Housing and Film Industry Reflections
Ahh, Kingdom Come… Many were looking forward to it, (especially those Jehovah’s Witnesses among us), but it seems likely it may never come to be.
The Word has it that before He became the Messiah J.C. was a carpenter. I like to think that in employing four or five hundred builders for nigh on six months the Kingdom Come project has already fulfilled a useful purpose.
Shame they weren’t building real houses.
Housing is an area I have a keen interest in. It’s so basic to our everyday needs, yet it can be so difficult for many in our society to acquire one of their own.
I was listening to Parliament one evening recently and heard the third reading of a building consent law rewrite. It was all very amicable between all parties. They were essentially in agreement about the need for these changes. So pleasant to hear parliamentarians working together, instead of shouting put-downs at each other across the floor. It was nicely summed up in a pun from Lianne Dalziel: “We have building consensus.”
There is a house in Wellington, not Parliament House but a house on the side of Mount Victoria, a new house designed by a well-established Wellington architect. It’s one of two houses designed and built ten years ago on a subdivided section. I say a new house; ten years old is relatively new, compared to the 100-year-old Mt Vic villas which surround it. Ten years old and one of those two houses is condemned as unsafe to live in. All this hoo-ha about registering builders, as if they were the ones responsible for so many leaky buildings. I’ve always thought the leaky home saga should be blamed on designers and developers first, then district councils and building material providers and manufacturers.
On a film job the director carries the can. They get the kudos if it’s a success, and they get the brick-bats if it’s no good. I think the architect who designed that house in Wellington should never work again.
Thinking of design and structures… Our Film Commission is being ‘reviewed’. We’re all invited to have a say as to how we think it should work; are there ways it could work more effectively? I really should have an opinion on this, but I actually don’t have a clue how such an organization works. I was surprised to discover just how many people the organization employs, and I imagine some of them are among the highest income earners in our little industry.
What I do know is that I was wary of the move towards a producer-led industry when we had (up until not so long ago) been essentially a writer/director-led industry. I’m still a bit wary of the producer-led arrangement but I don’t really know why – probably because I still can’t fathom how producers do what they do – but I can generally tell a good script when I read one.
As I’ve said before, if I were a producer I’d have given up long ago; I’d be growing flowers for a living.
It was pointed out after my last rave in this mag that we do not actually work under collective agreements. This is true. What I was getting at is the fact that producers like to have crew sign what is essentially the same contract for all, which may as well be a collective agreement; but I’m no legal eagle, so what would I know!
…AlBol
