PRODUCERS AND THE PRODUCTION OFFICE

Job Overview

The unit production manager assists in formulating the budget for a production and then manages it. The UPM's duties include hiring the crew and negotiating their contracts on behalf of the production, striking deals for equipment, reviewing contracts, authorizing payroll, arranging travel, issuing and approving purchase orders, and overseeing the production staff.

Special Skills

A UPM must possess strong people skills to negotiate with, manage, and motivate a diverse group of personalities. Organization and the ability to administer a budget are necessities. “I think anyone can do my job technically,” says UPM Donna Bloom. “What makes me good at it are my people skills. I can talk to people and I'm fair. I do not have a temper. I don't think I have ever yelled at anyone in my life. I worked for some pretty awful people and I learned from them how I never wanted to be. I knew if I became a production manager, I was not going to be that kind of person. I choose to follow the path of people I thought were great.”

Advice for Someone Seeking This Job

“You have to believe you can do it,” says Bloom. “Do all the homework you can. Touch base with people. Take any job. Never be a quitter. If you're starting out in this business, you're going to eat a lot of crow. You have got to pay your dues … People at the top are still paying their dues. Don't be in a hurry to do it. Take your time and enjoy it as you're on your way. You have to be humble, and be assertive, without being aggressive. You have to talk to people and make it known what you want, but in a nice way.”

Professional Profile: Donna E. Bloom, Unit Production Manager

Originally from New York, Donna Bloom's family moved to Italy when she was ten. After a year of college overseas, she returned to America in her early twenties to study at Emerson College in Boston. There she earned a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism, planning to become a foreign correspondent. Returning to Europe, she landed a job making documentaries for the Italian television network. “I was the jack-of-all-trades. I was the production manager, the location manager, and interpreter. You did everything.”

Unable to get papers to work overseas, Bloom returned to the United States in the early 1980s and took a job working at Good Morning America. One day she realized that what she really wanted to do was make movies, and quit her job.

Through her sister Julie, who was working as a production assistant, Bloom met several crew members. A couple of days later, one of the crew members called to ask if Julie were available to work on Tootsie. Donna answered the call and advised them her sister was working on another picture. “Well, what are you doing?” he asked. “That's how I started making movies: working as a production assistant on Tootsie at the Russian Tea Room for two days.”

Bloom continued to serve as a production assistant for a time, then as an assistant to a producer on Falling in Love, before segueing into location assistant, scout, and then manager. Her first big feature to location manage was When Harry Met Sally, a job she landed thanks to writer Nora Ephron.

“I had worked on Cookie, a film that Nora Ephron wrote. I met Nora—she is very pro-women getting ahead in this business—and she was always cordial to me, but I didn't know she even knew my name. She went on to write When Harry Met Sally. She was talking to Rob Reiner and he said, ‘We'll be shooting in New York, so I need a location manager.’ She said, ‘I know the person.’”

When one of the film's producers called, Bloom thought it was a joke. “I was unemployed. I had quit The Equalizer and was sitting at home thinking, ‘Well, let's see if the phone rings,’ and this man called me up and said, ‘I'm Rob Reiner's producer. Would you be interested in meeting with me to be the location manager for Rob's next movie?’ I thought it was a joke; I thought somebody is really playing a nasty joke on me.” Hired for the job, it was the beginning of a long relationship with Castle Rock.

For the next nine years Bloom continued to work as a location manager on films such as State of Grace, The Super, This Is My Life, and Mr. Wonderful.

The leap from location manager to production manager came on the Castle Rock film North. “The same man who gave me my first job as a location manager gave me the New York portion of North—Jeff Stott. He's been my mentor. I have had two mentors: Jeff, and Steve Nicolaides, who was the production manager on When Harry Met Sally. They were the two men who offered me that first job.”

When Nicolaides stepped up to produce his first film, another Castle Rock picture entitled Little Big League, he asked Bloom to manage the production. Feeling secure in her transition to production manger, she decided to relocate to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s, but still kept her home in New York. “I would not have moved out to L.A. to become a location manager. You need to know the lay of the land, every nook and cranny of the city and everybody who runs the city.”

Over the next few years she worked on several films, including One Fine Day, The Postman, Anywhere But Here, Hearts in Atlantis, Swimfan, and is currently working on another movie for Castle Rock.

“My whole career has been a highlight. I've met wonderful people along the way and worked with some really wonderful producers, directors, and actors. We get to do things normal people don't get to do: everything from closing the Brooklyn Bridge to flying helicopters into Canada. You get to do and experience things that are just wonderful.”