Saturday, January 22, 2011

Producing Credit

I know I have been woefully absent here, despite my best intentions. I promise to come back with more "meaty" things to say about LA, but this is a ninja post on an article just tweeted by The Hollywood Reporter.

Apparently, the Producer's Guild of America (I didn't even know about this one) wants to start a system whereby Producers on films would actually have to "produce" in order to be given the designation p.g.a after their name and to be considered for awards as producers of films - for Oscars for example.

As always, I'm seeing both sides to this. I think that it is ridiculous when you see a movie win a prestigious award and the stage is swarmed by 20 people. It's ridiculous when the credits roll and there are 20 people listed as producers. I think those people who are doing all the hard work producing, and suffering the many stresses that go with the job, deserve the credit.

On the other hand, if you are financing a movie and putting up huge amounts of case or if you are agreeing to star in a movie for less than you normally would, you deserve some compensation for that too. Particularly for those financing movies, it's a great little bonus to have your name up there on the big screen and have the possibility of hitting the stage at the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards, or any other awards show. Without that sort of incentive, will there be a negative impact on the already floundering stream of financing trickling into Hollywood?

It will be interesting to see what the impact of this is in the future.
Here's the link to the article for those interested...
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/producers-guild-america-moves-certify-74662?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thr%2Fawards+%28The+Hollywood+Reporter+-+Awards%29&utm_content=Twitter