Interview: Colin Vaines, Producer – Part III

The Media C-Suite:

Investors might be paying attention here. Obviously big name actors and directors cost a lot of money.  Film sets and wardrobes cost a lot of money. What does money buy, if not quality assurance?

Colin Vaines:

That’s a great question. 

The short answer, I think, is that money buys time. 

A Producer’s job is to project manage a story idea into a product. 

The planning of that, getting the elements right, is as important as the quality of the performance captured by the camera. I would say that the one leads into the other. Development is the crafting of that plan and buying the time to get all the elements as right as possible for it to be a compelling bet that audiences will want to pay money to see that film or television show.

Yes, ‘A’ list movie stars demand large fees to act in a film. So do notable directors, and all of the talent needed for a film to be produced. 

Most experienced actors and directors know a well-developed project when they see it. And most will charge much less to perform in a well-developed film or television show than they would for one that is not. That is the trade-off that a Producer is tasked with pursuing. 

Value for money. Not just money.

So, actually, I would say that time is everything. 

Money buys time and that allows a Production to reach accommodation rather than compromise.  Money buys that time for development to get it right and, sometimes, to wait for the right elements to converge. That combination of money and time results in critical and commercial quality more often than not.

The Media C-Suite:

After time, what’s more important, the story or the story-teller?

Colin Vaines:

For me its all about the story, that is what compels me to be involved in developing it into a picture. 

David Puttnam once told that me that if I ever had more than a 1% degree of doubt about the strength of a story, I should not loose time trying to develop it. I believe that to be true all these years later.

My job is to ensure that the story is told as well as it can be to as large an audience as possible.

The Media C-Suite:

Streaming platforms such as Netflix and HBOMax have encouraged a convergence between feature films and television series. Is this a complication for film-makers used to telling stories in a two hour film?

Colin Vaines:

I don’t see it as a complication really. It’s just another format.

What we have with the 2 hour feature film format is conformity to cinema operators’ need to maximise the showings they can manage in a day at the theatre. But it has created a recipe that works well for story-telling. Some of the disciplines needed to tell a complete story in 90 to 120 minutes are really important for production as much as for an audience of people sitting in a crowded theatre. 

Television has its own story-telling strategies that also work well for repeated, serial viewing.

What the TV series has turned into can be wonderful. The streamers are paying for their subscribers to commit hours of their time on well-developed story-telling produced as a television series with feature film production quality, at least for a season or two, which is not typical television. 

This is being demonstrated by genuine movie stars that are lending their talent to television today based on the production values and development being pursued by streamers. 

I don’t think Harrison Ford or Helen Mirren would have been involved with the Yellowstone franchise if that weren’t true. There’s also now Sylvester Stallone in Tulsa King and Jeff Bridges in The Old Man.  Talent like Kevin Costner and these other ‘A’ list film stars are looking for quality productions to be part of.

Experienced talent such as this are also involved as Producers, and they have legacies to protect.

So at least they see this as a mature opportunity, not a complication.

The Media C-Suite:

As the distribution side of the industry has evolved, has the role of the Producer changed?

Colin Vaines:

Oh, okay. This can be a sore subject. 

The title of Producer is a bit of a muddled mess I would think. 

What’s changed is that everyone is a Producer these days. It’s almost a bit of a giveaway in negotiations really. Most actors want Producer credits. Most everyone wants Producer credits. There are Executive Producers, which are quite different in film than in television. Associate Producers that no one really understands and of course proper Line Producers, who are so essential and deserve every credit you can give them.

The only people who don’t seem to care about the title of Producer are the actual Producers.

There is, always, someone who simply does the work of cultivating a business proposal to raise the money, shoot the scenes and deliver a well-edited picture to audiences. That hasn’t changed. In the industry, Producers know who they are. 

The Media C-Suite

There seems to be a lot of variation in how the career of any Producer progresses. Where do Producers come from?

Colin Vaines:

I think Producers emerge through some kind of determination. I loved movies, managed to get into executive roles at companies where I supervised production, and took that out into the world as a freelance producer.

Some producers are people who fell in love with a piece of material and found a way to get the basic elements around it, whether financial or creative, which set it off on its journey to production.  Some start off as writers, directors or actors who take a lead in developing a project. Others are simply great managers of talent or are great salesmen.  

What happens a lot is that the passion of a writer for their script or an actor for a character will drive film projects and pull in both other talent and some investors by pure enthusiasm and the romance of what could be. 

