Just moved here & want to eventually join IA Local 600

[David Mullen ASC]

 

Oh BTW, Carrie-Anne Moss, Heather Graham, & Joe Mantegna, are starring in this movie.

 

Say hello to Carrie-Anne for me -- we did a TV pilot in Vancouver called "Normal" a year and a half ago. She's wonderful.

[Guest]

I am saying that these days, even the "BIG" Hollywood DOPs work on non giant Hollywood movies. And they are often glad to have the work.

 

If you have bills to pay, money is money, no matter where it comes from.

 

R,

[Guest]

Would you not be better looking outside of the union to find really talented people and avoid all the nonsense and paperwork? Or are those people beneath you, now that you have a 1.8m budget to play with?

 

There are a ton of great people outside of the union. Problem is that the union insists that only their people be used once a union contract is signed, thereby shutting non-members out of the jobs.

 

So if you want an IATSE DOP, i.e. David Mullen, I now need to truck in IATSE members from Toronto to be on his crew. As IATSE will not allow non-union ACs to work on his crew, even though they may live 10 minutes from set. DUMB.

 

R,

[Phil Rhodes]

DUMB

 

Unless you happen to be in the union, in which case you get to work. Bugger everyone else, eh?

 

P

[David Mullen ASC]

Since it only takes working 100 paid days as an AC within a 3-year period to qualify to going Local 600, an AC has to be fairly inexperienced to not meet that threshold, which is one reason I worked with many union AC's on non-union low-budget features for years before I joined. There are a lot of 20-something AC's in the union already, and the cost of joining is half that of a DP.

 

If we were talking about any other local, I can see the complaints that it is hard to join, but the camera union is one of the easiest to get into! If you can't make the threshold of having worked 100 days in your field and gotten paid for it, then you probably aren't experienced enough yet to join Local 600.

[Guest]

Unless you happen to be in the union, in which case you get to work. Bugger everyone else, eh?

 

P

 

That is the philosophy boiled down in a nutshell.

 

R,