Interview with Kellee Cragin

Kellee Cragin is a Metro Detroit-based production supervisor and line producer whose credits include commercials for Ford, Chevy, and Alltell, the Lifetime television movie Prayers for Bobby, starring Sigourney Weaver, and the teen TV show The Wannabes. I found Ms. Cragin’s information through the Michigan Film Office website and reached her on a busy late Thursday afternoon. She was incredibly gracious and friendly, despite the inconvenient timing and wavering phone reception. The following is an abridged transcription (summarized/paraphrased where necessary).

Can you briefly describe your job to me?
I am a line producer and production manager. I do prep, so I work with budget and make sure that everything’s there that needs to be there and accounted for. I work with creatives and rein them in. Once the budget’s in place, I find crew, starting with the casting director. I do all the contract work with actors: negotiating, booking people...you coordinate with everybody. Then you work on locations: if you’re filming on location, you hire a location scout and work with them to find out the most efficient way to shoot. You want to consolidate locations. If I’m on a set, I’m working with production designers and art directors.
As a producer, I’m responsible for every single department. Once you get locations and casting, you get big-ticket items like finding the DP, and the DP picks his crew (such as the gaffer). I also work with the unions. The film business is very much a unionized show; everyone has a union, makeup people have their own union (lists off various crew and actors who have their own unions). You have to know what the rules are so that it doesn’t get too expensive. They (creative and logistical crew) make the schedule, and then we have to make it work.

*I ask her to explain what she means by “they”; she explains: “We take creative and logistics information and come up with a shooting schedule”.*

How did you get started in the business?
My father had a commercial production company, so I learned a lot from the ground up.

How do you tell someone over you (your boss) that you can’t accomplish an assigned task?
It’s just a collaboration---we are a team, so usually we can all see trouble coming. If I notice something coming, I’m going to tell them, “I’m working on Plans B, C, and D, but I won’t be able to get this [part of the project] in on time.”

Do you have any advice for a media student starting out?
Get yourself around production as much as you can. Intern in more than one department---that’s the best advice my father ever gave me. My father was a cameraman, but he had me working in all departments...You understand their [the other crewmembers’] pain and frustrations. I’m not going to go climb up a 50-foot ladder to hang a light, but I need to understand how others do it. Everyone is important on a film set. You’re only as strong as your weakest link.

On working in the booming Michigan film industry: "Everyone knows everyone else. It's a small world, and that's how we like it."