Navigating Pipeline Disruptions

Disruptions to the pipeline

Well, it’s been a chaotic end to 2019 and start to 2020 for many members of our Guild, the wider group that the Screen Industry represents, and the screen sector in general. We have had disruption to several projects recently. The fluid start date, adjusted stand-down, and prep periods with the Tolkien Job which started shooting in Auckland this February. There was also big disruption for over 400 crew with the sudden postponement to shooting for “Cowboy Bebop” due to injury to the lead actor and the subsequent hiatus for a predicted 6 to 9 months while he recovers. Just recently another production “The Beast” has been stalled several weeks away from shooting due to production complications arising from the Corona Virus outbreak. These disruptions to the pipeline of work can be extremely disruptive and distressing for crew. Projects take time to get off the ground and are frequently timing their shooting around availability of location, crew, and infrastructure, and when a project hits problems that cause it to push or even cancel it creates a hole in the workflow that will generally be unable to be filled in the short to medium term. Often crew will need to wait until the next production or productions flow out of the pipeline.

Is there an answer to this sort of disruption? Is there something a crew member can do to prevent it from happening to them or mitigate the effects? I honestly don’t know, and if anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them. What I do know is project-based contracting always has the chance of the project hitting some headwinds that may cause it to be postponed or even canceled. While it’s rare for an injury to a lead actor to occur that stops a production filming as well as an apparent pandemic to stop a production in its tracks before it’s started, these things do happen and this is why it’s important for contractors to have contingencies in place for gaps in the workflow. This could be a side-line job that can be fallen back on in these situations or a portion of the annual income saved for these situations. All we can do is hope is that these shows come back online at some stage in the future.

Guild Subcommittees

The guild will create subcommittees from time to time as a method of making progress on Guild initiatives and as an effective way of having a group of members with different backgrounds and skills collaborate and provide recommendations to the Guild Executive to assist the decision-making around key issues affecting our members and the screen sector.

We have several sub-committees currently working through solutions to:

• Developing Guild endorsed method for Continuous Hours in NZ.
• Generating a list of upcoming workshops and events for our members.
• Developing an updated and accessible rate-card for our sector.

Both the Guild Executive, the Regional Branches, and the subcommittees are all made up of general members who have put their hand up to assist in helping the Guild be part of the future direction of the screen sector and giving all our members a voice. Assisting with a subcommittee is really easy and often just consists of being part of an email discussion group with several members, doing a bit of research, talking through an issue, and coming up with a recommendation. I encourage anyone who has a screen sector issue that they think the guild can contribute to, to contact us and put it forward and anyone who is interested in being on a subcommittee to get in touch.

Many of you will have heard of the Screen Sector Strategy that is currently in development. It is about developing medium- and long-term planning for the screen sector which is industry-led. If you are interested in the future development of the industry and how it applies to you the best way is by feeding back your thoughts and concerns to the guild, talk to your peers and get in touch to discuss it.

The main factors that seem to be central to the long-term sector planning are:

• Infrastructure: What is needed and where is it needed.
• Training of new crew in many of the departments and disciplines: We have an aging workforce and the lumpy nature of our business cycle.
• We all need to start thinking about more structured ways of training. We need to reach out and tap into the help that is available in both local and central government.
• Reach out to the guild if you want to make the training process in your company or department better, more structured, and more professional.
• Looking after our locations: They are the lifeblood of our regions and cities to be viable locations for local and offshore productions. Without these, we will wither and die.
• We all need to take responsibility for making sure those that live in and near these locations don’t have any reason to start objecting to filming in their neighborhoods and environmental areas.
• Having a bigger voice with central and local government: Guild membership and participation is what we need to achieve this. What can we do as a guild to encourage you as members to give feedback to the industry and participate in the guild and contribute to the smooth running of the industry and the future of the sector?

I think it is important for us all to be involved in the process of long-term planning for our industry, as essentially the “Below the line” crew that make up the membership of the Screen industry Guild make up over 90% of those working on most productions.