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Overworked Production Crews


Stephen Sanchez

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LA Times article:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-08-30/behind-hollywood-glamour-this-instagram-account-highlights-darker-side-for-workers

How many of you are experiencing this?

This seems to be narrative work. What about those of you working commercials?

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Long work hours is a very real issue in our business. I only work on narrative, feature films and for as long as I’ve been around (42 years and counting), our hours have been difficult. I can remember working 110 hours in a 5 day week before. I won’t do that anymore. My life and my family’s well being are much more important than any movie. I was one of the Focus Pullers on PLEASANTVILLE, mentioned in the LA Times article. Brent was my loader and my friend. We lost him in a fatal car accident due to fatigue. I still miss him and will never forget him. That is why this issue is personal for me. 
I have actually shutdown shooting many times for the day by announcing to the ADs and producers that I’m going home after 14 hours. I’ve actually said that once 14 hours have elapsed, I don’t care if the cameras are rolling, I am walking to my car and driving home. I always put the weight of liability upon their shoulders for the crew’s safety. I’ve never been fired for this. What are they going to do? Let me go for being responsible? Even they know how that would go over if ever publicized. I always thought I was being way too generous by setting the bar at 14. It should have been 10. In fact, the Marvel Studios work model is 10 hour days, no breaks. They bring lunch to us and pay us the Union meal penalties per the union contract. I like that model. Every production should adopt this. 
The IATSE is currently negotiating our new contract with the Producers and Studios. Our employers are balking at reducing our hours and are electing to keep us working long, dangerous days. I encourage our business agents and representatives to hold them accountable and fight for our quality of life. We work to live. We don’t live to work. 
 

G

Edited by Gregory Irwin
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OP, can't say from first hand experience. My experience is, only from watching behind the scenes footage on DVD and from a few short 20 minute experiences at the Santa Monica Pier, underground at the NYC Subway, the Oculus in NYC and Vegas. 

They were shooting a film / commercials at these locals. I stood there for 20-25 minutes at each, waiting to take some photos and in ALL cases nothing went on except a few workers walking back and forth. I saw no stars, nothing. Now, 20-25 minutes of standing around is the upper end of my ADD brain limits. So that type of work doesn't mesh well with my brain.

Vegas was worse. It was not a cine shoot, it was a commercial still photo shoot. They had the street closed down with police on both ends and a shiny new car seemed to be the subject. A photog had his tethered laptop and medium format still cam on his tripod, lighting, assistants and and all that. I arrived at maybe 7.30PM to 8PM. I stood there for my time limit...nothing. So I walked around to do my own photography. When I left maybe 11.30PM...he was still there, street blocked off, everything was in the place it had been when I left and it looked like nothing had happened....anal.

For cine work you need to be very anal...as in analytical. You have to be of that disposition naturally. It is hard to force it and be good. If that is your nature, and you got the fitness, the time needed to work around the clock does not matter to you.

I'd say if you are not of that nature and like to work around filmmaking, find a job in an area where your hours are more limited to normal working hours. I mean, when you do all the setup to get a shot, you gotta stick with it. If it takes triple the time you thought... that is what it takes. You may need special natural light, you may have to wait for the rain to stop, whatever. So it goes with the territory.

But if you are in a studio / office setting, doing doc work, grading etc. You can probably shut things down for the night and start back up in the A.M. where you left off. Unless of course, Hollywood is up your butt to get it done now!

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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gregory, and the article, describe it very well. 14 hours on set is standard in narrative world, at least in north america.

commercial and music videos can have their 19+/24+ hour days as well, although not as common and typically not 5 days in a row.

on a 12-hour shooting day we usually have 1 hour pre-call, 1 hour or so to wrap out on location, 1 hour lunch, plus travel to and from home. so you really have a 16-18 hour day with just enough time to sleep.

other crew rarely mentioned who have even worse hours are transport, locations, and ADs.

i pull my car over for a nap when i feel drowsy, and productions have been offering hotels on 14+ days if you request it. i know of some grip/elecs crews who have an informal phone line so you can speak to someone to stay awake on drive home.

