For me, I’ve reached the most important pairing of chapters out of “The Game Producer’s Handbook” and “The Complete Film Production Handbook.” That is “3: Habits of Highly Effective Producers” from the former and “32: Industry Survival Tips” from the latter. It seems that one book addresses important traits early on, and the other ends on them; nonetheless, I am very interested in which essential skills are similar or different.
There were six things that were mentioned in both books:
1. Passion – belief and motivation
2. Having a Positive Attitude – being pleasant to be around, having a sense of humor, being a foil to stress and challenge
3. Having a Purpose / a Plan – knowing the goal as well as how to get there (subject to change, but should always exist)
4. Being Persistent – not giving up when others might
5. Being Professional – keeping your personal feelings out of it; having a thick skin to the drama
6. Being Known – making sure that your excellence is perceived by others
Honestly, these are general habits of effective people, which could mean a couple of things: 1. The only overlap between producers across these two industries is on the level of being good people. 2. “Producing” is far more elusive than that. 3. The books are actually written differently enough so that looking for superficial overlap was a silly idea.
In fact, it is clear to me from reading these two chapters that they aren’t exactly written with the same intentions. “Habits of Highly Effective Producers” from the Game Handbook is very specifically directed at producers while “Industry Survival Tips” from the Film Handbook is more about doing well in the film industry in general. I would like to explore the differences in separate blog posts following this one so that instead of trying to juggle both these large books at the same time and flipping between them, I can look at each as an individual piece and reflect on them without trying to match them together.
Albert C Gea 