They know that it’s the Producer who ultimately decides if a film ever gets made, so they assume the role.  

At some point, a Producer has to stand between the talent and the money and the distribution to align all of those interests. 

They either can or they can’t.

The Media C-Suite:

Let’s talk about money. Everyone needs it, and there is a lot of capital looking for investment opportunity.

Why are so many independent film-makers struggling to get their projects funded at a time when consumption of content is outpacing production of content?

Colin Vaines:

This is such a good question. 

I think there is still a big gap between the ambition of some filmmakers and what the market will actually finance. It’s the job of the Producer to align the two things. I came on board a film some years ago which was budgeted at a truly unrealistic amount for the subject matter, even with a major star attached.

The first thing I did was to bring on a line producer I trusted and slash the budget in half. The film went on to get made and be a success for the people involved.

Despite the horror stories, with careful advice, investors can make money investing in film. It can be a lucrative industry, but you have to know what you’re doing. There is some luck involved, of course, but there will always be bad investments. 

The simple answer is that films are like startups in any industry; they fail for many reasons. 

In this industry, investors can be persuaded by the passion and vision of a film-maker, or the glamour of involvement in the movies. That happens; too often perhaps. And each time there is another cautionary tale that accountants and lawyers tell their clients who might be thinking about it. 

It makes our job as Producers very difficult when we need to go out and start raising the equity portion for a film budget.

The Media C-Suite:

Tell us more about equity in a film. 

Colin Vaines:

I wish I had understood this earlier in my career. 

Developing a film or television show is time-consuming. No different than building out a management team and business plan for a tech startup, or any business. That time is costing the founders money as they give up paid work to put it all together. That is equity, of course. 

At some point, we form a company and have the copyrights to the story and the script registered in the name of that company.  As Producer, I would be a shareholder of that company. That is my equity now formalised.

So many film-makers don’t understand the importance of those shares, and many will often be happy enough with a contract and fees out of the budget. When we need cash to take the project further and to build out the package, we look for investors.  The smart investors take shares, and can end up controlling the company that owns the rights.

That’s the equity portion of the project. That equity controls the rights, which is what the distributors want and what the streamers demand from most Producers. So, whoever holds the equity makes those decisions.                                                                                            

Once we fully-develop the project and sign contracts for distribution and production rebates, then the company can borrow the rest of the budget requirement against those contracts and we shoot the picture. 

If the equity holders have kept enough of the rights, or struck the right deals over several projects then you have a film library with multiple revenue streams, and that can generate quite a lot of money over the long-term. 

That’s money that you can re-invest back into development of new projects.

The Media C-Suite:

We see a trend in this today with private equity funds buying into Production companies with film libraries. Is this what you mean?

Colin Vaines:

I think so. It’s not new. 

Dino de Laurentiis set this in motion fifty years ago, alongside visionaries like the agent and Producer John Heyman, whose World Film Sales was the first company to pre-sell and license films territory by territory around the world. Dino had quite a large film library by the time he passed, and it was all sold to private equity for tens of millions if I recall. 

It was very large sum of money at the time.

But what’s happening today is more than this. Today’s generation of Producers use their company to acquire more and more rights to new, unproduced content. They are building development catalogues.  And its those catalogues of rights to develop more content, once they have a proven track record as Producers, that Private Equity is investing into. 

The streamers, in particular, simply cannot keep up with demand for more content, and those proven Producers who own the rights to ready pools of quality content are worth hundreds of millions a year to those streamers.

The Media C-Suite:

As an experienced Producer who focuses on development of film projects, what would you tell an eager investor to look for in a film project?

Colin Vaines:

Today, I would like tell investors to stop looking at single film projects and instead look at investing in production companies with multiple projects in development. That equity capital can help build a catalogue of film projects. 

And if that Producer can achieve even one modestly profitable film, then that catalogue becomes a gold mine.

The Media C-Suite:

Your career has taken you around the world, with some of the biggest names in the business and brought you full-circle back to Soho. What’s next for Colin Vaines?

Colin Vaines:

The next story. 

Of course, for me, that’s everything. 

I will always be a Producer. 

Publisher's Note: The British Film Institute carried on the tradition of public funding for British film. For public funding information in the UK, click here.

This interview series was originally published in February 2023. It's been updated for clarity, formatting and relevance.