The Golden Rules of Production with Trish Wheeler
Three decades of immersion in the world of film production have armed Trish Wheeler with a veritable barrage of experience in varying capacities, and a diverse portfolio of projects - dynamic and engaging films of all shapes and sizes - that showcases her passion for making films.
She’s had the privilege of learning from and in some of the best in the commercial and feature film spaces, and through that journey, has developed a meticulous approach with an unmatched work ethic, good eye and attention to detail.
Part of her work repertoire includes acclaimed award winning South African films such ‘Four Corners’ (directed by Ian Gabriel) and ‘Knuckle City’ (directed by Jahmil XT Qubeka) and then more recently ‘Masinga The Calling’ (directed by Mark Engels) all of which she Line Produced, and on tight budgets.
In an effort to broaden her spectrum of work even further, but with the notion of still ‘keeping it real and meaningful’, Trish stepped recently into the role of Head of Production at Groundglass, a Cape Town based film company becoming known for its commitment to interesting, diverse (and conscious) creative work. Here her desire is to help create and nurture content that not only entertains but also informs and inspires, sparking meaningful conversations and challenging perspectives.
“The power of film combined with the Internet has created the ability to reach out and inspire change globally on an epic level. Let’s use it wisely and in the most conscious way possible. That is my mandate for the rest of my film career.”
When she’s not behind the camera or her computer, Trish is a music enthusiast and an avid adventurer – travelling the land on both feet and on horseback. Her diverse interests fuel her creativity and continually provide fresh inspiration for her life and work, allowing her to continually connect with the world around her.
LBB> What advice would you give to any aspiring producers or content creators hoping to make the jump into production?
Trish> Nothing beats learning from experience… enter the professional world keen but humble, and happy to make tea – in other words, get back to learning the basics, from scratch. In film there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Producers and production managers have earned their position after arduously working their way up.
Don’t expect constant applause - the work within the production department is often thankless. But it is often the most rewarding. You don’t always get thanked for running it well, but you sure as hell will hear about it if it’s not.
Learn how to juggle, learn how to manage your time, time is money – in fact learn how to bend time, it goes by too quickly these days!
It can be a cut-throat business with lots of competition so resilience and determination are definitely key to succeeding. And never lose your passion, once that goes, things will slide.
Don’t be afraid of feedback and criticism. Don’t be afraid of long hours, they will come! Leave your ego at the door, you don’t have to be right about everything to prove your worth. Open your ears before you open your mouth.
If you are going to talk the talk, walk the walk. Same as life.
LBB> What skills or emerging areas would you advise aspiring producers to learn about and educate themselves about?
Trish> Producing films is that wonderful balance of our brains’ left and right hemispheres, in order to navigate both the creative and the administrative sides.
While producers may arrive with creative guns a-blazing there is still the nitty-gritty, dare I say ‘pencil-pushing’ side of things that needs to be embraced.
Learn the way of the telephone and actually talk to me. All too often these days production is done online and not enough human contact. And make friends with Excel – it’ll be your best friend.
LBB> What was the biggest lesson you learned when you were starting out in production - and why has that stayed with you?
Trish> I have some golden rules passed down by my first production mentor – follow these and you are half-way there (!):
Check check and check again.
Never put off for tomorrow what you can do today.
If anything can go wrong it will.
My own motto is ‘Make yourself indispensable’. I try to live by that rule in everything I do.
Keep your eyes open and your ears to the ground, you can learn a lot by just listening to the sounds of experience
But I guess the most important thing I learned is if you want to do production, you have to love it, you have to love living breathing and eating production, otherwise you won’t thrive.
LBB> When it comes to broadening access to production and improving diversity and inclusion what are your team doing to address this?
Trish> We are very inclusive when it comes to employment, and are actively involved in creating opportunities to train and mentor promising candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds.
And right now we are also very balanced with our male/female ratio, another important factor in a harmonious and diverse office. I feel every company in every industry should find a way to balance the (dare I say) hormones within their walls. At the risk of going too off-topic esoteric, it really is about the energy that’s created with the right balance of humans.
LBB> And why is it an important issue for the production community to address?
Trish> For so long, and especially in South Africa, the film industry has been dominated by the white male… even for women to take leading HOD roles like directing and DOPing took a while to integrate.
After 30 years of democracy in South Africa, finally there is equality emerging from the universities and colleges into the working world, whereas previously our African population was at a serious disadvantage through lack of access to proper education.
In an industry that relies on targeting audiences, it’s important to have an employment base that can speak for and from all areas… and for us in South Africa, from different cultures… the authenticity that comes from that will automatically lean towards inclusion.
It’s interesting because on camera there has also been an active trend of authentic representation and inclusion… are we opening up roles to differently abled people, do transgender performers have the same opportunities as others? It used to be about black and white, then male or female; now it’s so much more, as more and more diversity of ways and being becomes more visible and less judged.
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 formalised production and the ‘creator economy’ or do the two feed into each other?
Trish> Yep, there are a host of people who have taken to the internet with homestyle production, making the most of the opportunities that have opened up with such on-hand access to economical filmmaking with cellphone cameras, and app-style edit programs. Everyone and their aunt is doing this. I say kudos to the folk who have managed to make this work for them and create a stable income doing so.
