The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What does a line producer do?
A line producer is a producer who communicates between the crew members, the directors, and - if it’s a commercial - an agency and clients. In the case of filmmaking - the studio, executive producers, or the main producer.
My favorite definition of a line producer is someone who takes creative ideas and transforms them into money, time, and effort. To me, a good line producer knows everyone’s job enough to know when they’re doing it well. With experience, they also know how much things cost, how much time it takes, and who they need. They have a mind where they can take an idea and know immediately what it needs to make it happen. Because we are, in fact, fabricating reality.
What does a week on your job look like?
A week has 3 acts.
The first act is the bidding, estimate and research phase, where you have an idea that you want to create and you’re talking to the people who will be necessary to make that idea happen, whether that’s the director, the cinematographer, prop designer, location manager, all these different key crew members to get an idea of the overall scope.
The second act is actually the days and hours leading up to the shoot itself and the time on-set: running the crew, tracking expenses, making sure people are safe. That’s definitely a big thing now with COVID, but even before COVID, you’re moving heavy lights, transporting actors or clients, getting people fed on time, and sticking to the rules of union or even just set guidelines.
The third act is the wrap, which is a part that a lot of people overlook because that’s the only way you know if you are successful on your shoot. That includes not only getting all your paperwork done, but also paying out all the wonderful collaborators and people that worked on your set for you. It’s making sure all the releases are done and just making sure everyone is walking away from a shoot happy. Because you want to work again and you want to make another thing with them, hopefully, or at least the people that you liked. You want a bit of a wrap-up process with that too. You want to touch base with the director, the executive producers, the coordinators - people above and below you.
You just want to make sure that communication is constantly flowing. It’s up to you as line producer to take any advice or feedback and make those decisions. Because everyone has their own motivation. A director may want to spend 3 hours on a scene when you know you only have 1 hour. And a DP (Director of Photography) knows he could do it in 1 hour or doesn’t even want to shoot the scene or something like that. You’re taking in everyone’s feedback and you can’t be a yes-man to everyone. But you have to be able to absorb it and come up with a new plan that hopefully is for the best of the commercial or the film that you’re working on. You have to take everyone’s wish list and make them into something practical and executable.
That sounds very stressful.
I just think of it as a collaborator. Everyone has their own agenda and knows what they need to do to get their job done but it’s on your [line producer] shoulders to make it that reality. I always thought of a producer as a helper. They are trying their best to help everyone get what they want. And no one is wrong - they just don’t know what everyone else is doing. So there needs to be that one person to be that mouthpiece talking to everybody or knowing when they need to connect two people, because maybe their ideas are so different they need to just get together at the table to talk through the differences.
So, to get back to your question about what a week looks like. There are three acts. They’re all just happening at the same time. You might be wrapping up a project and starting a new one. You might be shooting something but starting to wrap or bid on a new project. All of them are constantly happening at the same time.
So you really have to be a very organized person and you have to be able to know who to call to help you. Because you can do it all by yourself but you might move a lot slower. There’s a saying that “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together.” It’s so true because if you take it all on yourself, you can move fast but you will also get burnt out very quickly.
How do you find projects to produce?
It’s all been word of mouth since 2010. I had no contacts in the industry, no money, and no content/portfolio. There’s only one thing I could offer at the time and that’s my time and effort - to be a true partner and handle the things that people don’t want to. I found a lot of creative and great people to work with over the years that just don’t like logistics …or doing spreadsheets and tape receipts…. chase down invoices, look at credit card statements, look into legal approvals, releases, and insurance etc. - all the many things considered “boring or tedious” side of filmmaking aka producing. So when I took on the burden of running the business side of making a film, the director and creative talents in the crew can find freedom to just focus on creating.
You mentioned watching movies with your family when you were younger. Can you talk more about what sparked your interest and when you knew it was something you wanted to pursue professionally?
My eyes were really opened by my cousins who came to visit us one day and they had made this really dumb stop-motion video using their Disney toys and their dad’s camera. And I was like “You made that? By yourself?” I started experimenting ever since I saw that. I started doing stop-motion myself as early as seventh grade - that was when I started using a video camera to make that stuff. But even prior to that, I would say I was always using my toys in such a way that I was recreating scenes from movies. I was obsessed with recreating the opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark - using a basketball as that rolling boulder. I would set up all the things and do it over and over again.
