Wellington's Film Industry Boom
Busy! Sheesh. One of the things that surprised me when I started Crew Wellington was just how many little jobs there are coming and going through the city that I never knew about before. I guess when you earn most of your living as a grip – which I still do – you only ever hear about the mid- to big-budget stuff. With Crew Wellington (and now Crew NZ, more about that later), I get a better idea of just how many cameras and crews there are out there shooting every day.
Unfortunately, as the good book says, man does not live on a half-day corporate vid’ shoot alone. And so we wait for a decent and sustainable ‘big job’ to come to town. The good news is that 2015 is looking like the biggest year ever for Wellington, as the internationals realise that the tax breaks are here to stay and the dollar slowly tracks downwards, there is a lot of activity beginning to boil.
The bad news, of course, is that with everything happening at once, we’ll probably finish up with hundreds of Australians in town soaking up the extra work. Sigh. Oh well. At least we can laugh at their funny voices and their quaint old-fashioned beliefs in things like ‘unions’ and ‘tea breaks.’
Speaking of unions, I’m about to send out another reminder to everyone on my list that there has never been a better or more important time to belong to the Guild. With the Americans on the horizon, solidarity now more than ever is vital – for our working conditions, for our health and safety, for our solidarity with our fellow workers all over the world. We can match anything the UK, Canada, US, or Australia can offer, we don’t need to compete for work against those locations by allowing our wages or working conditions to be driven down.
I’ve done a very quiet roll-out of Crew NZ (www.crewnz.co.nz). You’ll be hearing a lot more about it. In the meantime, go have a dekko. I reckon she’s a beaut.
