Devin Reeve: It’s interesting how projects come to us.
My business partner (Larry Layfield) and I have a company called InnoVate Productions.
We work as a creative development and producing team, but we also work as a line producer
and a UPM team (Unit Production Manager).
So for this project, they reached out to us.
They needed a line producer, someone to manage this whole team for what we’re trying to
do.
And then other times people send us scripts and we develop our own content and we produce
it and develop it, raise the funding and do it ourselves.
We have another film going on right now that is actually filming, while we are filming
this (ROCK IN A HARD PLACE) that a friend of mine was directing.
He had another producer on it.
He asked ‘Would you come in with your company and take over the
production for me?”
And we were like “Absolutely,” so we did that.
It’s another reason why we’re tired.
So we we’re hired, we partnered up with people to create our own content and put things
out there.
We do everything from music videos to commercials to films.
We have a music video coming up with Holly Holm who beat Ronda Rousey in February and
we’re actually doing a commercial with Ronda (it was already set in place before she got
beat) for an energy company that she has a contract with.
So lots of fun things coming our way.
We developed a Halloween special that right now is in development that is in a really
good position to come out next year, so we’re kind of moving forward, whether we create
it yourself of people hire us, we just like to keep working.
Film Courage: Devin, you say you’ve been doing this 15 years?
Devin: Yeah, I’ve been acting since I was a child (since I was 10) and I’ve been
producing since….first film I produced was 2005.
10 years.
Film Courage: And so in the beginning, in 2005.
Did you already have inroads through the acting where you could reach out to people or was
there a website or some place where you went to look for people looking for line producers?
Devin: When I started, when I said “I want to produce my own stuff,” very shortly
after that I realized no one is just calling you to produce.
No one’s calling to say, “Do you want to produce a film with me?”
Because if they are, they’re calling you to produce it because they need money.
So part of a producer’s job is to raise funding for it, if I’m the executive producers.
So I taught myself to line produce.
I went and bought Movie Magic Budgeting.
I was already good with managing money and managing people.
I said “Oh, that’s not that bad.”
So the first thing I lined produced was a short film, that was a $50,000 short film.
Pretty good budget for a short film.
Just started from there and then I think the next thing I did was a feature film that was
like $200,000 and slowly just worked my way up, so by making that transition, to line
producing it opened up other doors for people to actually start calling, it opened up
doors for producing and for acting, for line producing and it was a good move for myself
because I was doing really well and I hit a brick wall.
And I was like, “Oh man, what did my manager say when I hit a certain age I hit a brick
wall and then after a couple years you will kind of gain your momentum again” and she
was just dead on.
And that’s kind of what I did in my spare time and now I’m lucky to be able to have
those different skills to help you stay busy all the time.
Question: Do you have any advice on finding a movie producer?