So, it started very early that I was already trying to fabricate reality, I guess you could say. I was trying to recreate movies that I was watching. I didn’t really pursue it in college but I did have a good friend take me on to set for Tisch at NYU. He was on the director's track and he asked me to PA (Production Assistant) for him. I started on the very ground level of learning what it was like doing student films and very ultra low-budget micro music videos, spec commercials and stuff like that, where your budget is $2000 to make a music video. Also, I did a cinema studies class which I think really changed how I watch movies. It was a class on Hitchcock and to learn how he was so in control of every single thing: how things were framed and costume, wardrobe, color, all of that. Thinking about auteur theory was a big thing.
I don’t have any formal training. I just learned on set, which I think is what a lot of people told me was the best way to learn - to learn on set. But it also comes with a bit of sacrifice because you have to start saying no to jobs. Like I was working at a talent agency and I could have gone on a track to be a talent agent or something, but I really just wanted to do filmmaking and produce. So, I had to quit. I was there for 9 months and as soon as I realized “I’m not going to be a producer if I keep doing this,” I had to quit that. I was unemployed for 3 to 4 months, so I was privileged enough to be able to rely on my parents’ support during that time. I do think you need some kind of privilege or help to break in. But once you’re in, you have to show up and put in the hard work yourself to get noticed and to proactively learn on set. Because if you don’t ask questions like “What is this piece of equipment?” “How do I use it?” “What’s your role here?” you’re just going to be a gopher like “Go get me that coffee” or “Go bring me this thing.” You’ll just be a pair of hands and feet to move stuff or people around. You have to go up to producers and tell them what you want to do.
You don’t really know what you might like or what you gravitate towards until you’re in it and you get to experience it first-hand.
And you might not like it. It might be something you thought you would enjoy doing. With my experience making home movies and stuff, I thought I would be a director. But I fell in love with producing more because I liked to know what makes the clock tick. I want to know how that film is made versus making the film. I do think there are stages - maybe I’ll go back to directing - but at one point, I directed and I was like “this sucks.” There’s so much pressure to direct.
It’s okay though because now you have people, like Law Chen, who loves to direct and you can collaborate with him and do the things you actually enjoy doing.
Right. Once I directed, I knew how hard it was to direct so that’s how I became a line producer. The line producer is the director’s best friend because right up to the end, they’re executing the vision and helping to make the day. I will try to keep the day-to-day stuff away from the director so they can think creatively about it. I know that directors, even the best directors, are making stuff up as they go. They are very good at building the parachute as they are falling out of the plane. Maybe they’ll show up on set, and they don’t know what they’re going to do that day. But if they have someone like the DP, or the production designer, or the actors to help collaborate, that’s where the magical process comes from. Maybe some directors, like Scorsese, know exactly what the shot is but they still have to leave room for the unknown. But that unknown is a controlled unknown because they know they have the producer’s support.
If there’s going to be an unknown, then I better know how much it costs already.
There’s so many different things you can do in the filmmaking world and you talked about why, for you, it was production rather than directing. Are there any other areas you have explored or that you would like to explore in the future?
I think I would’ve been a production designer - someone who needs to be creative and flexible and knows how to run a team. Good key members, like a DP, a production designer, a gaffer, an AD, all know how to produce to an extent. They all know how to run their department. The DP knows how to run the camera crew and how to balance the lighting crew too. The production designer knows how to talk to wardrobe, makeup, and their props crew as well as if they have to buy, rent, or build stuff. I think the production designer would have been the next best thing. And I think so because there are a lot of low-budget shoots where the producer ends up being the production designer since they can’t afford to hire a production designer. So they’re like “Yeah, I’ll go pick up some clothes or props from Walmart” and kind of do it all. If you can do it all, it makes you indispensable. But it’s also a blessing and curse.
I know I can do it all, but I can’t duplicate myself. There’s only so much time I have. Long answer short, production designing seems to involve producing but also has the ability to establish a creative look and feel to a film.
Let’s get into how you started Hsubox Productions. What made you want to start a production company of your own and what was that process like?
I started my production company because no other production company would hire me in the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. I was lucky enough to have an Associate Producer job at a very small boutique company, but they eventually broke up in 2010. And then I was freelance. I applied to every single production company job there was, but no one was hiring. So, I did it myself.
