LOS ANGELES — After years of hustle, film and TV producer Stephen Love found himself in a situation many of his peers would salivate over: He was in four bidding wars.

Studios clamored to snap up his projects. Hollywood trade news outlets gushed about their merits, bolstering Love's career and reputation. But all the while, Love was shooting commercials and music videos and trying to get consulting gigs to make ends meet. He even drove for ride-share companies.

The son of a preacher and a teacher, Love, 35, grew up on a farm in York, South Carolina, almost 40 miles south of Charlotte, North Carolina.

He's come a long way from when he caught the film bug in his youth, which led him to start a videography business while still in school to shoot weddings and other occasions.

But even after the bidding wars, Love, who produced the 2016 drama "The Land" and 2023 sci-fi film "They Cloned Tyrone," has multiple jobs. He consults on the side while running a company that makes commercials and music videos and working on branded content and deals. He's far from the only one.

"You have to have these multiple things happening while you're also trying to focus on the thing you really love, which is getting in the weeds and making a movie," said Love, who splits time between his home in Hollywood and Atlanta, where a lot of production work and opportunities for newer creatives are located. "The idea that there's producers who have been in the game for 30 years-plus, having the same issues that I'm having just 10 to 12 years in the game, can be disheartening."

The job of a producer is largely misunderstood.

Movie and television producers have long tried to shed the stereotype of the "fat cat" — the cigar-chomping boss on set who rakes in big profits, has an extravagant vacation home or gives away cars as holiday gifts to buddies. That may have been the case for a few individuals decades ago, but today, many producers say their livelihoods and the future of producing as a career are at a crisis point.

The pandemic, dual writers' and actors' strikes of 2023, studio spending cutbacks and the recent Southern California wildfires all have contributed to a production slowdown that has squeezed producers' opportunities to get work.

In addition, there's the demise of so-called back-end profit participation deals — largely due to the changing business practices of the streamers — that once allowed producers to capitalize on a popular film or TV project and recoup their costs after production.

Overhanging all of this is the growing number of people who are getting producer credits, which has added to the confusion and the financial turmoil.

Producers often don't get paid for their years of project development — the early stages of making a film or show before getting a green light — meaning they can make less than minimum wage when counting up all their hours of work, even when they create a hit.

"We're labor," said Jonathan Wang, 40, working out of offices on L.A.'s Eastside. A producer on 2022's Oscar-winning "Everything Everywhere All at Once," he says, "We are providing labor for studios, for buyers, and we are providing a real job that needs protections for it to continue."

There are multiple efforts underway to address these issues.

The Producers Guild of America, a trade group that represents more than 8,400 producers across various fields, has launched a campaign to define a producer's job. Meanwhile, a newer coalition called Producers United is pushing to get producers paid as they work. (Both groups advocate for including health insurance for producers and stopping the dilution of the producer credit.)

It's a bit of a running joke among producers that no one seems to know what they do.

"This is an age-old question," quipped Stephanie Allain, a longtime film producer and co-president of the Producers Guild of America, in a Zoom interview. "Like, 'What do you do?' How many times have you gotten that, Donald?"

Fellow producer and PGA co-president Donald De Line, who was also on the call, quickly answered, "Oh, a million."

That fuzzy understanding of the job — even among people on set — has contributed to the situation producers now find themselves in.

Though many people have an image of producers just passively writing checks, the role of an active producer is important for the making of a movie.

The role of a true producer can vary by the type and budget of a film and the skills of the individual. For Allain, it means identifying the material, finding the writers and director, helping with casting, securing funding, overseeing production, hiring heads of departments, spending time on set and in the editing room and being part of marketing efforts.

"Your arms are wide, and you're bringing everybody into the tent," Allain said. "And you're very judicious about who comes in that tent."

Put another way, "A producer is there at the beginning, the middle and the end," De Line said.

But unlike others on the set, producers are not represented by a union. The Producers Guild of America is not a union but a trade organization that also administers the p.g.a. mark attached to the main producers' names in a film's credits. (That process can itself be controversial; there have been disputes in the past over who can claim producer credits for the best picture Oscar.)

The lack of definition of a producer has opened the door to lots of people getting producer credits whose main role is a different function. Actors, financiers and others who are not working on set as the main point person can negotiate a credit, which then cuts into the money allocated to a project's producers.

Producers often are loath to push back against others who try to claim a credit because they're desperate to see their projects across the finish line after investing so much "sweat equity," said film producer Jennifer Todd, known for the 2000 thriller "Memento" and 2007's Beatles-inspired musical "Across the Universe."

Todd and producers Love and Wang are all part of Producers United, which has about 200 people signed on.

This group of so-called career producers — those who are the lead producers and hold no other roles on the set — also is pushing for making development fee advances the norm. Though that can typically be about $25,000, some producers said they rarely see that amount. Many will toil on projects for years with minimal payout.

Wang, of "Everything Everywhere All at Once," said he made $35,000 a year over the seven years that he worked on the film, which made $140 million globally on a $14 million budget. (The film was also the first time he had seen back-end profits in his career, but it was not a massive amount, he said.)

Part of the reason Wang and others in Producers United feel so strongly about making the career more sustainable is they're concerned about the next generation of producers in the industry and the longevity and health of the film business.

"The extinction event is real," said Wang. "Even at the highest level, it's still not going to be something where you're fully set."

Even if that development fee is granted, it is taken out of a producer's fee, meaning it's only an advance of sorts.

"If a real producer, who actually enables content to get made and be good, is something everyone wants to be, then we should protect the people who actually do that so that we can have the content," said Cathy Schulman, a producer on the best picture winner "Crash" and the Amazon Anne Hathaway drama "The Idea of You," who is part of the Producers United group. "Imagine if the word 'fireman' meant that 15 people could say they're the one, and only one has the hose."

Without these kinds of changes, producers say the ability to attract new people into the field and retain them is slim, especially those who are not independently wealthy.

Producer Love said he and his wife, a marriage and family therapist, hope to start a family soon, but he has to think about what that means when he still has to work multiple jobs.

"It's not super sustainable," he said. "It's really important to me to be able to support my family and start a family."

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