It seems like a movie producer does something different from a news producer, which is different from a TV producer. What does that title mean across different types of media, or other industries beyond media?
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There’s an excellent book called *The Devil’s Candy* which gives a fly-on-the-wall view of the production of the movie *Bonfire of the Vanities.* The director, Brian de Palma, gave a journalist open access to the whole project and didn’t revoke that permission even when it became clear the movie would bomb.
While de Palma was trying to tell the book’s story through film, the producers were dealing with stuff like *”The studio is very uncomfortable with the lack of a positive Black character, so you’re going to have to recast the Jewish judge as black”*. And *”We got Morgan Freeman for the part of the judge but he’s rehearsing for Shakespeare in the Park in California so we’re going to have to move the shoot there, and yes I know we got permission to use the courtroom in New York but we’re just going to have to build a fake one and you’re going to have to live with some budget cuts because of that.”*
Meanwhile a music producer steers the recording to its final sound. This is usually done cooperatively with the artist but not always. To see what a producer can contribute, it might help to look at a couple of examples of what they might do in the absence of the artist.
Simon and Garfunkel’s *Sounds of Silence* was a commercial failure, bad enough to make the pair split up. It was re-worked by the producer, who added electronic instruments and drums, which S&G were only told about it after it was (re)released. The new version hit #1 and has been inducted into the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress.
Joy Division recorded their albums expecting the final sound to be very like their live shows. On the first one the producer added synth sounds and the band hated it enough to want out of their recording contract. The two major albums have been highly praised for their production and the “trademark Joy Division sound” but it wasn’t what they wanted at the time, was done at least partly behind their back, and the producer told one of the band members to fuck off when he complained.
At the cooperative end of the spectrum, Todd Rundgren produced the landmark album *Bat Out of Hell*. He also played guitar on the album. When they suddenly needed a revving motorcycle engine at 3am, he went over to his effects rig, plugged in his guitar, tweaked a few settings, and created the needed bike engine. Legend has it that as he was adjusting the effects pedals he asked whether they wanted a Japanese or an American bike engine.
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