I used my credit card and I built myself a website on iWeb. I started printing some business cards as “Producer/Director/Editor” and I took every odd job that was available. I went on Craigslist, I went on Mandy. I went on all these entertainment job sites applying for producer jobs but no one was biting. I was able to do some non-union work producing for some production companies, but not full-time and what I wanted was full-time. So, I did it out of necessity. I created my own production company so I could employ myself. I could have gone freelance and stayed freelance, but to work on bigger jobs, I knew I needed to invest in myself, to have a company structure, to have production insurance, to create marketing materials. And sure enough, people started hiring me for commercial work. Which I think is the best thing that could happen to any filmmaker - to get some commercial production experience under their belt. Because there’s a structure and a budget to learn your craft.
On your website, it says “The mission of the company is to help connect Clients with incredible Makers who would originally get overlooked, minoritized, or rejected outright because they were…too different or ‘not commercial enough.” What fueled this mission?
It came out of selfishness. You can call it selfishness, or empathy. There’s someone out there who’s starting out in film, just like me 10 years ago. There’s a 2012 Jon who has applied to every single production company job and isn’t getting any work. It might be because his talent is overlooked, he doesn’t look good on paper, he hasn’t had enough experience, he hasn’t had a chance to prove himself or herself. There’s people out there. I think of the fresh graduates every year. Every year, there’s someone out there who I’m missing out on working with. I can’t find them and, therefore, if I make it my mission to find them, maybe I’ll attract what I put there. So, I put it out there and I’m hoping that people will find me. The more I push out the messaging of what Hsubox Productions is, the more the newsletter goes out, maybe people reading will think “I have a friend who’s just looking for a chance to work” or “I have a friend who has a kid who just graduated college and is looking for work.” That’s who I’m trying to reach.
What’s important is that it’s not there symbolically. It’s there as an actual mission statement and it’s not there just as a checkbox. It’s the whole reason for the production company itself, because that’s the plug I had to create to fill the hole where I kept falling through.
What projects did you look for when your company was first getting off the ground?
I knew advertising was the best way to make a living. I knew as a line producer, I needed directors because directors are basically the storefront display. People get attracted to a director’s work and think “I want that director to work on our campaign.” I knew I needed to get to know as many directors as possible. Therefore, the directors who hate producing would say “Hey Jon, can you work on this ad for me?” In order of importance: first, I would look for something that was branded or advertising-related; second, I would stay in touch with the directors to be sure that, if they did get a job, they knew who to turn to for a producer.
What projects are you currently working on?
I am working on a couple different avenues. One, of course, is commercial production. I have a national TV thing shooting mid-February. I also have multiple promos for A&E Network being shot over the course of the next two months. I am also in the edit of a docu-fiction feature film that was shot. I am also producing a short film for one of the winners of the Netflix, Tribeca Studios, and Gold House Future Gold Film Program. There were 3 winners chosen for this year and, luckily, one of my friends got chosen. It was so funny because I told him about it at a rooftop party. He wrote a script and budget in one day and he got selected.
Seeing how far Hsubox Productions has come today and looking forward, what are your goals and hopes for the company?
My goal is to write a book by the end of the year on breaking into indie film producing or commercial film producing to help those who want to be filmmakers, like how do you use that to make money and to further your career and some big life lessons I’ve learned. That’s one of my big things - self-publishing an ebook. Another thing is hiring another full-time line producer to help me scale up. Getting that original piece of content made and launched is big. Those are the big three things. One is a staffing goal, one is an original content piece/feature film goal, and the third one is something for me to help pass the torch on.
That’s exciting. I’m excited for the book.
We’ll see. I started this notebook in 2013. It’s got notes from every production of what went good and what went bad. Some of them are great pieces of advice, some are just silly musings.
Here’s one from 2011 - oh gosh, it says “No one is the gatekeeper to your destiny. Only Jesus.” I am what many people would classify as religious but I prefer the idea that I’m just in touch with spiritual matters.
Another is, “If you can’t produce violent action sequences, write violent dialogue sequences.” I think that was Tarantino.
“If you don’t eat on set, you won’t poop on set.” I remember what happened - I ate something and I had a bad reaction. I was stuck in the bathroom on the walkie-talkie, like “Yep, still in the bathroom! Keep rolling! Keep going!”
I think that is an excellent note to end on.