But in the end it’s the advertising that supports this process, and pays those ‘salaries’, and for the most part that will always stay within the walls of professional production. More and more we are finding that digital advertising is taking the lead over television (and certainly cinema), so I guess in a way they do feed into each other.
LBB> If you compare your role to the role of the heads of TV/heads of production/executive 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?)
Trish> Okay well, full disclosure, let me share that my career spans both the analogue and digital eras, so there are some obvious differences there. Pre-cellphone pagers for one were the primary on-the-road means of communication.
Fortunately the production company I grew up in (David Feldman Productions, may he rest in peace, dear David) was leagues ahead of everyone else in technology, and we thrillingly had the country’s first car mobile telephone – a gigantic battery in an aluminium suitcase with a clunky magnetic aerial – a taste of what was to become the norm not even four years later, along with the internet and the advent of email.
But briefly, budgets were bigger (relatively speaking), crews were smaller, turnaround time from brief to delivery was far less compressed, and expectations I think were a little more reigned in.
For South Africa, the influx of US/Hollywood service work I think ended up creating much higher expectations all around as far as production infrastructure goes – and where expectations increase, so do the challenges, and so does the support structure and commensurate costs needed to meet these.
For one thing, it’s becoming more and more the norm to do entire shows on WhatsApp groups. Frustrating but true.
What has stayed the same…the same uncertainty around the flow of work – will it be a good season, or a good year?
Is South Africa still going to be high on the list of favourite places to film? Are advertising spending money this year? Are we staying competitive enough? I think those risks and uncertainties have been there from the start the same thrill of seeing a project through from start to finish.
The adrenaline that comes with day to day film production, especially in the thick of it.
The same sense of camaraderie in the temporary families we get immersed in for the duration of a project, be it short or long, the craziness of it all, and the non-conformity of our personalities, really binds us.
LBB> When it comes to educating producers how does your agency like to approach this?
Trish> To be honest, in my view, producer (and production) education comes from on-the-ground experience and literally working your way up from the bottom. There is no college on earth that can teach what this way of schooling offers – there are so many more layers to production than what you can learn in film school – the least being how to deal with professional people, and how to navigate through the deluge of unplanned challenges. That knowledge comes from hands-on experience in the real world, and from listening and being around other production people.
However, I think one can definitely better ones’ grounding by attending and participating in as many talks, seminars, gatherings as possible within the industry – the online world has opened the channels to a vast array of knowledge from across the globe – and in this way, the theory of six degrees of separation becomes more and more a reality. And isn’t it most often ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’!? Maybe all it takes is that one chance encounter where the perfect investor and your perfect script align. And boom! But how will you know without doing the work to stay connected – both with humans and knowledge.
LBB> It seems that there’s an emphasis on speed and volume when it comes to content - but where is the space for up and coming producers to learn about (and learn to appreciate) craft?
Trish> Well it’s ironic isn’t it, because the space for producers to learn seems lately to be in the content that’s being created, YouTube films and tutorials teaching you everything from growing tomatoes to exploding your neighbours trashcan to distributing your film. The online world is in constant competition with each other, so speed and volume seem key to keeping up with the Joneses and keeping your followers – so somehow then the craft gets lost.
We need to have more film festivals, and more opportunities for global award-winning work to be shown to interested people or ‘plebs’ in the industry, and appreciated and learned from – especially in advertising. Not everyone can get to go to the international festivals or pay for exclusive viewing access to work.
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?
Trish> I think keeping up to date with technology is vital.
There are many courses (online and in-person) out there at the moment, especially as far as technology and IT software goes – it’s so easy to learn the ropes of useful programmes such as Xero for accounts and Keynote for presentations, as well as A1; the tools are there, and they're accessible, so why not use them to enhance the work? However, I do think it’s important not to assume that these tools can do everything and we can stop thinking. Keep the mind analogue and digital at the finger tips.
LBB> Clearly there is so much change, but what are the personality traits and skills that will always be in demand from producers?
Trish> We often joke how producers and production managers wear a multitude of different hats.
They are mothers, therapists, communicators, writers, childminders, motivators, mediators, planners. They need to have a head for numbers, a head for logistics, be good at multi-tasking, good at staying impartial and not taking things personally; they need to be fierce negotiators. They need to have tenacity, resilience and unending determination.
You have to work hard to be liked! There’s a fine line between being on the side of the crew and that of the production (and budget), but it’s crucial to understand where that line is and how to navigate it.
There is a real skill in putting together the right crew together for a particular production – you will learn from experience that this will make or break the success of the project – and not just where the level of skill goes – certain personalities will blend together with the style of the project to allow for the most harmonious and efficient set.
Whether it’s a short production, like a commercial, or long-form, like a feature film or television series, the premise is the same – dedication, hard work, and LONG hours. Without question. And without fail. When interviewing anyone for a production position, my first question is always the same, “How badly do you want to do this job?” Why? Because you will be eating, breathing and sleeping on the job.”
You can choose to excel at it, and the harder you work and the more dedicated you are, the quicker you will climb up the ladder. The humbler you are, the more respect you will gain; more respect means more trust, more work. And a long and fulfilling career.