as gregory mentioned, bigger shows have been adopting the 10-hour/no lunch break days. so there is movement in the right direction, but 65-hour+ weeks are still the norm

Edited by Kyryll Sobolev
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I’m very proud of my union who represents my and about 160,000 others business interests in the motion picture industry, where the AMPTP (employers) are refusing to negotiate in good faith with the 13 Hollywood IATSE Locals and Guilds who work tirelessly to keep all of the product coming to fill theatrical, television and streaming platforms. It is extremely disappointing to know that our employers do not support safe work hours with proper rest periods between long shooting days and then wish to raise the qualifications for the pension and healthcare plans that will affect thousands of young workers who need to qualify for a retirement fund and healthcare for themselves and their families. They also proposed to eliminate all pension increases over the coming years. 
This is a business to us. This industry is how we provide for our families’ financial security. We all feel very fortunate to work in the craft of filmmaking that we love and have dedicated ourselves to. But in the end, this is also how we make our living and plan for our future. We ask for a good living wage, proper rest periods and benefits that we can rely on as we get older. This is not unreasonable. In fact, we know that we are on the correct side of this dispute because we have earned the support of solidarity from other key guilds in our business including The Directors Guild, The Writers Guild, The Screen Actors Guild and The Teamsters. Our hope is that this support from our brothers and sisters will force the AMPTP to return to the table and negotiate with us in good faith to an agreement that we can all accept. If that doesn’t happen soon, the IATSE will most likely stage a strike and walk off the job shutting down the entire industry. We shall soon know what’s to come in the coming days. 

Gregory Irwin

Member of the International Cinematographers Guild, Local 600, IATSE 

 

68A3F0CD-50AA-458B-A095-FA77444B329B.jpeg

Edited by Gregory Irwin
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I Japan it is still slave work,  I count find better words to represent it. I was mostly an actor so I was fine but the crew there worked from early morning to night every day. My friend and former roomate  who is working in the music video industry (used to work for a TV) has best scenario a day off in a week but often times its 1 day off in a MONTH. He has to sleep in his car at least every second day, because there is simply no time to go home. Even if he gets home he would usually only have time to sleep yet  he sleeps between 2 to 6 hours on average.
 
 

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Here people of course say that "it is not good to drive if you are sleepy" but they often don't do anything to prevent the conditions which result in these situations in the first place. The worst I have had to do so far was not getting more than a total of couple of hours of sleep in two days and then had to drive 800km back to home which was a 9 hour drive. It is scary when you have to literally use your fingers to keep your eyes open so that you don't fall to sleep and are still having those one or two second micro naps which can still lead to disaster. From that I learned not to drive if I have slept less than 3 hours...

--------

I see it like the behaviour of a wounded animal when it does whatever it can to get back to its nest to die in the safest place it knows. People just feel ill and they are doing whatever they can to get home even if it may cost their life 

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Greg, well said.  I support our union and will also vote as needed.  I do not take this lightly as many brothers and sisters will suffer real financial hardship if a strike is called. 

Nothing will change if we do not stick together and make it better.

Neal Norton
Local 600 member

 

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To put my accustomed hat on, it's worth bearing in mind that whatever's being suffered by union members is generally being suffered even more severely by non-union people. Most of them will be underpaid, inexperienced, and lacking the confidence and security of employment to adequately defend themselves. The fact that many people working on the extreme low end may never become full-time, high-end film industry employees, and therefore may never join the union, is irrelevant here; it's possible to fall asleep at the wheel going home form a student short too and I know people to whom it has happened. The fact that they're here to tell me about it based on nothing more than blind luck.

I have no position on the IATSE strike vote as I don't know nearly enough about it to form an opinion, but as ever my thoughts turn to the much larger group of people who will be outright denied help by unions.

P

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Not necessarily. Nonunion crews regularly stay late until the job is done without compensation. Most of us went into this game because it tickled us, and the youngest, least-experienced people, the least likely to be in the union, are the most likely to still feel that way.

