Typed by hand. It may still contain mistakes; the recording is the original.
Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.
Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?
Confused Woman: Biagio-WHO???
Announcer: This episode…
Biagio: It’s episode 44 and we’ve got advice to help you succeed in film and TV. Five traits of successful film and TV producers and it all has to do with the letter L. Why working full-time in showbiz can kill your creativity and innovation if you’re not careful. How to get through the tough times in your career? And are you old enough to remember that time the whole world almost crashed?
Announcer: Music courtesy of Dave Pelman Music, davepelman.com
Biagio: Hey, everybody. She’s Joke.
Joke: He’s Biagio.
Biagio: We’re married, we make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.
Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.
Biagio: Well, happy 2015, everybody. Look at that, we are 15 years into the 2000. Remember when everyone thought the world was just going to end in the year 2000?
Joke: Yes, that seems only yesterday but not so.
Biagio: Yeah. You know, probably some of our listeners are too young to remember Y2K and all the excitement and danger it brought with it.
Joke: Wait, what? You think we have 12-year olds listening to this?
Biagio: Well, no. But I mean, if they’re 20 they were only five when Y2K happened.
Joke: Oh, man. I feel really old.
Biagio: I doubt at five years old they knew what Y2K even meant. Alright, well while we’re done aging ourselves and instead, we’re going to talk about something that I think is going to kick the New Year off right for everybody. Right, honey?
Joke: Yes. We’ve all heard of the saying, always be closing. And in our business, it’s really kind of always be pitching.
Biagio: Yes, yes.
Joke: But maybe that’s a topic for another day.
Biagio: Yeah, we’ll save ABP for another day entirely.
Joke: Today we want to talk about ABL.
Biagio: ABL, yes. Today it’s the letter L.
Joke: L. Wow, I feel like I’m in my daughter’s preschool. We’re going to learn about the letter L. Okay, so today, we’re going to talk about five traits of successful producers that start with the letter L.
Biagio: Alright.
Joke: So, here we go. Number one: Always be learning.
Biagio: Ah, this is one of my favorites.
Joke: Always be expanding your skills, always learn the different aspects of the job. This is absolutely one of Biagio’s favorite. He’s always picking up some new line item in the budget and it drives me crazy sometimes. But it’s just important to know and really understand the different jobs on set, we’ve talked about this before and not just on set but even in post so you really understand what everybody’s going through.
As a producer, you kind of have to captain the whole ship. So it’s really important you understand what each job requires so that you can make sure that, one: You hire the best people for the job but two, that the job is being done to benefit the bigger picture.
Biagio: Never stop learning. I’m not ashamed to say, yes, we’re successful TV producers. Yes, we own our own company. Yes, we’ve got great offices in the Universal Studios. You know what, I still subscribe to Lynda.com. I spent the holidays, when we weren’t editing, doing a bunch of tutorials in all sorts of random things ranging from visual effects to computer coding.
Why? Because I feel that the more you learn, the more you bring to your job, whatever it is. And I often come up with really weird out-of-the-box ideas because of these nutty tutorials I’m doing. So I think learning and always learning and never stop your learning is very important.
Joke: And science proves that you may defer Alzheimer’s and dementia if you keep learning.
Biagio: That’s right. So keep studying, people. You don’t want to lose that memory too soon.
Joke: Alright, number two: Always be living. That seems like, duh. I’m going to be living. Maybe it’s like living, listening. The idea here is really just to be present in your life, to be looking around, to be listening, to be curious, to really see where the stories are, to be interested in other people’s stories. To, again back to the learning, to learn about other people but to live and to experience things. To see different cultures and to learn different languages and to really kind of live.
So that’s where I think successful producers really do get the most out of life. And it makes them successful in their job.
Biagio: Yeah. And listen, especially in the entertainment industry if any of you have worked in the industry for any amount of time you no doubt, have met people whose entire life is the entertainment industry. And what happens? They no longer have anything to write about or anything to create. All their insight is about the entertainment industry itself.
It’s not about things that are different or interesting or outside of their everyday lives. And that’s why I think it’s so important to get out there and meet as many real people as you can, no matter what area of the business you’re in-actor, writer, director, producer. You need to get outside of Hollywood. You need to get outside of the biz and go and hang with other real interesting people around the country and around the world.
And if you don’t have the money to travel, no problem. That’s where the internet is for, but expose yourself to the other people who are living their lives. It’s going to influence and inspire all of you work.
Joke: Alright, number three: Always be leaning.
Biagio: Leaning. Wow, this is I don’t even know what this one means. I can’t wait to hear, honey. What does it mean to always be leaning?
Joke: Well, okay, I think it’s important to always hire people who are better than yourself, right? I think it’s important to understand that in our business and as a producer, a producer is not a solitary job. A producer is teamwork. You need you need your team to produce, to bring a story together. That’s what I love about the film and television medium, is that it’s a very collaborative space.
