Producers on agency, production co. sides of the biz offer advice to aspiring directors, producers
By A SHOOT Staff Report
“Break a leg” is theatrical slang for good luck. But there’s more than luck involved in breaking successfully into the industry and evolving into a working producer and/or director.
Each step along the way is a challenge—one we hope to make a little easier through career advice offered by a cross-section of producers from the ad agency and production house sectors.
To help foster opportunities for those seeking a meaningful foothold in the business—and in the spirit of SHOOT’s 16th New Directors Showcase event set for Thursday evening, May 24, at the DGA Theatre in NYC—we invited agency and production house pros to offer career counsel to aspiring directors and producers.
To gain prudent career-building advice, SHOOT posed the following four questions to established producers:
1) What advice do you have for new directors?
2) What advice can you offer to up-and-coming producers?
3) Learning is an ongoing process even for the most seasoned producer. Would you share a recent lesson learned on the job, perhaps related to a project involving new technology (i.e., VR, AR, AI, etc.) or another experience?
4) What recent project are you particularly proud of—and why? You can include a direct link to it.
Here are portions of some of the feedback and informed counsel we received.
CLICK HERE to page through the survey responses, or click on the NAME or HEADSHOT below.
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More