Why Line Producing Is as Much a People Job as a Numbers Job

Pete McClellan shares budgeting tips and makes the case that your little indie's breakeven point should probably be higher.

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A line producer’s job revolves around creating and overseeing a film’s budget. But Pete McClellan, who has line produced for films like Lingua Franca and All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, views the job more as “people management than budget management.” There is the adding and subtracting of expenses, sure, but the crux of the job comes in building trust, communicating clearly, and managing expectations. As he’s gotten more experience, McClellan has learned when to approve expenses that are beyond the scope of an original budget; how to artfully move money around so that the production stays under budget; and how to maintain “healthy relationships with department heads to create an environment of us all being on the same team.”

In addition to his line producing work, this past week, McClellan’s first feature as a capital-P producer was released: Nicole Riegel’s Dandelion. So in addition to the ins-and-outs of budgeting, we discussed the relationship-building necessary for producing, and some longstanding gripes McClellan has had with the Esquire article I wrote last year about the wave of cool microbudget movies sprouting up.

Let’s talk about smaller indies. Last year, when I wrote about the wave of cool micro budget movies coming out, there were some things you pushed back against.  

Something that stuck out to me in the article was Ryan [Martin Brown]'s quote about how all of a sudden if you start selling to these big production companies this idea of being able to make things for smaller and smaller budgets, that's scary because these small budgets are not sustainable. So an idea I'm trying to push is that if your small indie movie is going to have success it's most likely going to have big success. There are very few things that end up in this weird in-between of making a few hundred thousand dollars or making a million dollars. It's either going to make close to nothing, or you're if you’re lucky and it does have commercial appeal you’re going to get back a couple million bucks. 

So this idea that there's this magic number of how big our budget should be going in is misguided. It needs to be "This is how much it costs to make a movie" as opposed to "We're willing to make sacrifices because we believe in this." The people paying for the product need to know that the cost has gone up. Which is why nothing is being made right now, because the cost has gone up and people are trying to figure out how to work around that. But it's like, "Oh, we're going to skimp back. The investors wanted to give us a million dollars to make the movie, but we feel like we might not make a million dollars, maybe we'll make $250K back, so we'll make the movie for $250K." Well it's like, "You all lose outright, and then even if the movie does have success they're probably going to make over a million dollars." There's such a small target on the dartboard that is "OK, we made back three hundred thousand dollars." As someone who makes a living making movies, I don't want to see us collapse into the only people who make movies are the people who can afford to not get paid on them. That's such a scary world. So I want to advocate that movies are super expensive, and they should be because you're paying a lot of people to do a thing. 

Is what you're saying that the thirty thousand dollar movie should be three hundred thousand dollars?

No, kind of the other way around. It's going to sound like a cheapskate position, but I highly advocate that you don't pay your friends on a short film because I think the amount of money you can offer them is so low and the reason they're doing it is not to get a paycheck, it's to help you out. And if it's not a friend, you have to hire the person for sure. But when you're starting out and proving yourself as a director, go make something for super cheap. Like, zero dollars. Prove that you can direct and come up with story ideas. 

So on those slightly bigger small indies, your breakeven point should be higher in a lot of cases. And you shouldn't be making the movie for such a small number where you're now exploiting people. 

Or you don't even have the money to make the thing you're trying to make. That's another thing. You're like, "I'm going to bring my costs so low that I have a good chance to make my money back." But then your movie turns out shit. Great, you saved $200K on your $800K movie when you could've spent the proper amount and given yourself a chance to make your money back. 

Getting more into the weeds of budgets, most of your work has been as a line producer. Are there places you think people tend to skimp and not spend enough? 

It's rare to find a budget from someone who knows what they're doing where I'm like, "Oh god, what are we doing here?" But people breaking into line producing, you've got to understand fringes. That's your taxes, your union dues, all the costs of doing business. Often, especially when you're talking sub-$1 million and you're trying to skimp on every cost, it's like, "Do you know what worker's comp is? You've got to have worker's comp, because if someone burns their hand on your set they're going to sue you if they can't go to the doctor." 

And this is the fine line between a career and a hobby. What we're talking about here is career filmmaking. When folks from the hobbyist world are trying to break into that, they forget taxes owed on labor. I think people try to skimp on crew size, and I think you've got to be a really specific type of film to be able to do that. You're not setting yourself up for success if you have one person doing hair and makeup and wardrobe. Look to a union set, look at how many people they have. Of course you're going to slim it back. But people try to eliminate whole departments like, "Oh, we'll have our art director also do props." It's like, "There is a reason those are separate departments.” And it's just knowing your own script to know what you can get away with. 

Budgeting example.

I think about how in baseball, teams started doing a shift on defense. They have the same number of players on the field, but all of a sudden you're not putting a shortstop in the shortstop position. And it works for them. I'm wondering if there are analogous ways film sets could be more efficient than whatever the orthodoxy is. 