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here it is common to do 10 hour shooting days (8 hours + 2hours overtime per day. the prod companies can't afford paying more overtime in most productions) and most tv-series have transferred to 8-hour days but with a "periodic work hours" model where overtime is not compensated but instead the next shooting day might be a bit shorter or at the end of the month you get more days off to compensate the extra hours. This "periodic model" is because the production companies don't want to pay for overtime but want to have the possibility to get people work a half hours or a hour extra every day if needed. They risk the whole crew getting angry (they generally will every time the shooting day goes over 8 hours) but no one has left their job yet because of this free overtime work so the production companies are happy.

The length of the shooting day does not necessarily reflect the real work hours of all the individual workers. In one production the shooting days were about 12 hours generally but my real work hours were about 21 to 23 hours a day, 6 days a week and at the 7th day I had to do some maintenance work which was "only" an 8 hours day so no days off at all. I got paid for only the 12 hours which were on the callsheet and got a lot of nasty health problems because of that shoot

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I don't, in principle, object to overtime being compensated with time off in lieu, so long as the time off in lieu is longer than the overtime worked. For a long time in the UK it's been normal for conventional employers (not the film industry) to use this approach but with the time off being of the same duration as the overtime. That means you're essentially being paid overtime at 1.0, which isn't really the idea of overtime. Film and TV crews might be one of very few employee groups in the UK to actually get paid overtime.

I do understand the logic of shooting long days; setting up that day costs enough that overtime to get the most out of it becomes worth paying. My view is that there is some sanity in it, it's sometimes OK on short projects like music videos and short films but naturally we don't want to encourage anyone to endlessly work 14 hour days, 6 days a week on longer projects.

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oh, and travel hours to work and back are in almost all cases your own time here. Not paid, not taken into account when calculating if you have time to sleep or not. Driving to the set and back takes always at least 1.5 hours or 2 hours per day, every day.

I still like our local model more than the Mexican one where it seems you'll start to wrap only when you run out of money for that shooting day and after that you might actually go to the bar instead of going to your room to sleep because you will be so tired anyway that the sleep would not help much anyway at that point .

Well, we do most music videos and commercials here with the similar attitude so it is not a "Mexican thing" , more of a case where no one wants to admit that the day has been too long and now we really really need to wrap... no more extra shots even when the director still has 200 extra shots on his list!  Didn't most the Hollywood films get made like this just recently before the Unions kicked in? the producers clearly miss those old days where no one went home until the budget was done for the day

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13 minutes ago, Phil Rhodes said:

For a long time in the UK it's been normal for conventional employers (not the film industry) to use this approach but with the time off being of the same duration as the overtime. That means you're essentially being paid overtime at 1.0, which isn't really the idea of overtime.

they are compensating overtime just like that when using the "periodic work" model: you do one hour of overtime, you get one hour off. If you still have some overtime hours left at the end of the month (when the period ends) THEN they have to actually pay for it. Otherwise it is just "free extra work".  They have adopted this model from other industries and it does not work that well for film/tv-series shoots but it is cheaper for the production companies so they just use it anyway.

Previously they had to pay 50% more for the first overtime hours over the 8hrs day. Then 100% more for the next hours. And 200% for the last ones until one could not legally add any more overtime hours to a single day and you had to wrap. With this old model the director often got a talking to if the day went over 11 or 12 hours because it was so expensive for the prod company. Then things improved in the following days to prevent the budget going over. So it was a self regulating system but did not work on high budget shoots where there WAS money to pay for the ridiculous overtime expenses... or for the shoots where overtime was not paid for at all like the music videos and some commercials.

It is more of that one does not want to abandon one's friends in the middle of the shoot just for the working hours going over to a limit. Then your friend would be even more screwed and would take even longer for them to get home. So it is more of helping out your friends when the production screwed something up or there was just "bad luck" for the day going over the planned hours.

