Auckland's Film Industry Thrives
The leaves have fallen, and the days are short, and it’s time to hunker down for the colder months. The Auckland industry seems to be humming along nicely with lots of longform productions in full swing, and a few more lining up outside the door ready to kick off within the next twelve months. It’s a promising thing to drive around Auckland and see some of the construction/reconstruction of a few of the studio facilities, getting geared up for even more work. Covid has been particularly cruel to the commercial market however, and it seems to be taking a little longer to get back up off its knees.
TVCs have struggled to navigate its way through the ever-changing Covid restrictions and requirements in terms of health and safety, and navigating exposure risk along with crew replacement in the event of key crew falling ill, but none the less we are an adaptive bunch of people who think nothing of looking outside the box for innovative solutions.
The Screen Industry Guild has been working alongside SPADA and NZAPG (NZ Advertising Producers Group) to update our wonderful Blue Book guidelines which effect your base terms and conditions of engagement with productions, for example the fact you can charge travel time, late lunch penalty, overtime, midnight loading or additional rates for working on public holidays.
Although some productions will vary their contracts with individual crew on a project-by-project basis the Blue Book as proved to be one of the most valuable assets in our toolkit and is referred to daily by hundreds of producers and crew alike.
It is the hard work of a very few volunteers in the Guild that have furnished you with the guidelines of employment that you enjoy, so I’d ask you to encourage any of your peers who are not members to consider contributing to the conditions they also enjoy charging for by becoming a member of the Guild too.