I've been kicking that around too with a project I got recently attached to. We're applying for a grant and the grant is for 200,000 euros. In the application form, building the budget, I'm like, "Good god, how do I do this?" And it requires you to kind of rethink how you make a movie. If we're going to do this, it's like with a crew of five people. And yeah, that doesn't include a wardrobe specific person. But it's so material specific. And as you get more experience as a producer, you make those decisions correctly. Versus when you're starting you're still making those decisions, but you're making mistakes. And that's OK, you can learn from that. 

I think a savvy production has the line producer in a creative conversation with the director, making sure that you are on the same page in terms of their priorities. Yes, some departments will bloat. But as long as that bloat is happening in the same organic direction as the director's priorities, then I think it's OK. Where I think you get yourself in trouble is twofold: One, you don't see eye to eye with the director, either because you're a bad line producer or they're not bringing you in. Or, it's the line producer trying to make their life easy and not think about the project first and foremost. 

Here's a big way I screwed up line producing on my first job: SAG contracts are eight hours, not a twelve hour day. And so many times I'll get a budget and they've plugged in the SAG scale and it's for eight hours. I go the other way, and I assume they're going to get an hour of OT so you can calculate into your budget what an actor's going to get paid and estimate ideally more than they're actually going to get. And that's protection for you in case your AD calls up and says they need an hour. Also it's a good way to store money that no one's ever going to balk at. 

Are there other pieces of advice you give to first time line producers?

I think a big thing is that a budget is a living document. It should be constantly evolving, both in the sense that it's not rigid before the project and it's not rigid during the project, both in terms of overages and savings. I think it's ultimately less about having to stay under on all these lines and more about knowing where problems might arise and reacting in a dynamic way. 

Ultimately, while it's a numbers job, it's also a people job. You need to have relationships with crew members so you can anticipate problems and try to get ahead of them. If you're not checking in or trying to anticipate problems, then you'll run into the thing where you get a call at 8:00pm, midday in the shooting schedule, and they’ll say what they need. And I'm like, "It's 8:00pm. What vendor is going to be open right now?" And it's not their fault, they have other things to worry about. But all of a sudden, the overage is we have to hire someone to come in and fix this problem. So having healthy relationships with department heads and creating an environment of us all being on the same team here goes a long way. 

McClellan was an associate producer on Fremont, one of my favorite films from last year.

Can you talk more about how you manage the interpersonal element as a line producer?

Places where I've seen some line producers struggle is in the contentiousness that can come up. You're dealing with people's paychecks. It's not a fun, sexy thing to be the person in charge of payroll. But I think it's building that trust with people. And one of those trust elements is when people ask for something, knowing how to manage those expectations. Let's say Production Design comes to you and says, "Director asked me for this, and we can't afford it." It's knowing when to say yes to things even though they are outside of the scope of what you had originally budgeted for. You don't want to just be constantly naysaying because then people won't come to you when problems arise for fear of you just saying no anyways, even if maybe you could've said yes because some money opened up. Or they'll just do it without asking, and then all of a sudden you're over budget. So it's important to say yes to things to build that trust and allow the different departments to feel empowered. 

For you as a capital-p Producer, what does getting financing look like? 

I think it's definitely finding the right angle depending on the project and who you're going to pitch it to. The closest unsexy thing is like business to business sales. What the film is determines who you're going to take it to. But the more and more I do this, every project has had a very unique and almost organic way of getting its financing. Whether it's some billionaire guy who just wants to make something or it's a traditional production studio and it's just part of their slate. 

What I'm curious about is how people find that billionaire. What I've found is that it really is all about knocking on as many doors as possible. And maybe it doesn't work out for this project, but it's good to at least develop that relationship, and then it may pay off in some way in the future. 

Absolutely. Also, this industry is all about buzz. So they may pass on it, but just hearing about it once some other person talks about it, it may be this chain reaction of, "Oh, yeah, I did read that." Things get sent around so much that that helps the project even if they're passing on it. It's somebody else to have it in the back of their mind. And it is just a matter of: How many rooms can you get into? And the classic thing is when you need them, they don't want you. And when you don't need them, that's when they want you. 

If you're new to the whole thing it's really hard to get into those rooms because, guess what? Those rooms don't actually exist. It's not your local filmmaker networking hall where a billionaire is going to find their next thing. It's making relationships with agents at CAA and WME and all these people who are more the cultural curators who can put you with the right people. 

Still from All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt.

It seems like you've been pretty good at making and leveraging those relationships. How did you learn that? 

It's definitely something I'm still learning and still trying to figure out. I think it's about being realistic about how this actually happens. Especially when you're talking about millions of dollars. It's like, what does that look like? Why would somebody even do this? And how do I relate to that person? That's the mindset you have to be in more than, I have such a good movie idea, and people are going to love it, and it's going to make so much money. Someone savvy enough to put millions of dollars in, the return isn't going to move the needle for them. It's going to be relationships and the accolades. You have to have something already proven before someone's going to take a huge risk on it. And it's kind of an all ships rise mentality. Who do you work well with? And do they have the same ambitions as you to work on projects of a similar size? 

