<\/p>\n
The SCAD Savannah Film Festival, held every year, assembles the best in above- and below-the-line talent for an audience primarily composed of Savannah College of Art and Design (that\u2019s SCAD) students. This year, IndieWire\u2019s Future of Filmmaking partnered with SCAD<\/a> to host the Behind Their Lens: Producers panel at the festival, which featured six top Hollywood producers, all women, to discuss the challenges and successes of their industry, and hopefully impart some career-learned wisdom to the students, too.<\/p>\n As moderated by IndieWire Executive Editor Ryan Lattanzio, the panelists were: Ellen Goldsmith-Vein\u00a0(\u201cSpringsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0\u201cWendell & Wild,\u201d\u00a0\u201cThe Maze Runner\u201d), CEO and founder of the management and production company Gotham Group; Carla Hacken (\u201cHell or High Water,\u201d \u201cThe Book of Henry,\u201d \u201cMr. Harrigan\u2019s Phone\u201d), president and founder of Paper Pictures; Debra Hayward (\u201cLes Mis\u00e9rables,\u201d \u201cGood Grief,\u201d \u201cBridget Jones\u2019s Diary\u201d) and Alison Owen (\u201cBack to Black<\/a>,\u201d \u201cGhosts,\u201d \u201cElizabeth\u201d), who joined forces to form Monumental Pictures; Riva Marker (\u201cReality,\u201d \u201cThe Guilty,\u201d \u201cBeasts of No Nation\u201d), CEO of Linden Entertainment who previously co-founded Nine Stories with Jake Gyllenhaal; and Kaila York (\u201cGridiron Grind,\u201d \u201cSightless\u201d), founder of Headlong Entertainment.<\/p>\n More from IndieWire<\/strong><\/p>\n Before the panelists each unpacked their individual achievements, they began by answering a basic question: What does a producer actually do? It\u2019s one of the most misunderstood jobs in the business, and one for which few film schools offer a degree.<\/p>\n \u201cHave any of you flown on an airline lately?\u201d Ellen Goldsmith-Vein said. \u201cHere are two ways that I would describe being a producer. One of them is being an air traffic controller. So you\u2019ve got to make sure that you\u2019re landing and taking care of all of the aircraft and in the air and all the souls on board. And really, at the end of the day, you\u2019re keeping the pilots on their course. The other way I might describe it is: Does anybody watch this incredible television series called \u201cThe Pitt\u201d? You know Noah Wiley\u2019s job? Sometimes you do end up in a corner crying like he has on that show. At the end of the day, there are a series of steps and one is identifying a story that you want to tell\u2026 and then it\u2019s beginning to figure out how to put that story together, and assembling a group of people to help tell, and then finding somebody who wants to actually make that come to life. It\u2019s really ultimately about passion and persistence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI would add to that having oceans of patience and perseverance and the ability to take rejection,\u201d Hayward said.<\/p>\n \u201cI used to say that the producer did everything behind the camera, and the director did everything in front of the camera, but it\u2019s more than that,\u201d Owen said. \u201cSometimes, you have producers who are very centrally creative and find the projects. They option an article or a book and really shepherd it from the beginning. There are other producers who are more concentrated on the finance and are really good at financing projects. And there are other producers that are brought on maybe halfway through a project to shepherd it. And then obviously you have line producers as well, who are much more physical. So it\u2019s quite a hard job to understand, because there\u2019s so many different aspects to it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cProducers are often the people who come up with the idea for the project, or they find the book that they love, or the play they love, or the musical they love, or the comic book they love, and then they assemble that whole team,\u201d Marker said. \u201cI always say, probably because I am a woman, but you \u2018mother\u2019 the project. You give it love where it needs love. You give your crew members love where they need love. You have to be disciplined. You have to also always what the vision, what the emotional impact, what you see the vision for the movie being, and sometimes that can be having conflict with different people \u2026 whether that\u2019s your filmmaker, whether that\u2019s the other crew members, whether that\u2019s the studio, but always with the goal of \u2018this was the vision we all started with. This was the reason we all said that we wanted to tell this story.\u2019 And that can be like the most rewarding part of being a producer, and also the most challenging part of being a producer.\u201d<\/p>\n Hear more from the panelists in the video above.<\/p>\n Best of IndieWire<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Indiewire’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The SCAD Savannah Film Festival, held every year, assembles the best in above- and below-the-line talent for an audience primarily composed of Savannah College of Art and Design (that\u2019s SCAD) students. This year, IndieWire\u2019s Future of Filmmaking partnered with SCAD to host the Behind Their Lens: Producers panel at the festival, which featured six top […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2169618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[416719,416720,416721,416722,157636,416723,365560,355976],"class_list":["post-2169617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-alison-owen","tag-debra-hayward","tag-ellen-goldsmith-vein","tag-hollywood-producers","tag-indiewire","tag-paper-pictures","tag-savannah-college-of-art-and-design","tag-scad-savannah"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/What-Does-a-Producer-Actually-Do-Hear-from-Six-Top.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2169617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2169619,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169617\/revisions\/2169619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2169618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2169617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2169617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2169617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}