The Good Fight

Hello all, it’s good to be back! Where was I you ask…? Well, for the past couple of months I was producing a wonderful independent feature titled: Calling it Quits. I had intended to post daily about the experience, but the workload as Producer, Line Producer and Production Manager (did I mention it was low budget?), took its toll on my time. As much as I love writing, my priority was the film, so I temporarily suspended my posts.

But now I’m back and have a lot to tell you. First and foremost I wanted to thank the director Anthony Tarsitano for writing such a wonderful script. His openness, confidence, and creativity were truly inspiring. I’d also like to thank my producing partner on this film - Jeanne Suggs. Jeanne is a smart, supportive and a wonderful collaborator. Together we spent the last several months assembling an amazing team of film professionals and producing what I believe will be a wonderful film.

Producing a film at any budget is hard work, but at the budget level we worked at the hard work is multiplied several times over. This is because you don’t have enough money to hire all the help you really need so end up wearing multiple hats.

I must say the hard work paid off. The quality of the performances and the production values on this film are truly exceptional. This is directly attributable to the talent of our cast and crew. I’ve worked on bigger budget shows with larger crews, but never have I worked with better. Time and time again the crew stepped up to create sets, wardrobe, lighting and sound design that would be exceptional at 10 times the budget.

As producer on a low budget film it’s a painful fact that you will have to make compromises and will never be able to pay talent what they are actually worth. But going in we were determined to treat the cast and crew as best we could on our budget, and make sure every cent we spent ended up on the screen. I think we succeeded.

It’s an amazing thing to see all your months of planning and prep and the dozens of individuals you hired come together in a well-run, successful production. We’re now firmly into editing and scoring and we’ve been fortunate to find some equally talented people to help us here as well. I can’t wait to see the final product. I’ll keep you informed of our progress.