Benn Fleishman at the 76th Creative Arts Emmy Awards - TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews

so I'm the supervising producer for the creative arts emys uh started actually in 2001 so go way back uh and uh I'm uh one of the producing team so basically what I'll do my my kind of primary focus is are things like budget and Logistics and kind of schedule and you know running the show and then I help out with other things like you I support the other producers with kind of creative input and uh just uh General kind of production discussions I started in it was 1986 and I had a friend of a a friend of the family who was working for Dick Clark Productions and she knew I wanted to get into the entertainment business I was 20 years old and and she set up an interview for me with uh a production coordinator there at dcar Productions when they were in Burbank and uh I hounded them for a few months mons and finally got called in to work as a PA and uh the rest as they say is history it's something I always look forward to uh when Nancy Robinson sends me the email it says okay here we go and sends me four or five different uh links to videos um of the potential interns and so I always enjoy kind of watching all those and looking at what they've you know done and everything and then you know sort of selecting my kind of top three or whatever and then I include uh Bob and and his assistant Candace in that we sort of between the three of us 100% tode on the person and um this year uh it's Zoe Boyd and she is actually possibly the best one we've ever had not that we want to rank them you know against each other whatever but she's fantastic so we're super excited and and the kinds of things that uh has been fun to see her do well um are uh you know earlier in this in the earlier stages of production it's not as busy in terms of you know actual shooting and that kind of thing you know in terms of you know Logistics and and shooting but what uh we have a lot of then is because there's 100 Awards between the two shows you know roughly 100 Awards so there's a lot of proofing you know with the um video packages and scripts and all that stuff and and we just need another pair of eyes to look through this stuff and she's actually really good at that and um that's that's a task that we've always had our interns do and she's she's done it particularly well uh and found you know some errors or whatever that luckily were caught earlier in the process and didn't make it onto the screens that you see in the house here and uh it won't make it to the television screen so that that's a big thing um other UH responsibilities that the inter might have like she like down here she's here now with us doing a whole variet iety of tasks last night during the show she was helping uh when the winners would come off stage she was helping them get to the thank you Cam and make sure that they knew to be quiet and and to you know do you know kind of get out of the way of of the next group coming through and that kind of stuff uh so that's just one of of several things but she's also helping in with General production just like maybe uh uh putting seat cards out that go in the audience for rehearsal where we have the different names and pictures and stuff of the nominees and presenters out there so they use these for rehearsing so she I saw her out there putting those into the seats and taking them out uh running supplies to people that needed in the truck you know all all kinds of stuff like that Waters whatever you know so um yeah that's that's uh you know a lot of the things that they've done what I like to see them see happen with them is that they get a broad sense of the different things that are going on because you know at this stage of their career which is just the very beginning uh I think that it's helpful to see kind of all the different departments and what they're doing and not just be kind of stuck with one thing and uh what this allows them to see is maybe what might it you know what they might be attracted to in terms of what they're going to do in the business assuming that they stay in the business which they usually do and um uh so I so I like to see that that where they are exposed to the town Department to the script Department to the post Department to production to the producers and you know all all the sort and you know and even things like um technical stuff in the truck with the director uh you saw Rich pu at here before uh I made sure that she spent a little time in the truck seeing what they do in there and even you know um you know meeting the set set designers and lighting people and all that stuff one of the key pieces of advice I think is really to to get to know all the different departments so that because to be a good producer I think you need to know what everybody does not as an expert but at least have a good idea of how the different departments work so that you can better interact with them which is what a a good producer I think needs to be able to do is interact and communicate with the different departments and if you don't really have a good sense of what they're doing then uh that can lead to problems down the road