What does a producer actually do in the movie industry?

Producers raise the funds, approve the hires, arrange for shooting sites, pay the bills, etc. Executive Producer is a legal title having to do with rights and money.

more than the Director?

The director decides how to follow to script, how to set up the camera shots, how to record the sound, how the actors should interpret their roles, and how the film will look.

Director: Makes movies

Producer: Finances movies

Distributor: Moves movies.

you’ve got to admit… the hint must be in the title… directing is definitely a more upper echelons type of role (sitting in the throne and ordering people about type of thing) where the producer who is probably more hands on, (creates the tools for one to work with) deserves more accolade…perhaps… I don’t know…I’ve never worked in movies

The producer is the money side. The director is the creative side. The movie is known as the director’s movie. Who directed Psycho? Hitchcock. Who produced it? I don’t know.

Producers arrange for the Directors Hookers

Have you seen the show “Entourage” ?

When they shoot the movie “Medellin” (I think maybe its season 4??) that does well to paint a picture of the difference between the director (Billy Walsh) and the producer (Eric Murphy).

Billy likes to refer to Eric as Suite.

Great show…...

Interesting that of all the movies to pick, you choose Psycho…ROTFLMAO

Text speak is discouraged here on Fluther.

I’ve always wondered this myself. Haha Good question! Thanks for asking!

The executive producer, the producer, director and the starring actors in a film are what’s called “above the line”. That means that in the budget, they are the people whose fees (which are usually in terms of a percentage) partially or totally come from the gross amount of money the picture makes.

Everyone else is “below the line”. They are hired at a set salary for the duration of their term of employment, and their pay is part of the budgeted costs of the picture.

An executive producer is the person who either brings the project to the studio or is extremely instrumental in getting a picture made, even if they aren’t doing the day-to-day work. e.g., Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey were named as executive producers of Precious after the film was made; their names gave the picture some cred in the indie film world and got it shown at Sundance so that a distributor would pick it up.

A producer is the person who does the day-to-day work of overseeing the production of a film from the time the studios give the green light and put up the cash to the picture’s release. They bring the talent and the money together, and they hire all the upper-level employees, like the director, the cinematographer, the set designer, etc. (usually, they like to bring people on they’ve worked with before and have good relationships with, who in turn bring on the slightly lower-level people they like to work with, and so on down to the Production Assistants), approve all the actors cast and approve how the money’s going to be spent. If things go haywire, the studio will step in (or maybe the executive producer), but usually, producers are given enormous leeway in making decisions.

Sometimes the executive producer(s) is also the producer, but usually not. In television, an executive producer is now called the showrunner. Many times, the showrunner created the show, like Joss Whedon (Dollhouse), Stephen Moffit (Doctor Who) or Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy), but not always, especially after the creator leaves. Usually, the showrunner is also the head writer.