Producing Tomorrow's Producers: Cultivating a Network of People You Trust with Alan Pierson

Alan Pierson is a creative producer with a background in immersive tech and narrative filmmaking. He’s produced commercials on six continents, released a cannibal slasher and a Christmas rom-com back-to-back in theatres, and worked with some of the largest camera manufacturers to pioneer live-streaming workflows for stereoscopic content.

LBB> What advice would you give to any aspiring producers or content creators hoping to make the jump into production?

Alan> Be willing to work for free. This is an industry built upon personal connections and referrals. Every job I’ve had I can trace backward through a spiderweb of people to one singular short film I worked on in my early twenties. I met just the right person, who brought me to their next job, where I met two other people who also brought me to their next jobs. A few more shoots like that and suddenly I had a network and a career.

LBB> What skills or emerging areas would you advise aspiring producers to learn about and educate themselves about?

Alan> The single most useful thing you can educate yourself upon as a producer is Visual FX. No other area can cost or save you as much money. During the prep stage, it’s important to recognize any areas where VFX can save you time or money. Do you need to build the entire set, or is it more cost-effective to build part of it and extend the rest digitally? During post-production, it will prevent you from being taken for a ride. On one of my first commercials, we were doing color work at one of the major post houses in New York. The client asked us to add a CG seagull to one of the shots. The post house worked up an estimate of 60k to add three seconds of a bird! If VFX had been a black box I might have been tempted to approve it. Instead, we hired a freelancer for $100/hour who knocked it out in three days.

LBB> What was the biggest lesson you learned when you were starting out in production - and why has that stayed with you?

Alan> Experienced crew members who command a high day rate are worth every penny. On a live-action shoot, hundreds of dollars are being spent every minute on set. A single mistake or oversight that delays you by 10 minutes will cost far more than the difference between an okay gaffer and a phenomenal one. Hire the best you can afford. If you need to cut costs, cut gear before you cut salaries.

LBB> What is an important issue for the production community to address?

Alan> AI. It’s our biggest unknown variable ever. It’s going to reshape the entire production pipeline. A very fresh example for me is using AI-generated images in set dressing, rather than licensing artwork or photographs for hanging on the wall in the background of a shot. The ethics of AI, not when we can use it, but when we shouldn’t use it, is going to be the challenge of this upcoming year.

LBB> There are young people getting into production who maybe don’t see the line between professional production and the creator economy, and that may well also be the shape of things to come. What are your thoughts about that? Is there a tension between more formalized production and the ‘creator economy’ or do the two feed into each other?

Alan> They’re complimentary to each other and each has its use case. Which we lean into for a campaign depends largely on what we’re selling. The benefit of producing online content with an influencer is that you have much more control to get your product in front of the target demographic, through both their followers and paid media targeting people with similar interests to their followers. The benefit of producing a professional spot is that you have the resources to tell a compelling story, using all the cinematic tropes and tools we’ve developed over the last 100+ years.

Say for instance we’re selling an electric kettle designed specifically for making pour-over coffee. We produce a 100k ad and put a 500k TV media buy behind it, which will be seen by about 25 million people. Of those who see it, only 40% make coffee at home daily, and of those, only 12% make pour-over. Now of the 600k we’ve just spent, only 1.25 million people who saw the ad have a use for the product. Now say, I find a content creator with 2 million followers, and the only content they make is about pour-over coffee. It’s reasonable to assume that all of their followers would be interested in our product. To work with them to put a piece of content in front of their followers will cost me about 30k, one-twentieth of the cost per relevant viewer that a TV ad would have been.

Now say we’re selling something less tangible, such as a shoe brand. We don’t need to sell one shoe in particular, but rather the brand as a whole and its impact on professional sports. If we were to get content creators to shoot videos on their own, talking about how great this brand is, it would feel both cheap and disingenuous, which aren’t feelings we want associated with the brand. Here we need to craft a beautiful film that tells an emotional story, and we need the full arsenal of tools we get from working with experienced filmmakers to pull it off.

LBB> If you compare your role to the role of the heads of TV/heads of production/ exec producers when you first joined the industry, what do you think are the most striking or interesting changes (and what surprising things have stayed the same?)

Alan> TikTok and the rise of the creator economy we’ve discussed has been a seismic shift in the industry. When I was starting out 10 years ago, every brand wanted to make a brand film, and the most important relationships to cultivate were with highly sought-after directors. Nowadays I’m finding it far more important to have strong relationships with content creators and the talent agencies that represent them. What will never change is that this job is built upon relationships and cultivating a network of people you trust.

LBB> When it comes to educating producers how does your agency like to approach this? (I know we’re always hearing about how much easier it is to educate or train oneself on tech etc, but what areas do you think producers can benefit from more directed or structured training?)

Alan> I highly recommend taking structured classes, either at a local college or online, to learn every aspect of production and post-production. Professional instructors have a wealth of tips and tricks that you won’t get from online tutorials. Our agency in particular offers yearly stipends for such. Take a sound design class. Take a cinematography and lighting class. It will make you infinitely better at your job.

LBB> It seems that there’s an emphasis on speed and volume when it comes to content - but to where is the space for up and coming producers to learn about (and learn to appreciate) craft?

Alan> Ask to shadow more senior producers or help them with mundane tasks. People love to feel like the knowledge they’ve collected over the years is valuable and to pass it on. If you’re outside of the industry, find commercials you admire, find the lead producer on them, and send an email. You’ll find more often than not that if you don’t cost them anything, they’ll be happy to show you the ropes for a day. If you’re an associate producer in an agency, it’s true that big-budget productions are far fewer and will go only to the most senior producers. Be proactive in volunteering to help them out with anything they need in exchange for shadowing on set.

LBB> On the other side of the equation, what’s the key to retaining expertise and helping people who have been working in production for decades to develop new skills?

Alan> It’s an incredibly technical field, and things are constantly changing with yearly hardware and software updates. We have to do our best to make sure that when things are slow, staff are spending time learning about new releases and tech updates in general to stay competitive. AI is the prime example this year, where we have an internal team dedicated to research and discovery, building out a toolkit and leading workshops for the agency as a whole.

LBB> Clearly there is so much change, but what are the personality traits and skills that will always be in demand from producers?

Alan> I think the most essential trait of a Producer is that they are unflappable. Things will go wrong in live production, and when they do, you need someone capable of taking the reins and making quick decisions under pressure where a lot of money is involved. An analogy I like is this. You’re driving in a car full of people in the winter. The road is icy and suddenly you feel the car start to spin out of control. Who do you want driving, the person who shouts “OH MY GOD WE’RE GOING TO CRASH” or the person who stays calm, turns the wheel into the spin, regains traction, and drives off?