Crew and Producer Concerns in Film

Half way through the year already!

Although our trusty editor is working at the moment he’s still able to sort out the magazine for publication. ‘El presidente’ was working when the last NZTECHO mag came out and he couldn’t even get his act together to write something. (Not so! AlBol’s Guilford tribute was special – Ed.)

But this time I’m not working, so I’d better put fingers to keyboard. There were a couple things that occurred as far back as last year which I’d like to comment on, since I haven’t already…

One… Poor crew behaviour on the Avatar shoot…

It seemed that there were many issues around that job, not the least being the ridiculous hours that people were working. No doubt people were paid for the hours they worked, and people were happy to take the money, but the money doesn’t make the hours any more acceptable in my book.

I gather there were crew who tried to get something done about their working hours early on in the piece, but they were unable to find enough traction or support from the rest of the crew. Some left the job before it was finished because they weren’t prepared to keep putting up with the hours, or the director’s shouting (and I don’t mean buying beers for crew).

There was another group on that job which chose to protest the ridiculous hours of work - but unfortunately they chose to wait until the end of the last day of the shoot before they made their point. Yes, on the very last day the grips refused to work overtime.

So they left the rest of the crew to muddle through to the end without their support, while they sat at the back of the grip truck drinking beers.

I would feel proud of them if they’d made their point a week or three into the shoot, but leaving such a protest till the end of the last day is simply laughable - or would be laughable if it weren’t such a gutless and pointless act.

Two… Poor producer behaviour over the Outrageous Fortune actor negotiations…

I don’t know the full ins and outs of what went down there, but I have heard tell that the producers threatened to unplug the final series because they weren’t happy with what the actors (and Actors Equity) were proposing. I’ve heard this threat from another producer in the past, and it struck me then how churlish and irresponsible such a threat is, particularly when the production is being financed largely with public money.

I gather that at the core of the differences between actors and producers was the issue of a standard contract. This is an issue that won’t go away, and will eventually have to be worked out between SPADA and Equity.

We craft workers effectively work under collective agreements, given the ‘contracts’ we are presented with on most jobs.

You’ll find that nothing varies from one crew member’s contract to another’s, except perhaps the payment amounts. This could be seen as a collective agreement - except that the crew generally have very little input into the ‘agreement’, and producers don’t want to negotiate with you as a group but are happy to present you all with the same contract for services. That strikes me as something of an anomaly which will also need to be sorted out in time.

Helen and I recently went to the Hokianga Film Festival… It was a wonderful event, one of the key ingredients being the input of local ‘film-makers’. These local film-makers have grown out of an Adult Community Education (ACE) course aimed at giving the local community the tools and skills to tell their own stories. But ACE courses are under the axe because they are simply, as the minister put it, “for making macramé toilet roll holders or learning Moroccan cooking”. That may be true in the suburbs, where well-heeled middle-agers are looking to broaden their interests in life, but out there in the hinterland many of these courses are actually vital to the life-blood and well-being of communities.

Meantime, the screen production industry continues to be fairly busy, which has got to be a good thing for us professionals.

… AlBol