Safety and Budget Essentials

Safety, budgets and overtime – never forget the basics

It is so sad to hear about the young camera assistant Sarah Jones who was killed by a train when the crew of Midnight Rider were working on a railway bridge in Georgia, USA. We would like to think we can trust those who are organizing our work lives but an incident like this goes to show how vigilant we all have to be when it comes to keeping safe on any film shoot. It can be too easy to get carried away with the task at hand and forget that there is a real world out there operating with different rules, different values, and different priorities.

On the Techos’ Guild front, there has been plenty to keep executive officer Karla Rodgers and others busy. With the extended quiet time throughout the industry last year, many people put time and effort into lobbying for positive changes to the incentive schemes. I was decidedly skeptical about this Government’s commitment to our industry but we now know that the lobbying efforts were worthwhile.

So good to discover that this Government is actually listening to our industry and is prepared to make changes to the incentive schemes in order to help lift production levels. Of course, there will be no objection to the bigger off-shore productions coming here but my personal hope is that the changes can also encourage and help facilitate local production. As I indicated in the previous NZTECHO magazine, I would like to see more investment in local production through the New Zealand Film Commission.

Speaking of our film commission, it is great that Dave Gibson has been given the CEO job. Good on Dave for putting his hand up for the job. I don’t imagine for one moment that it is an easy task he has taken on but it is good to have Dave in such a position, with his experience and his commitment to our NZ industry.

As I have said and written many times before, I am not a fan of shooting days anything longer than 10 hours (with occasional overtime to tidy up a day’s work). We lead such materially aspirational lifestyles that the desire for the extra money is always going to conflict with the desire to keep working hours to within sensible limits. That has always been one of the problems with the whole notion of overtime. And of course for some people, particularly directors, their work is their life.

Anyway, what got me thinking about this was a link (see link at end of article) a South Island industry colleague sent me. The article begins like this:

Veteran line producer Robert Schneider budgeted a $40 million below-the-line studio feature based on the usual 12-hour shooting day, then he decided to try an experiment. He re-budgeted the film based on an eight-hour day. He was challenging the long-held assumption that movie crews must work a 12-hour minimum day to counter the high daily costs of stage, location, and equipment rentals.

He extended the 17-week shooting schedule to 20 weeks and refigured the budget based on an eight-hour camera day with one hour prep time and one hour wrap time.

The new budget came in one million dollars cheaper.

"I wanted to dispel the notion that working shorter, more humane hours meant increased costs," says Schneider. "I’ve suspected for a long time that on many films it’s cheaper and more efficient to shoot basically straight-time days than to shoot extended hours that are inefficient and paid for at premium rates."

Of course, we know that not all productions are the same, in fact, no two productions are the same, but I continually hope that real life will be taken into account along with budgetary considerations when film shoots are being scheduled. That is one of the advantages of working on lower budget jobs – they simply can’t afford the overtime.