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58 minutes ago, aapo lettinen said:

Didn't most the Hollywood films get made like this just recently before the Unions kicked in? the producers clearly miss those old days where no one went home until the budget was done for the day

What I don't quite understand is how the American unions are so powerful, and yet UK crews don't seem to have anything like the same issue with long hours (it's not great, but it's not anything like as bad, as far as I know). 

I won't rehash my suspicions too extensively here as I've talked about it a lot before, but my impression is that the American unions spend as much time sucking money out of their members and being deliberately exclusionary as they do working for anyone's benefit.

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I don't think employers care about overwork because there is a endless supply of grunts always coming up to replace the overworked. Now maybe the big names have some pull with their working conditions, but everyone else it is either do or die.

That is how it is in many non film jobs. For instance. When I was a kid we had 3 trashmen. 1 to drive the truck and 2 to load. Then we had 2 trashmen. 1 to drive and 1 to load. Now we got 1 trashman he drives and he gets out to load. 

I talked with a therapist. She told me the company she works for won't give her much for a raise as she already makes their top end limits. She said they try to find things to fire people making top end $$ and they can hire kids out of school for a lot cheaper. They can hire 2 kids for almost the same price as 1 long time worker making maximum salary. And they only hire for 32 hours a week so and call it part time, so no benefits. 

That is just how it is nowadays. Lots of people to fill jobs and they don't have much pull unless very specialized and in high demand.

 

Bruce%20McBroom%20Peter%20Sellers%20Fien

Still photographer Bruce Mc Broom & Peter Sellers on the set of Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu

 
Photographer: Unknown
 
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  1. 3 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

    I don't think employers care about overwork because there is a endless supply of grunts always coming up to replace the overworked. Now maybe the big names have some pull with their working conditions, but everyone else it is either do or die.

    That is how it is in many non film jobs. For instance. When I was a kid we had 3 trashmen. 1 to drive the truck and 2 to load. Then we had 2 trashmen. 1 to drive and 1 to load. Now we got 1 trashman he drives and he gets out to load. 

    I talked with a therapist. She told me the company she works for won't give her much for a raise as she already makes their top end limits. She said they try to find things to fire people making top end $$ and they can hire kids out of school for a lot cheaper. They can hire 2 kids for almost the same price as 1 long time worker making maximum salary. And they only hire for 32 hours a week so and call it part time, so no benefits. 

    That is just how it is nowadays. Lots of people to fill jobs and they don't have much pull unless very specialized and in high demand.

     

    Bruce%20McBroom%20Peter%20Sellers%20Fien

    Still photographer Bruce Mc Broom & Peter Sellers on the set of Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu

     
    Photographer: Unknown
     

    You're right, and for the average joe unions were supposed to counteract that. The ruling class and their vassals in academia and the media have succeeded however in convincing the average joe that unions are bad for them. Successful unionization also sets a floor for non-union professional and white-collar types.  

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4 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

What I don't quite understand is how the American unions are so powerful, and yet UK crews don't seem to have anything like the same issue with long hours (it's not great, but it's not anything like as bad, as far as I know). 

I won't rehash my suspicions too extensively here as I've talked about it a lot before, but my impression is that the American unions spend as much time sucking money out of their members and being deliberately exclusionary as they do working for anyone's benefit.

They say Americans live to work and Europeans work to live, and I believe there is some truth to that. And I don't think American unions are really that powerful now, after having been beat-down for forty years.  

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1 hour ago, charles pappas said:

They say Americans live to work and Europeans work to live, and I believe there is some truth to that. And I don't think American unions are really that powerful now, after having been beat-down for forty years.  

the issue is, loyalty towards companies or employers is not rewarded in the long run in most cases. they just squeeze you dry when you still think that they are on your side and then get a non-paid intern to do your work (or a low paid newbie if free interns are not available) . no matter what the end result looks like or if the newbies get someone killed as long as it cost as little as possible to hire them ?

One solution for this issue has been here that the production companies make their own "training programs" to quickly train unemployed workforce from other industries to do basic film work. The issue here is that they need to train new ones for every production because the previous ones are asking union rates after working for low pay or for free in one production (first thinking  that "it is cool making movies no matter the cost" but now they know what it is and want to do it for work which requires them getting enough money from it to pay the bills)

What a wonderful world it is for a capitalist ? 

