Lleju Productions Blog

Monday, December 12, 2011

What is a Producer?

by Omar Haneef

Congratulations to Keith for winning the bodyfat challenge. Sadly for the rest of us, he was the only person to win it and he did the old fashion way: consistently eating the right kinds of the right amounts of food and working out. He measured every bite. No one can argue with success.

Bill has been talking to me recently about the creeping nature of the producer title. As a production company we have “produced” a number of movies in different capacities and for different reasons. But what is means to “produce” a movie has varied. Sometimes, we just write a check if we think the math works out, and at other times we roll up our sleeves, and hire the line producers, talk to the talent agencies and line up the talent, make our best guess at how much the stars are worth in distribution and take our shot. We have even marketed movies ourselves. These tasks are vastly different and calling them the same thing is misleading, and sends the wrong signals.

We understand why it happens. We have been guilty of accepting a "producing" credit for writing a check ourselves in the case of Unthinkable. It is given out almost as a favor.

Many people in the industry have bemoaned this issue over the years. But Bill suggested a solution: just hand out more detailed producer credits. Slice up the role into constituent roles explicitly. Titles such as Financial Producer, Packaging Producer, Casting Producer and others would make explicit the role, and be a fair way of doling out credit.

Note that Bill does not suggest we take credit away from someone who 'merely' brings money to the project or 'merely' puts together the cast. Those are amazing contributions that are as hard as anything else. They deserve credit. But the suggestion is to give credit to them for what they are and not what they are not.

Posted By Lleju Productions At 12:09 PM • Trackbacks (0)

Monday, February 14, 2011

The Lleju body fat % challenge

by Omar Haneef

A lot of companies have fitness incentives, and they usually revolve around minute discounts on gym membership. While this is nice to have, it probably wasn't the $20/month that was preventing you from looking good, living longer, and living better.

But at Lleju, as an example of the crazy things we do, it gets a little more interesting.

Bill decided on a different tact here at Lleju: a 12% bodyfat target for men; 18% target for women. You have to hit the target by June, and again in November to show that it is a long term lifestyle change. This (1) rewarded people who were healthy anyway, and (2) didn't ask for mere weight loss which is not healthy.

What kind of incentive are we talking about? $15,000 which is probably the number that catches your eye. This is the largest health incentive we know of, and it is not related to the ostensible job functions.

The best part of the incentive scheme is that even if you fail to get the reward, you've made yourself healthier and better looking. One thing is for certain, come June, there will be a lot of attractive people at Lleju.

Posted By Lleju Productions At 10:47 PM • Trackbacks (0)

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

What it means to notice a contrived plot device

by Bill Perkins and Omar Haneef

What is the proper way to interpret the audience's reaction to a movie? Often a producer will hire a company to assess the movie in the middle of the editing process in the hopes of obtaining good advice on what to cut, expand or retain.

Generally, we trust that the audience knows what it likes, but we don’t trust why it likes what it likes.

When prompted, audience members will often complain about some part of the movie that didn't "make sense" because it was too sudden, or not sufficiently motivated, or simply felt like a non-sequitor. The audience may have some general idea. For instance, some critics have expressed confusion with the scene in Spider-man 3 when Peter Parker starts singing and tap dancing.

Invariably, this leads the director, producer and editor to go back in the editing room and try to fix the problem by filling in the plot. Perhaps the producer tries to motivate the scene by bringing up Peter's singing lessons earlier on, or editing in his deep desire to perform. The new scene may be boring, but surely it’ll help the audience understand the plot.

However, often it is not the incredible plot device that the audience is responding to. Major contrivances are often overlooked in a strong movie, and even minor contrivances become show stoppers if the scene is poor.

What gets overlooked is that there are great movies with unbelievable plot elements that never bother anyone.

By way of example, consider Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic, Alien. Alien is a famously gripping, tightly edited movie. You may recall that it opens with a summons to a mining planet, where the crew sees a dead alien inside a spaceship. The crew finds the alien -- as far as they know the first contact with a non-human intelligence -- and choose to spend about a minute examining it before they dart down a hole they find. The alien is completely ignored for the rest of the movie and all the sequels that follow it.

Now, notice the kind of commentary that is missing from fan blogs: no one asks what this alien is, or what it’s back-story is, or if this is the first contact with an alien species. Think about that for a second: the opening sequence of a movie includes a dead alien and we treat it as part of set design.

The reason that we don’t ask such a question, is because in the weird, dream-like atmosphere of the movie, it makes sense. It is in the craft of the movie, not in sheer plot line, that the movie makes sense.

What this means is that if an audience asks a question, it is never only a technical question. It means the audience snapped out of the spell of the movie and that something else is also going on. We can’t tell you if it is pacing, or cinematographic vocabulary, or poor acting. Something snapped them out so that they started looking around and noticing all the little things that are amiss with your plot.

You may notice that once you fix that hole, another problem has come up to replace the one that was just solved. For instance, perhaps the audience doesn't understand why Peter Parker is trying to make his girlfriend jealous. Meanwhile, the actual element that is not working, that is snapping them out, continues unchecked.

We’d be particularly interested in your thoughts as to how to better identify the part that is not working.

Posted By Lleju Productions At 4:10 PM • Trackbacks (9)

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Movie Futures

There has been a lot of talk about the Movie futures contracts currently approved by the CFTC. We at LLeju support the efforts to create liquidity for movie producers other then the fragmented market that currently exists. What do I mean you ask? Right now independents have very few options to monetize or sell their product, the studios essentially are the market for finished product. If the structure of these contracts (they need to be tweaked a bit) allows independent producers to access a larger pool of liquidity it will be the greatest step forward for movies since the invention of film. More to follow.

Posted By Lleju Productions At 9:35 AM • Trackbacks (0)