The Production Manager

The prime conditions for the operation of a successful motion picture production process revolves around the strength of the the role of the production manager. The most amazing aspects of the most successful levels of a successful filmmaking process needs a steady hand, financial oversight, workplace environment tranquility,  and solidarity of vision in the film project itself.


With the virtue of understanding these requirements allows the filmmaking process to flow from pre-production, the production phase, the post-production, and ultimately completed project. The most prolific Unit Production Managers (UPM's) shuffle the decks, the relations to keep demanding producers, studios, talent, and the crew in a stable base mode even if the production is traversing the turbulent period of woes. Even more important is the place of moving a process forward by steering the ship.  Then, if the UPM is successful, the completed project is moved into post. Can the UPM get a project to this point, that is what the most efficient UPM strives for in totality.


So, as we examine the production process, we must realize the UPM for all of the assets that they bring to such endeavors.  

The Great Leap Forward...

“The Great Leap Forward” was a phrase long associated with the “Cultural Revolution” of the Maoist Communist movement in China. However, it has come to exemplify a period of restless anticipation in the fields of digital filmmaking. While we marvel at the visual wizardry of box-office darlings like “Avatar” and the “Harry Potter” series, it is in hindsight that we see that these films are still working to catch up technology wise with the vision of the filmmakers. In the case of James Cameron, his vision for “Avatar” was fermented and penned in the early 1990’s. The synergy was there, however, the nexus of technology in terms of the computer processor necessary to compose such powerfully stunning vistas as his fantasy world of Pandora required nearly a decade and half to come about into fruition.

In a TED Talk presented in February of 2010, the Academy Award winning director explained his long waited to create the blue creatures, visual panoramas, and jaw dropping action sequences. Cameron explained it like this: “But we found ourselves lagging in the mid '90s in the creature and character design stuff that we had actually founded the company to do. So, I wrote this piece called "Avatar," which was meant to absolutely push the envelope of visual effects, of CG effects, beyond, with realistic human emotive characters generated in CG And the main characters would all be in CG And the world would be in CG And the envelope pushed back. And I was told by the folks at my company that we weren't going to be able to do this for a while.”  

The great context of Cameron’s comments speak to the scores and depth of the potential stories that are lurking in the minds of Hollywood filmmakers as they await the next great wave of processing and microcomputer technology. The real question is whether a system of highly collaborative infrastructures will finally make their way into everyday filmmaking circles beyond the world of the film-editing suite (the worlds of Avid and FCP)? The possibility of multiple user interfaces in context of production design, set production leadership, and the introduction of cloud based computing technology still sits tenuously on the edge of actuality in the industry.  When will crews have the true ability to work in a virtual set that matches the virtual fantasy of Pandora. So only time will tell on that matter.