Outrageous Outcomes and Guild Transitions

Outrageous outcomes

Award-winning cinematographer and committed West Coaster, Alun Bollinger has been President of the Techos’ Guild for an age.

Perhaps none of this hoo haa between Actors’ Equity and The Hobbit would have happened if Actors’ Equity and SPADA had got together and talked many, many months ago.

Sure the two parties have different agendas: the actors want to talk about a collective agreement and residuals; while SPADA insists they’ll only talk about reworking the Pink Book. Different agendas should not stop the conversation before it starts.

I must say, as I have said before, that I was disappointed by the way the actors’ attempt to negotiate with the producers of Outrageous Fortune turned out. I understand that it may not be appropriate for overriding terms and conditions of engagement to be negotiated in relation to a single production, but I also think it inappropriate for the producer to threaten to ‘unplug’ the project, particularly when it is being made with public funding. The Outrageous Fortune situation was in many ways like The Hobbit situation, but on a more local scale. The actors attempted to negotiate terms and conditions with the producers and the producers threatened to unplug the series (although they deny doing so). The crew freaked out at the possibility of losing their jobs, so the actors backed down. In the Outrageous Fortune situation everyone knows everyone else involved so it’s quite personal, these are your workmates and colleagues who are getting agitated and whose livelihoods are being threatened. With The Hobbit situation the difference is that it’s not just your workmates, it’s the whole country that is reacting to the threatened loss of the project.

Producers put a lot of work into getting a project up and running. Much of that work is done purely on spec with no guarantees that their work will pay off or that the project will come to fruition. They have to sustain themselves and their offices through this speculative stage with no certainty as to the outcome. Success for a producer is first and foremost getting a project into production; any further success with sales and potential profits or spin-offs is a bonus.

By the time a programme like Outrageous Fortune reaches its fifth series it must surely owe much, if not most, of its success to the work of the writers and the actors who have brought the stories and characters to life. At this point I find it difficult to comprehend why the writers and actors should not share in any profits the project may bring to the producers by way of some form of residual arrangement.

Let’s not forget that a few years back producers successfully negotiated a more producer-friendly arrangement for distribution of income on both NZ Film Commission and NZ On Air supported projects. Why should those gains not be shared with others who play a significant part in ensuring the success of a project, particularly when it is their words and their faces up there on the screen?

For more on The Hobbit debate and aftermath, turn to page 16.

But enough about Hobbits and actors and producers.

We screen production workers have to thank our incoming and outgoing Techos’ Guild executive members. There was a bit of a shuffle and a changing of the guard at our recent AGMs in Auckland, Wellington and Queenstown.

I’d like to thank outgoing Auckland chair, Jen Butcher, for her input over recent years. I hope we can lure her back onto the exec in years to come.

And I particularly want to thank retiring treasurer, David Madigan, who has been a stalwart of our organisation for many, many years. David has retired as treasurer and from the National Exec; but he is still the immediate past president and I can’t see how he can escape that position until I retire! Thanks heaps David for your invaluable input over many years. We do still have your phone numbers so no doubt you will be consulted on occasion, but not too often I hope.

And a big thank you to those new members of the National Exec who have stepped up.

Finally, as we head rapidly towards the festive season, I wish you Christmas cheer and all the best for the year ahead.