Do you have an idea of what the sorts of projects you want to make are? 

Genuinely it is the mid-tier studio films more so than pure capital-I indies. A goal for me is making things that resonate with a huge, wide, broad audience but still can push the envelope a little bit and get a message out there. I find the symbiotic relationship that happens in film between commerce and art to be really interesting. And finding that perfect balance is fun. I want to be artistic and tell compelling stories. But if I personally was in it just for the art, I don't think filmmaking is the right way to do it. I think a lot of people would disagree with me. But I think to ignore the commercial element of film is silly. Once I'm managing someone's millions of dollars, this is no longer some pet project for an artist. This is a business. And I'm responsible for a lot of people's paychecks. That changed my perspective on a lot of things too. With the hundreds of crew that you hired to do something, if your mindset is We'll do whatever we can for the art, fuck no. This is people's livelihoods, and you need to protect that a little bit. But I think it can be exciting to be like, "We're here as a job and a career and to make money, but also we can do something interesting with the art." 

I think there are people who are only interested in making money and there are people who are only interested in making great art. But as you said, filmmaking is a medium that lends itself to people who came in wanting to do both. And I'm curious about your theories on how that happens. 

This is speculating on how you save the industry a little bit. But an analogy I've been thinking about a lot is the survival bias. They did a study in World War II of planes that had bullet holes all shot through them. The planes were coming back, and they were like, "Look at where the planes are getting shot. We need to repair those things." When in reality it's like, "No, the ones that aren't coming back are being shot in other places so we need to focus on that." And I think a lot of times we'll see a movie that will succeed and we'll be like, "Oh, great, let's just do that again." But we don't look at all the movies that failed trying to do what that movie did. So you're kind of chasing something that's already come and gone, and now you're just filling the market with a repeat of the thing. It's not going to have the same success. So it feels like a little bit of a cop-out to be like, "Original ideas sell." But I do think that that is what we need to get back to a little bit. You can't think purely about what is going to sell because what sold before you has already been sold, and now people aren't going to be interested in buying that again. 

Still from Lingua Franca.

If you're looking at a project that you think is artistically interesting, how do you then advise that project so that it is commercially viable?

There are some where it's purely art. And then your best case scenario is making the cost as small as possible. On other projects, I think getting a big name actor does move the needle. But I think that pool of people is much smaller than people realize. Ultimately I think people get caught up in stardom when I think casting is actually a really big deal from a storytelling element. Did you get the right person for the role who's going to be a compelling face to see? Or do you have a B or C list celebrity who actually doesn't really fit the story you're trying to tell? 

The movies I've worked on haven't necessarily come back with huge box offices, but the ones that have meant the most to me are the ones where it's nonprofessional actors or up-and-coming actors, and they put more heart and soul into it and have a more interesting story to be told than the guy off the network show who doesn't even really want to be there. I think the mistake is that that pool of who's going to sell your movie is a lot smaller than people think. Especially now. And you should just go with a discovery, because if you're already playing the lottery I think you have a better winning ticket if you helped discover someone interesting versus someone people know and don't care that much about. 

And then, I don't think audiences know what they want. Again, it's the survival bias, where everyone's chasing after what's worked. The advice always comes back to: Tell a story you're compelled to tell. There are a million ways to gamify it, but if your heart's not in it, then you've set out to fail. 

Listings

• Mary Dauterman is in search of a VFX artist for a music video. Email Mary.Dauterman@gmail.com.

• Bronx Documentary Center is taking applications for the 2024/2025 BDC Films Fellowship Program. Apply through July 30, and learn more here.

• Casting Double is looking for someone to play the lead role in a short film: Mikey Liu (18-26, Chinese American man, skateboarder, must speak Mandarin and be comfortable riding a skateboard). No acting experience necessary, paid, shoots upstate in August and in NYC in October. DM @castingdbl on IG or email casting@castingdouble.com.

• From Bucky Illingworth: Have an affordable / sliding scale Super 16mm package available in NYC. It's an Arri SR2, PL Mount, HD tap, 2 mags Otar Illumina Lenses (9.5, 12, 16, 25). Insurance is required for rentals but also open to work as a DP / operator. Just looking to make shooting on film more accessible for people! Email: email@bucky.website.

• The short thesis film, Safe In My Skin, is casting right now. It is shooting Upstate New York in late August and early October. This is a paid opportunity and it is open to actors and non-actors. If interested email casting director Manuela at safeinmyskin2024@gmail.com with a photo of you and any links to your previous work! Looking for:

  • Male Talent / Chinese-American (18 - 25 yrs old) *Must speak Mandarin *Ideally knows how to ride a skateboard

  • Male Talent / Caucasian (18-25 yrs old)

  • Female Talent / Caucasian (18-25 yrs old)

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