I’m watching boardwalk empire which is amazing by the way and noticed in the credits Mark Walburg and Martin scorsess (spelling I know sorry) are executive producers. What exactly do the do vs lower level producers and directors or is it more like their names are on it because they helped set it all up?
In: Economics
An executive producer can have input into story lines. Just listened to an episode of The Office Ladies podcast of all things where they discussed moving up to executive producer level on the show. (Jenna Fisher and John Krazinski)
EL5: executive producers have money and connections to fund/green light the project. Producers do all the work to deliver said project.
For TV shows, producer has a wide range of potential meanings and responsibilities. For that specific show, Wahlberg and Scorsese get EP credit for helping develop the show. That could involve actually creatively developing it with the show creator, or just bringing the show to HBO and getting them involved. After the show was created and the pilot was shot, Wahlberg and Scorsese had virtually no involvement in the show. They still received credit (and money I’m sure) as part of their initial deal/contracts. A lot of “executive producer,” “co-executive producer,” “associate producer” are writers that are in the writer’s room. There’s a hierarchy to writer’s rooms and titles. New writers will usually work as a writer’s assistant, which might involve contributing material to scripts, but not being tasked with actually drafting a full script. Writers who are actually in the writer’s room, but are fairly new will receive maybe associate producer credit, then move up to co-EP, then EP, etc. If the title is just “producer,” they’re the ones that handle more of the financial component of the show. A “line producer” is in charge of the actual budget of every episode, going literally line by line to see where the money is being spent.
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