Ross Girard on Produced With

"If you don't like problems, this is not a career to get into." That is Ross Girard's warning to anyone considering a career in production, and he was not being cynical. Problem solving is a very large portion of what producers do, the Chief Operating Officer of Campfire Studios said on the Produced With podcast, because a production is a living, breathing thing nobody fully controls. In documentary that is not an occasional inconvenience. It is the form itself.

Girard joined Campfire in 2017, when the Los Angeles film and TV company he now helps run had about four people. Roughly 25 are on staff today, and close to 100 hours of documentary content have gone out to Netflix, Hulu and Max. Its Emmy wins include Outstanding Business and Economic Documentary for "WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn." Girard has spent more than 15 years in entertainment, almost eight of them at Campfire, and he oversees physical production across the slate, including the Emmy-nominated Netflix series "Special" and "Unknown Number: The High School Catfish."

A documentary gets budgeted from an idea and an outline, with no locked script to price. The instrument Girard uses to do it is a written assumptions document.

From intern PA to COO of Campfire Studios

Girard landed in Los Angeles in 2008, out of Emerson College, where he studied studio television. His first job was an internship at Partizan, and in his first week he was on set as an intern PA on a large Adidas commercial at the Warner Brothers ranch. After graduating, a producer there named Becca Kinski connected him to a music video David Gelb was directing: Girard, one producer and about 20 grand. Years of music video and commercial work followed, with artists including Usher, Daft Punk and The Strokes.

His first feature arrived the same way. A Funny or Die short he production managed led Mike Farah and Anna Wenger to hire him on a low budget feature called "Answer This," shot in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his production management textbook still on hand. In New York, producing a Strokes video, he met Minette Louie, who brought him on as co-producer of "California Solo" in 2011. Looking back, it is easy to see how the connections joined up, he tells interns, but "you can't really predict forward."

How to budget a documentary with no script: the assumptions document

Pricing an idea and an outline instead of a locked script is what the assumptions document is for. It records what the team can map out in advance from the creative: the characters, the locations, the interviews the story appears to need, and the plan for reaching them. Sometimes his team builds a Google map with every subject plotted on it, to see who can be covered in one trip and who needs their own.

Shoot day count is the number nobody wants to commit to. Creative teams resist it, and the budget shapes the answer: once post, staff, archival licensing and music are covered at a baseline, the question becomes whether a few more shoot days can be squeezed in. He starts with the film he actually wants. He lays out the ideal version, budgets it, finds it is over, then solves that with the creative team, because cutting alone does not work when there is still a story to tell.

Why documentary budgets change after the green light

Girard has not worked on a single project that turned out exactly as planned, and in documentary the reasons are structural. A new character can emerge on the second to last shoot day. An active court case can move. A song nobody expected to license becomes pivotal late. Money on a long project is one shoe box, he said: overspending early constrains what is left at the end, unlike a two day shoot where the whole spend is visible a week out.

Overruns are usually a collaborative discussion rather than a surprise. Occasionally the financial partners fund the change. Most often they will not, because a financier committed a specific amount and was not expecting to commit more, which leaves the producer to deliver the changed film on the original number by rethinking the approach, taking work in house or running a smaller team. Underneath all of it sits the relationship with the people on camera. "It's so important to have a good relationship with your subjects," he said.

How long documentaries take, and when to start the edit

Girard produced two seasons of the series "Special," and the second season ran around 40 shoot days. Nobody preps 40 days up front. With four to six weeks of prep, the focus goes on the first shoot weeks while the rest keeps getting prepped once cameras roll. Short form has the opposite problem, because on a one day shoot there is no later week in which to fix anything.

"I would say for anyone making a documentary, don't start your edit until you're ready." Ready means enough interviews shot and enough archive gathered. Once an edit opens, an editor, an assistant and equipment cost money every week, and pausing is disruptive because people leave for other jobs. He put a documentary feature at roughly a year, sometimes nine or ten months, and a series at a year to a year and a half depending on episode count.

Network financing vs independent financing for documentaries

Format follows creative and budget together. Some stories sustain a three episode arc, others are stronger as a single feature with a three act structure, and networks bring audience research to that call. Ownership follows the money. A network financed project is typically work for hire, with the network holding ownership. Independent financing depends on the agreement: the financier may retain everything, ownership may be shared, or it may sit with the SPE set up for the project.

Network funded work is the more stable business in his view, because the budget, the deal and the fee are known and distribution is close to guaranteed. Independent projects are typically lower budget with lower fees for everybody, and their upside is backend, which carries real risk: festivals show a ton of movies and only some get good distribution deals. Legal is the other half of the job. His advice there: get a great attorney in early, before the story is locked, to vet fair use, defamation and privacy questions, and read "Clearance and Copyright" by Michael Donaldson.

The documentary market after the streaming boom, and where AI fits

The market is normalizing after the streaming content boom, when new platforms needed volume to fill libraries. Campfire is fortunate to be busy, by his account, but projects are harder to get off the ground and slower to start, because demand is smaller and buyers have fewer dollars. Buyers also want a more complete package, which puts the weight on a pitch showing exactly what access, rights and material a project already has. "There's not as much appetite for risk as I think there might've been in the past."

AI took up much of a day at the Producers Guild's Produced By conference, and the framing that stayed with him came from a filmmaker who treated it as another creative tool rather than a job taker, comparing the shift to how visual effects changed the practical effects industry. Girard called the displacement risk real. His own use of it is operational: meeting notes, task management and research.

Key takeaways

• Take the small job and let the connections compound. A Funny or Die short Girard production managed got him hired on his first feature, "Answer This," but as he tells interns, "you can't really predict forward."
• Budget the ideal version first, then take the overage back to the creative team, because cutting alone does not work while there is still a story to tell. Price that first pass off the assumptions document: characters, locations, interviews.
• Treat a long project as one shoe box of money: overspending in the first months constrains the edit at the end. Expect no extra funding when the story changes, because the financier committed a specific amount and rarely more.
• Do not open the edit until enough interviews are shot and enough archive is gathered: an editor, an assistant and equipment bill weekly, and a pause sends them to other jobs. Allow roughly a year for a feature, a year to a year and a half for a series.
• Pick financing by what you can afford to risk: a network deal means work for hire, known money and near guaranteed distribution, while independent means backend upside. Either way, get an attorney onto fair use, defamation and privacy early, before the story is locked.
• Pitch a complete package, not an idea: buyers have fewer dollars and want to see exactly what access, rights and material a project already holds, because projects are now slower to get off the ground than during the streaming boom.