The Producer and ‘Running Naked’: A production practice for micro-budget regional filmmaking combining professional and non-professional working within a higher education setting

This thesis seeks to establish a new model of production, centred around a more contextually specific role of the producer, one that is different from conventional models and theories for understanding the producer role in mainstream film. To do this the thesis explores the role of the producer in relation to the author’s current production practice as it is situated in micro budget feature film production in the UK in the 21st century. The thesis uses the author’s film, Running Naked (Buhler, 2020), and its production process, as a practice as research study. The thesis examines the producer’s contribution to the creative and financial components of the filmmaking process in the context of a Culture 3.0 film produced within a university looking at the strengths and weaknesses of this model. Simultaneously, utilising the work of Sacco (2011) and Boehm (2022), the thesis explores similarities and differences to films produced by the author using more conventional financing models and the effect the funding structure and the education context of production has on the producer role and the film.