Producers Profile: Jason Baum

Fans of this blog might know Jason Baum from our interview with him about “Concrete Wall,” the Zee Avi music video he directed last year. What you might not know (or maybe you do know, I literally have no idea), is that Jason actually spends most of his time as a producer. We have a lot of questions about the role of a producer in the music video industry, so many the we’ve decided to start another blog interview series, this one creatively titled “Producer Profile.”

Director Dugan O'Neal and Jason hanging out with a juice box

Doug: To start, I’m curious, how did you find yourself fitting into the role of a producer?

Jason: I sort of fell into producing only because I needed to start making a living after being in film school. I spent most of my summers when I was at NYU coming out to LA for a summer. I started to intern, and the only thing that I really knew that I liked was music videos. I started to submit myself to various production companies just to learn production, learn about some type of industry. Over those summers, I developed relationships at a couple of different companies. Once my time in school was done, I started to just work production, and by working in production, I eventually found myself in the position of producer.

Doug: Do most of your roles as a producer come through those relationships with the production companies? Or does that more come from the relationship directly with the director? How do you find yourself working on most of the stuff that you work on?

Jason: It’s always different, really. I think more and more, it becomes more about my relationship with either the EP of a production company or the director’s rep. I think “return customers” are a result of me having a rapport with certain directors. It seems more and more, it’s just really my relationships with the EPs and them suggesting me to new directors or expanding within their company.

Doug: Do you find that your role from project to project is also different, or is it pretty standardized as far as what you’re doing from set to set as producer?

Jason: It’s more or less standardized. I would say for music videos, it’s pretty consistent. I’m there from prep through the delivery of the video to an outlet, whether it just be the label or to a premiere site. Sometimes I’m there in the conception stage, usually I’m involved in the conception stage with directors that I work fairly close with or someone that has a deep relationship with me where we’ve done multiple videos where I’m sort of talking through the feasibility as they’re writing the concept. More and more, it seems like I’ve been so busy that the EP takes on that sort of beginning and helps the director bring it in on budget. Sometimes I bid the job. Sometimes the EP bids the job. It sort of depends on time and what is more feasible because I think a lot of EPs feel the burden of asking a producer to bid these jobs only for them to go away, or for them not to be feasible at all. A lot of times I’m coming into a lot of projects where it’s already bid and sort of set up at the moment right before it’s going to go into production.

Doug: You mentioned premiere sites, I wonder if you could kind of elaborate a little bit more about what your role is in that process.

Jason: It really depends. Sometimes the coordination with premiere - it’s usually if there’s a tight deadline and we need to make sure that we hit it exactly at the time that it needs to. Labels tend to give themselves a good week, or two, or three, or more to make sure to get service correctly. Sometimes that time isn’t available. Usually it’s just more on a technical level of just making sure everything is technically delivered how the site needs it.

Doug: So as far as decision making and where it ends up and stuff, you’re not really involved in that kind of process?

Jason: Not much, unfortunately. I would love to be more involved. All the label commissioners have their own sort of ideas of how that works, or their marketing departments. Occasionally, I think for some small artists and other smaller videos that maybe don’t have a great publicist, or don’t have the money for a publicist, we make suggestions. Really a lot of the access to cool venues to premiere your work is held by some longstanding professional publicist.

Doug: Do you try to keep them located in nearby? I know a lot of videos shoot in L.A., but not everything does. Does travel become an issue for you or anything like that?

Jason: I think for the most part most of my videos shoot in Los Angeles. I think every year I have maybe two or three that I go to New York for, but I don’t get a lot of travel beyond that. Over the past months, though, I’ve had this really whirlwind three months where I’ve been almost constantly traveling, which has been really awesome, and I’ve been really fortunate. That’s been really cool. When it’s a travel job, I almost can only do one job at a time. It’s pretty impossible to do a travel job and be available for someone. If it’s out of town, I’m normally only working on one project at a time.

Doug: Are you more working on one project at a time? Do you ever find yourself working on multiple projects at once? Does your relationship with the project kind of consume you as it would a director?

Jason: Yeah, it’s very consuming. An unfortunate part of music videos is a lot of times it’s so under-funded that for me as a producer, I need to work as much as possible just to be able to pay the rent. As much as I’d like to be focused on one project at a time and just really be completely focused on it, it’s not always feasible. Of course, a lot of things come up, and you have a hard time saying no, especially when it’s a friend. I do find myself often working on a good three videos at a time. Prepping one, shooting one, and wrapping the other - sort of concurrently if it’s that busy. I don’t normally take on more than three. More than three is really, really hard to do. I play my cards depending on how feasible it is to work on multiple things. Obviously, I don’t want to over extend myself, I don’t want the quality of my abilities or the product to suffer. I just sort of feel it out, and if I feel like I can handle it or if the project is easy enough, or if it’s a director that I know understands that I might not be as attentive as I would like to be and they’re okay with it, I sort of let that happen.

Jason calls this the "Me Against The World" pose

Doug: There’s a specific video that I wanted to ask you about because the director is pretty interesting, and that’s the Raphael Saadiq video that you produced that was directed by Bret McKenzie. I was curious about that video if there was anything different going on in that video since Bret is not particularly known as a music video director, or was that still more standardized like the rest of the projects that you’ve worked on?

Jason: It was a really fun video. I really liked that video, to be honest. I guess the brainchild was he’s represented by Danielle, at Doomsday. I think they’ve known each other for some time obviously as a musician, and he’s a filmmaker in his own right. It sort of was a no-brainer that he could probably do some really awesome music videos. Saul Levitz, who was commissioning it, just wanted something cool and different. Bret brought sort of a name, and a different energy to it that could make the video kind of special and had something to just spice up the release or the campaign. It came out pretty naturally. It was like a normal video, he wrote the treatment, he was involved. It was really awesome because he was working on The Muppets at the time. He’d go straight from recording for The Muppets to scouting with us and the same thing during the edit. It was just like a normal director experience. It wasn’t really different. He’s a lot of fun and a really nice guy.

Doug: In addition to producing, you’ve also worked as production manager, production coordinator. In those kinds of three jobs, they seem to kind of carry some similar responsibilities. How distinct do you find those three roles? Is there something really specific that you can point to to really differentiate the three of them?

Jason: Sure. It’s basically just the hierarchy of production. You’ve got the producer, and then in some instances you might have a line producer. Then you have a production manager followed by a coordinator. I would say in general the production manager vs. a producer, the production manager is really in charge of the logistics and the day-to-day tasks that need to be done. In an ideal world, a producer is just worrying about either client relations or director needs, making sure that the director is getting what he needs communicated across departments. Just overseeing the communication between all departments and the client. With that said, a lot of the times, I’m my own production manager. I don’t always have the luxury of having one. A lot of times those roles are blurred. Also, theoretically the production manager is the person that’s in charge of keeping the project on budget with the producer overseeing that and being on top of that. Production coordinator is the real nuts and bolts being dictated by the production manager what needs to be done to execute the needs of the day.