Keeping the Home Fires Burning

In an industry constructed around short-term freelance contracts, there’s an underlying basis of insecurity for even the most skilled and experienced people. Long hours, locations, intense shoots, and workplace pressures are a given. So what is it like for women juggling all that plus the sole responsibility of young children? Dara McNaught spoke to Annie Weston, Dot Kyle, and Sarah Cook, all three are mothers freelancing in production.

For the first five years of being the sole parent of a small child while doing production management and line producing, Queenstown-based Annie Weston found herself paying a nanny $400 a week. It was a struggle! Especially as there wasn’t much work around, sometimes she was paying simply for the opportunity to be available for contracts.

Now on the board of Film Otago Southland, Annie started in the screen industry over 20 years ago. Most of her work is on TVCs for international clients. Taking on a feature film isn’t an option as it would require several months of shooting. Each TVC takes anywhere from a week to two or three months and will require one to two hours each day upwards. Once the job is confirmed she has to be constantly available.

Timing is tight. Plus there’s the lawns and housekeeping to do. When Isabella started school, she says “it was like a light – it gave me six uninterrupted hours every day.”

Sometimes Annie works two or three jobs at once and has to plan a 10 to 12-hour day around her daughter, usually late into the night. A shoot can be 16 to 18 hours with an average of 14 hours. “The worst thing is when you have a job and sole responsibility for a child. It’s okay when it’s one or the other.”

When working days extended past 6 pm until 7 or 8 pm she would worry about Isabella and needing to make extra arrangements. So now she sends her eight-year-old to stay with the nanny, whose extended family seems to have embraced her. Sometimes for three weeks at a time.

There is a need to be constantly available by phone and email for queries, which may be for the next contract or for giving the most efficient service possible for a current one. “It’s hard to have a routine for your child when you have to drop everything for work,” Annie says.

Annie, who is acutely aware that her location in Queenstown and the nature of her work keep her more isolated, misses the company and stimulation of co-workers. She is wary of mentioning to production companies that she has a child, even once she’s employed, as she finds there’s an assumption her daughter will be a distraction for her.

Even with couples, she says, when both are working, the men may help but they rarely have the same responsibility as women. It is the woman who has responsibility for organizing the childcare. “She fills out the forms, packs the bags, and makes the phone calls.”

When Annie became a sole parent she wanted to have more time with her daughter and followed her long interest in studying script writing. In 2009 she was selected to attend the New Zealand Film Commission’s 1st Writers Initiative with her script and is now on the second draft. She enjoys learning the craft, mostly online, but the nature of the creative process requires blocks of uninterrupted immersive time and is radically different from a production manager’s focus on tasks and organizational detail and the need to be constantly available to producers.

Sharing the load

Like Annie, Dot Kyle, who is an Auckland-based production manager and coordinator, has found childcare a problem at times. “I’ve had disgruntled carers because I couldn’t finish at 7 pm, there might still be three pack shots to do. Nine times out of 10 when you try to commit to a finish time it will never happen.” While filming Evil Dead she worked 11-hour days plus 80 minutes return travel daily. The solution for Dot and husband Sven, who works in special effects, has been to have a live-in au pair for their two children aged four and 12. “The children still need to attend their own activities such as Scouts and swimming lessons.” This has been the most economical and stable way for the family to function.

The au pair was especially useful last year when Sven worked on location in Namibia for nine months (during that time they met up in Thailand for their wedding). “I encouraged him to go. I had had nine months working in Prague on Narnia before I met Sven and knew what an invaluable experience that kind of location shoot could be … but it was certainly very tough not having his support while he was away.”

Dot has noticed a change in attitudes to being a parent. While being interviewed for a major production in 2004, she said it was going well until she mentioned she had a child and was a single parent. Her interviewer's face said it all and her intuition that she wouldn’t secure that job was right. In 2007 she went to Prague to work on The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. She was only able to do this with the support of her family who cared for her young daughter. Yes, she took some flak from outsiders, but found comfort with her peers in film as there were many in the same position.

Much of Dot’s support as a parent now comes from within the industry. "Working on a shoot is like having a film family as distinct from, say, your blood family. People get close quickly … you can share the guilt and triumphs with other parents!"

She says there is a subtle change when working with producers who also have children as they have a level of understanding about that – it doesn’t affect the hours you work or the requirements of the job, but there is an acknowledgment of the added pressures involved. "Except I haven’t been able to do a school camp yet, I do feel guilty about having to leave that to other parents." Attending industry events, such as Women in Film and Television evenings, is hard, tough going when networking is crucial.

Dot is also part of a small Facebook forum for friends in the industry and they compare notes about – yes, their guilt – and childcare arrangements, they try when they can to get the kids together.

But she loves the work because every job is different. Dot loves the challenges and needing to be resourceful and respond quickly. She’d like to produce her own movies one day. "But I only have 10 years experience and I’m still learning and will be for a few years yet."

The bigger picture

Auckland-based Sarah Cook has 14 years experience as a production manager and producer and is sole parent to a four-year-old daughter. Commitment to work is paramount, she says. “You’re only as good as your last job so you need to give 110%.”

Her ex-partner works in the industry and does even longer hours than she does. Sarah has had sole care since Isabella was 18-months old.

All three women spoke of guilt at having to work so hard at a job that kept them away from their children. Sarah, who has just produced the Escalator feature Fantail, has an excellent daycare close to home, two regular babysitters, and sends her daughter to her mother’s in Wellington when she is shooting. Sarah enjoys the people she works with and the problem-solving, but finds being a producer is stressful at times. “The production manager role has responsibility just for the organizational aspects where the producer has to be across everything.”

She says “it’s an industry where people see you at your best and worst, you form close relationships quickly.” She finds people are willing to help out with her child when she comes into the office, but does worry in case she is distracting others.

Oddly enough, when her daughter was born, she actually started stressing less on the job as she realized there was more to life than work. “She’s bigger and more important than filming and I love having her.”