Contracts, Bloody Contracts!

Former president Albol gives his informed view on contracts and where they’re headed.

I recently broke two of my own basic rules when it comes to employment. I worked six-day shooting weeks, and I signed a contract which included a whole lot of stuff I couldn’t agree with, but I signed it anyway. Normally I would carefully read a contract and make alterations or additions where I felt it appropriate, and I’d talk it through with the producer. So why would I sign a contract I couldn’t agree with? Well, in this recent case the job was over and done, we’d agreed on my fee and the terms of engagement. Some clauses in the contract, such as a seventh day pro rata, though objectionable in principle were not relevant in practice, (ie: we didn’t actually work any seventh day; well, not the shooting crew; well, not all the shooting crew.)

So the contract seemed somewhat irrelevant given that it was signed by both parties after the fact.

I tend to question the real relevance of contracts anyway. I’ve been engaged on many projects over the years which didn’t seem to require any form of written contract, they were done on a handshake, or even on a phone conversation.

I fondly remember Jim Booth, producer on Heavenly Creatures. When I was presented with a contract I asked what it was for and Jim explained that it was necessary because of the international financial arrangements.

“So what do you actually need from me”, I asked, and after thinking about it for a minute Jim said that he needed the rights to my work on the project. So I wrote out a paragraph to say that I assigned the rights to my work on the project to the producers or whosoever they may assign those rights to, and Jim was happy with that.

Tell you what, I’ve more than once found straight-out contradictions in contracts.

On The Piano there was some confusion as to whether the crew were obliged to shoot one six-day week because it appeared in the contract, but though one clause noted there could be a six-day shooting week at any point during the shoot, another clause mentioned the six-day week specifically in relation to the one week away from the Auckland district, so the two clauses contradicted each other. I was a crew rep on that gig and I suggested that since the contract couldn’t make up its mind it was up to the crew to decide whether or not they’d work a six-day week. The out-of-towners voted to work the sixth day since the overtime being offered was quite generous, but the out-of-towners were outnumbered by the Aucklanders on the crew and the Aucklanders wanted their weekend off, so we didn’t work a sixth day.

And again, several years ago it was a contract for a job with a large Auckland production house, perhaps the most productive production house in the country. On reading through the contract I noted two clauses which completely contradicted each other. I can’t now remember exactly what the issue was, I think it was to do with dismissal or terminating the contract, but one paragraph said one thing and another effectively said the opposite. I pointed this out to the line producer who took it upstairs to ask the legal dept about it. The response the line producer got was, “Oh, someone’s spotted that”. And this from a production house with its own in-house legal department. A little incident like that makes me seriously question the veracity of any contract.

We can certainly question the veracity of any contract which arrives after the job’s been completed, and even ones which turn up after the job has begun. If you’ve started work on a job and there isn’t yet a written contract then the deal is the verbal arrangement you and the producer have made, even if it was just a phone conversation. If there isn’t a written contract and no specific verbal agreement has been made then let the producer know that Blue Book rules apply. If either party wishes to veer away from The Blue Book then it needs to be discussed and agreed upon or it’s not part of the deal. Alterations to standard practice should not be made after the parties have begun their working relationship, any such alterations should be agreed upon beforehand.

I’m not just making this stuff about verbal contracts up you know – this is basic contract law. Often broken, sure, but fully enforceable in law (if it can be proven just what the verbal agreement was). To quote a classic line, “a verbal contract is not worth the paper it’s written on”.

You are entitled to make alterations to a contract.

A contract is an agreement between parties, an agreement.

Perhaps it’s easier for me as DOP to negotiate my own terms but we are all entitled to do so. I know others who insist on modifying the contract that’s presented to them, and not just HODs.

There’s another aspect of this contractual issue which concerns me, the deals we’re sometimes offered on off-shore projects coming here. These conditions are often suggested and promoted by our own line producers. There seems no obvious reason for variations away from the The Blue Book to be offered to off-shore producers coming here when what they really need to know is how we work here in Aotearoa so they can start with that as a basis for planning their production. I know from having worked in Australia that Oz line producers would not willingly undermine their own crew conditions. Why is it that some of our Kiwi line producers feel it’s ok to suggest working systems which don’t naturally fit with our ways of working here in the Kiwi production biz? I suspect there’s producer ego involved in pushing variations to our working conditions, or they’re simply looking at feathering their own nest, but they are not helping to establish good basic relationships between the visiting production personnel and their Kiwi crew.

It still bewilders me why there is so much resistance to a standard industry contract for either actors or crew. A standard contract would eliminate much of the need for lawyer involvement and, as my experience with dodgy contracts illustrates, lawyers aren’t always providing a useful service (though it was handy to be able to run this article past a lawyer to make sure it wasn’t too fanciful, or libelous). Surely a standard industry contract (which the Techos’ Guild is working on) would simplify life for all of us. And even if a particular production wants variations to the standard contract it would be much simpler to deal with those variations because we wouldn’t be dealing with a whole new document each and every time we start a job.