So you have to be able to lean on other people. You have to feel confident enough in your abilities that you can hire people that might be better than you. That even though you have been learning everybody’s job, that you know so and so is better than that and that you’re confident enough that you can lean on that person to help bring your project to fruition, to help get your project to the next level.
So to me, leaning is really just a way of highlighting and embracing the collaborative medium that we’re all in.
Biagio: That’s a great point, honey. And you know, it takes real self confidence to allow yourself to say, that person’s better than me and that’s awesome. Like, you really have to have good sense of self to know that your project is going to be better if you hire someone that can do a job better than you can.
It’s really hard for indies sometimes to get their head around this, especially one-man bands. Of myself, I’ve been guilty of this in the past. I mean, I’ve done it all: write, direct, act, produce. You know what, there’s people that can do certain aspects of this job better than me. And when I trust them to do it, our projects are better.
And then of course, when we can’t find anyone to do it, thank God, me and Joke could step in and fix it.
Joke: We have to settle for ourselves.
Biagio: Yeah, we have to settle for ourselves. And luckily, we’ve managed to settle for ourselves without screwing things up too bad every now and again.
Joke: Alright, and that brings me to number four, which is: Always be Leading. And so, that is as a producer, you are the leader. You are the captain of that ship. And so, it’s important to lead. And it seems easier said than done, but it isn’t. You have to learn to manage personalities, you have to constantly keep the end goal in mind, you have to show, not just tell, you have to work harder than most people.
It’s your baby, nobody’s going to care as much as you are. So if you don’t show, if you don’t lead by example, it’s going to be very hard to get the team on board. And so, leading is not just barking orders. It very much is doing.
Biagio: Yes. Leading by example.
Joke: Yeah. Okay, so that was number four. Biagio didn’t have a lot to say about leading by example. Okay, well whatever.
Biagio: My wife leads me by example.
Joke: I have a feeling he’s going to have a lot to say about this last one: Always be laughing.
Biagio: Oh, yes.
Joke: And that really is just like, listen, at the end of the day we’re not curing cancer. We’re making entertainment. We have to enjoy our jobs. Yes, it gets stressful. Yes, you’re up against deadlines. Yes, sometimes you get crazy notes and it’s so frustrating. And sometimes you have to fight really hard to get your story told.
But you know what, guys? We’re so blessed that we’re able to do this and that we live in an age where anybody really has access to a camera even just on their phone, and to be able to be in this medium and to visually story tell and to have that available to everybody, that it’s not an exclusive club anymore, is really exciting.
And so, we have to fun with it. We can’t take ourselves too seriously even when things get stressful, we have to be able to take a step back and go, “You know what, hey, there’s a lot more—there’s a lot harder jobs in the world than what we’re doing and we’re pretty blessed to be able to do this.” So always be laughing, always have a good sense about the life and how lucky we are to do this.
Biagio: I couldn’t agree more. I think we have a lot of fun. And there’s going to be times when network or studio is going to give you notes you don’t like and there’s going to be times when someone that’s on your team turns out just to be a total jerk and you never saw it coming. There’s going to be times when the hours are long and the sleep is short and your personal life is definitely getting the short end of the stick.
That all comes with the territory. If you can laugh your way through it, if you’d have a lot of fun, if you really enjoy what you’re doing, in the end you’re going to be happy. And I got to tell you, honey, one of my favorite things in the world to do is laughing with you.
Joke: It sure is it’s kept us going this long.
Biagio: Kept us going. Okay, that ends the cheese alert. So, that’s it. Let’s wrap it up, honey. Let’s repeat those five things, the five L’s that we think are traits for successful producers.
Joke: Always be learning, always be living, always be leaning, always be leading, and always be laughing.
Biagio: There you go. I think that is some great advice to start off the new year. These are things that we not only try to practise but we’re seen in other great producers we’ve worked with when we were coming up through the ranks.
That being said, just a few reminders for those of you who might be listening to the podcast for the first time or haven’t listened in a while, you can always find more of these podcasts over at ProducingUnscripted.com. Our very first eight episodes that teach you specifically how to pitch, create, make, and break into reality TV can be found on our YouTube channel with a clickable table of contents and a slideshow, which is over at: YouTube.com/JokeAndBiagio.
You can follow us on Twitter at, you guessed it, JokeAndBiagio. You can find us on Facebook at yup, Joke and Biagio. So pretty much, you can find us everywhere at Joke and Biagio.
Joke: I know. We make it very difficult.
Biagio: It’s so difficult. Well listen, the names aren’t the easiest. For those of you who don’t know how to spell Joke and Biagio, that’s J-O-K-E A-N-D B-I-A-G-I-O. Well listen we couldn’t be more excited to be kicking off 2015 with you.
As always, thank you so much for giving us your time. We know you’re busy, anyone trying to break into this business has a lot on their plate and we really appreciate that you’ve given us a little bit of your time. And we hope the advice helps you to be successful, and just kick off a great 2015.
Joke: Yes, to a successful 2015.
Biagio: Hep, hep, hooray!
Joke: Bye, everybody.
Biagio: Bye-bye.
Announcer: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.
