Santa Barbara Film Festival Producers Panel

Reviewed by Kazimir Berman. Viewed at the Lobero Theater, Santa Barbara Film Festival.

I felt very fortunate to have the opportunity to see the producers panel in action at this years annual Film Festival. The panel consisted of producers who are at the top of their game. The panel consisted of Ivan Rietman(Up in the Air), Jonas Rivera (Up), Lori McCreary (Invictus), Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker), Lawrence Bender (Inglorious Bastards) and John Landau (Avatar). With such a talented group of people in the panel I couldn’t help noticing the buzz of excitement from the crowd and the respect they all had for the individuals on stage.

Moderated by Patrick Goldstien, the panel began

with John Landau explaining that “producers are problem solvers”. Ivan Rietman adding that producing is all about establishing trust. Trust between actor and producer, he said, is what enabled Bill Murray to achieve such comical excellence in films like Ghostbusters where he was able to improve the film on the level of a director and producer.

I also learnt that for comedies, according to these suc

cessful producers: being too silly, a push for more stupidness robs the comedy. The real way to achieve excellence in film they say is to “achieve truth in tone” and “constancy in tone”. These critical changes are to be made in the script phase which are in order to give breath to the film- instead of just getting to the gag.

Lawrence Bender, producer of Inglorious Bastards explained how Quentin Tarrantino researched so much for the film which lead to the development of the script and created the overall tone. But as much research as he did when it came time

for filming- his method was to through that all away. Instead he filmed like he had never done any research at all so that the creation can “just happen”. He explains it as the poetry of no poetry and a comedy- but not a joke.

The Panel was insight after insight, into the language of cinema and the development of film. John Landau stated that 3D is the natural progression of film (Avatar is actually screening in Korea now in 4D, which is achieved by the use of rocking seats, wind blowing through the viewers hair and water being dashed over the audience!).

Theaters are going digital, Movies 3D, these producers are on the fringe of the progression of modern cinema. Endowed with the largest budgets and highly regarded actors- their capacity to make change in the world is great and this is what I brought with me from the Producers Panel.