What Makes a Producer Producers

-- like sky divers, short-order cooks, and possibly drag car racers -- can come from anywhere. In fact, most producers are highly educated with years of training in fields that have nothing at all to do with digital television production methods at the turn of the millennium. Unlike the trained technicians with whom they often spend their hours, producers require no particular certification to do the job. The successful producer is, in many cases, a talented generalist with some basic communications skills and an ability to coordinate the personalities and resources of others to convey the message of a script, a story-board, or a general manager.

Why Digital Matters

Digital technologies are changing every aspect of production, not only the tools and techniques used to capture, prepare, and deliver video, but in some cases the entire structure of production environments and the very content of the television medium itself. More and more the job will require, at the very least, a knowledge of how these digital technologies change the workflow of the various players in production -- camera people, editors, directors, designers. A true "digital producer" should gain mastery over these technologies and shorten the cycles of production.

Who Should Read This Book

The specific techniques and examples we use throughout this book are oriented toward the development of audio-visual scripts for documentaries, news-magazine pieces, corporate video projects, and to some extent short-form commercials, promos, and public service announcements. Producers are the original "desktop editors," hammering source material into edit plans that might include narration, shot descriptions, tape and time code information, and sound-on-tape. That blueprint of the program is, for all intents and purposes, a "rough cut" without the play button. With the latest computer based tools and techniques, the distance from that script on your lap-top to the finished program on screen is shorter than ever.

How to Use This Book

As the digital era in the media reaches full steam in the next few years, computer-based tools covering the entire production process from scripting to shooting to finishing Ð will become commonplace. This book will help you answer the following important questions: 

o How are new digital production tools affecting the producer's budgets, schedules, and production plans? 

o What are the advantages of computer-based production tools? What are the pitfalls? 

o How should a producer prepare scripts and edit plans for effective nonlinear post-production? 

o How can a producer best use computer-based tools to avoid duplication of effort?