Industry Insights and Challenges

Firstly, I must apologise for the shallow, self-centred “el presidente” rave in the last issue. I really could not be bothered getting into politics in any way, shape or form then, but I’m over that now.

We now have a new government, as does the US of A. Our new PM declares himself to be a moderate. I do hope this is true, and that the ‘Hollow Men’ who are no doubt still lurking in the closet don’t manage to draw John Key and his new caucus into their web.

There are some issues here in NZ which we should keep an eye on.

There is an amendment to the Minimum Wage Act which has been in Select Committee for some time, an amendment under which it would be compulsory for contractors to earn at least the minimum hourly wage. Home-help workers, for instance, as contractors to home-help providers are frequently grossly under-paid; but they tend to put up with this exploitation because they are generally mild-mannered, polite, self-sacrificing individuals with a strong commitment to their work. Perhaps this is the same reason some of us in screen production put up with little or no pay on occasions - but I’m being facetious. I suspect it’s more that we’re a naturally supportive bunch, who are willing to give our time in the service of art (often in the hope of it leading to more work)! Anyway, there’s little chance of that particular legislative re-write going anywhere in the next three years, except on-the-shelf or in-the-bin.

ACC may get a serve, with the distinct possibility of it being opened up to private insurance companies. This may or may not be a bad thing? but we should be aware that one of the major flaws in that ‘great free-market capitalist democracy’, the United States of America, is the lack of universal health care. Insurance companies have a strong hold over the provision of health services in the USA and much of the population is left out in the cold, uncovered, because they can’t afford to pay the premiums.

We’re promised our Film Commission will be closely looked at. The time is no doubt ripe for this, but the outcome remains to be seen. I think the level of funding will be safe, for now; but how the organization is staffed and run may be given a shake-up. I note that Barney has been vocal recently about where he sees the organization’s weaknesses lie. I guess now is the time to have a say in how it could better serve our industry.

The world is apparently sliding into an ‘economic recession’, but we give the word ‘economic’ such a restricted financial meaning. I prefer to say we’re moving into a serious financial slow-down, from which I sincerely hope we learn that finance is not the be-all and end-all of our survival. Life could be a lot simpler and the planet a lot safer if ‘finance’ had less influence on the way we conduct our lives.

We talk about the ‘economy’ as if the word relates simply to the money-go-round, but we need to rethink. We need to acknowledge that money is simply a trading commodity, and that our world does not rely on money to keep it healthy - it relies more on economy of consumption, less is better, if we are to keep the planet in good health.

I was disappointed when Sunday trading was introduced in this country. I’m not a religious man, but I always liked the fact that we had at least one day in the week on which we did not worship the god ‘mammon’.

Sure, money provides impetus and stimulus for business and ‘progress’, but we seem to think we can have continuous ‘economic growth’ and ‘progress’. This is plainly folly, as is illustrated by the collapse of so many money market monoliths. But it is also folly to even think growth can be sustainable; be it ‘economic’ or otherwise, growth will always be finite. Sooner or later growth leads to decay and death or collapse. We can have ‘sustainable’, or we can have ‘growth’, for a while; but we can’t have ‘sustainable growth’.

There has been a bit of talk recently about our lack of organised bargaining power when it comes to setting screen industry working hours, standards and conditions. I think this has been brought on by the disagreements that arose around Kingdom Come contracts.

Unfortunately, some of the arguments were between different crew factions, as well as with the producers. The main issue was whether crew should be paid double-time or time-and-a-half for working a sixth day. It seems the working day is planned to be a basic ten-hour day rather than twelve? and I gather people are being paid good rates; but it is unfortunate that crew who thought they had a done deal (with double-time for working a sixth day) couldn’t get support from their fellow crew members - let alone from the New Zealand line producer.

It has struck me how supportive Australian line producers are of their local crew when working on off-shore productions over there in Oz. It would be good if we could rely on NZ line producers to lend the same sort of support to their fellow Kiwi crew on such productions when they come to our shores.

I did some work in over the past couple of years for an outfit that had no dough at the time, but asked the crew to file “phantom invoices” for the work we’d done. So we did, on the understanding that we’d be paid if and when the film went into principal photography. Looks like that’s about to happen, so we’ll get paid, as well as some of the crew scoring more work on the job. A happy ending - a happy outcome all round.

Merry Christmas!

… AlBol