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21 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

Not necessarily. Nonunion crews regularly stay late until the job is done without compensation. Most of us went into this game because it tickled us, and the youngest, least-experienced people, the least likely to be in the union, are the most likely to still feel that way.

That's exactly my point. The youngest IATSE members don't have families to go home to and they love hitting golden hour.   What I'm saying is, if you eliminate the incentive to stay, you'll have more consensus within IATSE ranks that the long hours just aren't worth it.   

There's a generational divide in the ranks that makes this a difficult problem to solve cause some members don't want 12 on 12 off.   They earn way to much in overtime to give it up.   Reform is very difficult if members don't want it.

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16 hours ago, charles pappas said:

They say Americans live to work and Europeans work to live, and I believe there is some truth to that. And I don't think American unions are really that powerful now, after having been beat-down for forty years.  

I believe as well that Americans have a dutiful and dedicated work ethic. But as for the unions not having power, we shall see that outcome very soon. Here is an excerpt from yesterday’s Variety:

Some 60,000 IATSE members could end up walking off the job, most of whom are based in Los Angeles. A strike, if it comes, would lead to a nationwide shutdown of TV and film production, because three of the locals — 600, 700 and 800 — are “national” unions. Local 600, the largest of the locals, represents 9,600 camera operators and cinematographers in the U.S. If they walk out, no one would be able to hold a camera on a set in the U.S.

The guild has also distributed a letter to the AMPTP with signatures including Checco Varese, James Laxton, Roger Deakins, Rodrigo Prieto and Emmanuel Chivo Lubezki.

Additionally, a joint union statement on behalf of the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, International Union of Teamsters and Writers Guild of America East said, “On behalf of our hundreds of thousands of members working across film and television, we stand in solidarity with our I.A.T.S.E. brothers, sisters and kin. The basic quality of life and living wage rights they’re fighting for in their negotiations are the issues that impact all of us who work on sets and productions. We stand with the I.A.T.S.E.”

G

 

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7 minutes ago, Phil Rhodes said:

I'm not an expert on the minutiae, but I'm fairly sure that's not strictly true.

Trust me. It’s true. No one will cross the picket line to work a camera. I also just learned that FedEx and UPS have stated that they will not cross any lines to deliver to the productions. Right now, the climate is right to negotiate a good contract. 
 

G

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56 minutes ago, Gregory Irwin said:

Trust me. It’s true. No one will cross the picket line to work a camera. I also just learned that FedEx and UPS have stated that they will not cross any lines to deliver to the productions. Right now, the climate is right to negotiate a good contract. 

There are people sitting at home twiddling their thumbs who are dying to get a chance to work on a big show, who have plenty of talent and could care less about the working environment if they're getting paid a lot. They don't care about crossing the line, they need work to pay their bills and line producers know this. In fact, I was talking to a line producer friend just yesterday who said she already has a crew lined up if her union crew leaves. The studio she's making the film for, doesn't care if it's union or not. I don't know how that will work, we didn't talk details. If actors leave, that will be a problem, but that show treats the crew well, so why would they leave? 

I think it's insane producers are abusing crew over a stupid "new media" rule/clause which was clearly not designed for long-term production. I think it's even more insane the production companies haven't figured out a way to fix it, are you kidding me? We're talking about giving people an actual 30 minute break every 6hrs, this is not going to destroy your production. So hopefully they will figure out a way to fix this problem and everyone can get back to work if there is a strike. 

If there is a national strike, it will have to be everyone for it to work. If actors stay, it's all over. The line producers will find a new crew and keep working. Remember, many are paid a bonus for getting the job done on time and under budget. They won't want to risk that for any reason. 

On a side note, I do think the days of big union crews are dwindling, due to there being so many super talented people who have the skills, simply sitting around waiting for the next opportunity. 


 

Edited by Tyler Purcell
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