A Changing Era in the Screen Industry
As the end of daylight savings is imminent, there is always a sense of dread knowing that the mornings will be dark and cold and light switches will once again be getting a lot more use.
I feel like a bit of an end of an era is upon us, with our Executive Officer's recent resignation. After 8 years of working on a daily basis with Karla, she feels now is the right time for her to hand over the baton to someone new.
I know for a while I’m going to feel like I’m missing my right arm. Karla and I speak often about immigration issues, Letters of Non-Objection requests from producers, Blue Book issues and enquiries, crew contracts, details about upcoming projects, and general day-to-day running of the Guild office.
At the time of publishing, we will have interviewed, and appointed Karla’s replacement. I know they will get the very best training from Karla, and I encourage each and every one of you to introduce yourselves to the new EO as time permits. It can sometimes be a lonely job running the Guild office remotely from home, where nobody comes to visit, so a phone call or email is a nice way to communicate with our new EO. In the meantime, I’d personally like to thank Karla for keeping the Guild running, in fact, for making it run better than it ever has.
I’d like to thank her for navigating our way through new software, office moves, three different Presidents, a name change, a 30-year anniversary party in three cities, multiple workshops, growing our membership, negotiating with the Government and Immigration New Zealand, getting our first-ever funding from the New Zealand Film Commission, and for the many hours of unrecognised and unpaid work she has done for the Guild behind the scenes during her tenure.
On the work front, Auckland has suffered the loss of two of the bigger projects that were meant to start shooting in March and April, but I’m quietly confident that there will be other productions that will happily slot in the spaces that they left behind. In the meantime, we’ve enjoyed crewing Luminaries, Netflix/Ground Control’s Falling Inn Love, Le Plane (remake of 1970’s show Fantasy Island) in Fiji, Baby Done for Piki Films, SPP’s Westside, Power Rangers, Avatar, and Screentimes’ Ablaze. It looks like there is going to be a lot of growth in the feature film and drama sector of our industry in Auckland, as we have noticed the television commercial production climate seems to be slowing down.
It appears that advertising as we know it is going to have to adjust how it gets their messages out to the viewers now that there are so many different platforms taking the place of what was once just the lounge room television monitor. Access to content is so varied these days, and with the ability to fast forward through, or block ads, our advertisers are having to get smarter about where and how they advertise. We’ve noticed that this has meant a drop off in the volume of moving picture TVCs being produced locally.
What to do if you are crew?** **Don’t panic if things are a little slow for you right now. Get your CV’s polished up and get them out there, network, network, network. Take on some of the longer jobs that come your way if they are offered to you, there will be plenty of opportunities coming up, and I believe it’s going to also be a new era for training the young creatives. If you are older and wiser, you have a lot to teach, and plenty who are keen to learn under you. If you are a young technician just starting out your career in the industry, come to a guild meeting, network amongst your peers, talk to your heads of department and keep your ears open for any opportunities that may fall in your lap.
On a side note – The Film Industry Working Group reconvened in February at the request of MBIE, to go over a few questions that the Minister had in relation to our recommendations relating to contractors vs employees, and how any suggested changes may be implemented moving forward. The results from this meeting will be forwarded to the Minister in due course and then run through its parliamentary process before any new laws come into effect.
The Screen Industry Guild has been invited to be part of two more working groups, one is the Studio Working Group, in cooperation with ATEED here in Auckland. There have been several meetings already this year, and there are some positive moves being made by those involved to further support our growing local industry. Watch this space for updates.
The other working group is one that the Prime Minister has requested. It is being formed by industry groups to put together a Screen Strategy for the next 10 years. This is still in its infancy, and the Screen Industry Guild is proud to be included in this group. During the next 12 months, there will be times when we will need to engage our members for feedback on different topics. I look forward to being able to update you as the year progresses.
