-: My name is Mark Salyer
and I am a producer of media, television and film.
Well, it really is kind of like being a CEO of production
and you're really kind of in charge of everything.
So it's hard to even say like, what do you do?
'Cause you kinda do everything or at least
you have to know a little bit about everything.
But at the end of the day,
I think a good producer is a good storyteller.
Currently, we have a couple of film projects,
one of which actually was just finished and is actually here
in The Virginia Film Festival this year.
It is called "Ladies Most Deject"
and it is a story of a family that is dealing with
the repercussions of the drug epidemic in Appalachia.
Well, I would call myself more of a creative producer,
so I'm really there developing ideas
as well as managing the actual production itself.
So for this particular project, I co-wrote the script,
and so I really became affiliated with it
from the very beginning and you know,
with mapping the story and coming up with
of what we wanted to say and how like,
the scope of the project as well,
because I think that's very important as a producer
to look at something right from the beginning
and understand kind of how big something is
or how small it is or how easy it is to produce
or how much money it's gonna take.
I mean, I pretty much was involved in every aspect.
I was involved in casting, I found the director,
who also was a UVA person, Marty Elcan,
who lives in Los Angeles.
And you know, I found all the crew,
I basically developed the budget and you know,
all of these things I had help with.
I had a lot of co-producers who worked with me on it
and for a small project, we were a fairly small, tight team.
But it really was my responsibility ultimately
to kind of pull it all together.
So that's a producer.