*There are many people who work behind the scenes in Hollywood that are as responsible as your favorite onscreen talent for the success or failure of your favorite TV series or film.
Ty Walker is one such individual. He is the SVP and Head of Physical Production at Hartbeat Productions.
Recently, EURweb jumped on a call with Walker to talk with him about what a producer actually does.
Here’s a hint, it’s a lot.
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EURweb: Please give us a rundown on what it is to be a producer.
Ty Walker: So there are times obviously when we’re not filming I think that most people think like ‘Oh, you know, that’s all of the job?’ Well, it takes a lot of prep and planning, organizing and casting in order to just get to the piece where you’re actually filming. Yes, the filming part is very, very, very huge. There are often months, sometimes years, planning and getting to the point where we can even get a project greenlit. Let’s just say that the network says ‘yep, we love this project. We want a green light for March 2023. We say ‘Okay, great. I go into the planning stages, right?’
What that means is obviously there’s a lot of legal stuff that goes into the entertainment business. It’s like building a company each time. You know how difficult it is to start a company, right? Every show is a startup show is a new startup. So, you actually do start a company in order to begin filming. And the reason is, you know, let’s say the name of your production company is Rick Productions.
You would not film anything under Rick Productions. Why? Because, if something goes wrong, they’re coming for Rick Productions. But, If the name of your movie is, say, “Jeep” because I’m looking at a Jeep in front of me, you’re going to start Jeep Movie LLC.
So you have to bring the attorneys in for all of that. But let’s just get past that. Let’s get past the company structure and the insurance piece of it. We need a director. We got to go and find a director. Which director will actually work for this particular project? Then, you know, say we’re doing a horror movie. You need to find somebody that has the ability to read and understand the work.
So that’s the first piece. The next piece is ‘So, who do we put in this movie?’ So, then we go into casting, right? We bring on a casting director or internally we just start talking about who’s going to be great for this particular project. So that’s another very huge piece and it often takes a lot of time, right?
Yeah, so I go to, say, Denzel Washington and say, ‘hey, we’re interested in you being in this project.’ Well, then Denzel has a lot of people who help him with his career.
So, you got managers you got agents, and so it begins the negotiation there and then after negotiation, then it’s the legal part of it, right? So that’s a big deal. After that, we’re getting close to March. Now. I need to go into some type of pre-production. I got to start interviewing production designers, costume designers, and line producers.
My job then becomes ‘Alright, so now I get to the point of what we call ATL.’ Right, which is the above-the-line crew. Your cast, your director. If there are any other producers involved, we do them, and then I get bumped to the below-the-line part of the project, and those are my actual editors.
The people that you see, after your cast and your producers, it’s a long list of credits that we usually see on television. I must go in and do my due diligence on who we’re going to bring on to work on these projects and then get them.
Ty Walker is also known for producing “Imperium,” “Trigger Warning with Killer Mike,” and “Hot Date.”
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