How to Become a Film Producer

In the bustling marketplace of modern media, it can be difficult to know where to start.

Most people will tell you that you need to take a specific course, attend a university, or work a long-running internship before you’re ready to become a producer. But we’re here to tell you that simply isn’t the case.

Thanks to today’s equipment, diverse talent and distribution platforms becoming a film producer is easier than ever. Especially when we’re talking about producing online content or commercials.

Keeping things simple, to get started as a film producer you simply need to follow these three easy steps, regardless of your project.

Step 1: Message

First of all, you need to find a direction for your commercial or video.

For commercials this usually revolves around products fixing real world problems. Say you’re shooting a commercial for a sports shoe that helps to reduce running injuries. The message pretty much writes itself: the product prevents injuries in runners.

An important tip here is to focus on one (or a few) of benefits. Many marketers stack scripts with too many benefits for viewers to keep track of, making their products lose their unique selling point in the process.

Step 2: Target Audience

With the message defined, it’s time to find out who you want to watch your piece.

If you’re selling those running shoes from earlier the answer is simple: runners. However, target groups can get much more niche than this: be it people of a certain age or profession.

Once you’ve identified this target group, it’s time to study everything about them. What do they do? What do they like? What are they used to watching? What type of visual media appeals to them the most Questions like these will help to define the styles and aesthetics of your piece.

Step 3: Make It Engaging

Finally, it’s time to combine the message and the target audience research to make something that will grab your audience.

There are a few ways to approach making content engaging:

·       Aesthetics: adhering to a particular audio-visual style.

·       Storytelling techniques: crafting a story which will resonate.

·       Genre: Incorporating comedy, drama, horror, or other genres.

To take us back to our running shoe example, here we may choose to adhere to a minimalist aesthetic, presenting a dramatic narrative, as these are two forms which resonate with a large portion of serious runners.

And there we have it, we are already on track to producing a killer commercial.

Get Producing

Being a film producer is quite an illusive task, however it’s less daunting than its reputation will have you believe. Check out this video to see how we produce a corporate video: