An Interview With Vincent Dolan

WRITTEN BY JOSEPH KINRADEY

Vincent Dolan – Compact Films Producer

For a city like London, it can be daunting for an up-and-coming filmmaker trying to make their way into the industry. The amount of competition, ruthlessness and navigation it takes to get a foot in the door can seem like a impossible task for most. Vincent Dolan, the head producer for the production company called ‘Compact Films’ is no stranger to that life. Once a film student just like myself, Vincent has had to start from the bottom and take matters into his own hands. This journey started with Vince looking for any opportunity he could obtain, mainly running positions but after a period of time attempts were made to progress to higher roles. Vince made himself available to a line of production companies based within London, advertising himself for a producer role. But in Vince’s own words, “I left university trying to apply for any run of production assistant jobs. Got nowhere.”.

This void of responses Vince found himself fall into ended up being the catalyst for Compact Films creation mentioned by Vince saying, “I was constantly getting rejected or not very far in the interview stages for whatever reasons. And eventually just kind of turn around and be like, if I'm going to do producing, I might as well just start my own production company to start at the bottom and go from there.” After trailing around multiple London-based networking events, Vince met a director by the name of Sonia Amini. Both shared similar frustrations with the industry and the lack of open doors to take advantage of. This bond triggered the decision to end up officially creating their own production company.

With the company now in a health position, I wanted to understand from Vince more about the producer role, why he decided to go down such a route and the skills needed for someone taking on that challenge. When discussing personal qualities, Vince highlighted that due to the nature of the role, “I suppose one is patience, resilience, because, and the ability to work under pressure, because when you're a producer, you're going to be in leadership.”. This prompted me to discuss the typical stereotypes of what a producer is seemed to be, as the role, it could be argued, has been coated in this image of an iron fisted, upper-lipped individual holding a position of a watered-down tyranny. Vince’s response mentioned how, “you can be the most organised, you could be the best at budgeting, you could be a great negotiator, but if people can't stand working with you, you're just not going to get far.”.

Going back to Vince’s early days, in which opportunities had to be seized, I asked Vince about the extent of this take and if there was any limits to taking opportunities. “As long as you feel you're confident and comfortable with the

skills you have, being able to take on work that you've never really done before, you're not really going to have a problem. Most of it's just confidence; It's sort of like you jump out of the plane and make the parachute on the way down.”.

Finally, I wanted to cover the intentions a producer should have when starting out within the industry. Throughout my brief time in the film community, I’ve met fellow producers, unlike my own, in which the main motivator for getting into the producing business was profit and fame. I was curious if this attitude to the role would harm one’s progress or even deny one’s career. Vince put some light on this saying, “you can make the same point with directors, directors who go into directing for fame and fortune. They never make it. And like people who go into business with the intention of becoming the next Steve Jobs, never do. They always fail to some degree. And producing is the same as like, I mean, I would love to make loads of money on producing. I absolutely, of course I do. I'd be an idiot if I said otherwise. But for me, like the reason I got into film was to make cool films.”