Guild's Role and Industry Growth
The Guild has been incredibly busy of late, and been involved with SWAG as well as being responsible for the printing of the ScreenSafe document, and the Blue Book. It’s more important now than ever before that you are aware of the baseline conditions of crew bookings by getting familiar with the contents of these documents. You should know which holidays are charged at T2, or where the travel zone boundaries are, or how midnight loading and weather cover days work. If you are not familiar, take the time to read the Blue Book and ask your peers to help you if you are unsure of how to charge for things that are beyond a normal shoot day.
Winter is upon us now, and productions are starting to chase the light, and speaking of light, it seems that the light we always see at the end of the tunnel is actually the train of ongoing work coming head on at us here in Auckland! It feels like it’s been an incredibly long time coming, but it is really happening. Long form work has overtaken the quantity of television commercial production here, which means that a much larger pool of crew are getting soaked up for longer periods, and more and more people are honing their skills, and we are even seeing an increase in the quantity of interns being taken on to all productions. This needs to be encouraged. If you’re an HOD, see if you can engage an intern (even if it’s only for a few days) so that some new talent gets to taste the future of our precious little industry. All in all, the outlook is sunny, and it looks like many of you will be able to make hay this upcoming winter, spring and summer.
We’ve seen another season of Power Rangers come to a close, as well as the ABC pilot ‘Triangle’ that shot around Auckland/South Island during April and May, along with a sprinkling of local productions such as ‘Rumble in the Sac’, ‘By the Balls’ and ‘Shadow in the Cloud’ to name a few. Avatar is now in full swing. Sweet Tooth kicks off this month, along with 9 new episodes of The Wilds shooting until Christmas. There’s a neat little horror film for Candy Cane Productions shooting in June and July in Dunedin, Brokenwood Mysteries are shooting for 12 weeks from July-October, Monkey is filming for 4 months at Walls Road, and Firefly Films are in pre-production for The Justice of Bunny King that will be shooting from August for five weeks… All of this, and there is still more rumoured to come!
It’s finally starting to feel like we are getting those extra steak knives that get thrown in at the end of those pesky little infomercials, but this time, we can’t get enough! We can’t get enough work, we can’t get enough crew. What an awesome position to be in.
The Guild has been very active over the last two years. We have representatives on the Board of Film Auckland (who work closely with Screen Auckland and ATEED) helping with keeping communication open with Council about shooting at hotspots such as the west coast beaches and local farmlands. We have also been closely working within the Auckland Studio Working Group, another ATEED initiative that have asked for our assistance/support, and has produced some yet to be announced.
