Stephen Williams

If you don't provide food the crew, you will loose your crew for longer, that will cost you way way more than the cost of feeding people. It's actually very cheap insurance.

Say you have 50 people, they drive off from the location looking for a restaurant or in reality 10 different restaurants , others may go to a bar, one will go shopping & get lost. Someone will get their car towed away, have an accident or break down.

 

For once I will agree with you. Cue hallelujah chorus.

 

I have always tried to get the best food possible on set, at a reasonable price. Guess what....film crews bitch and moan no matter what you feed them, and no matter how good the food is. Film is one of the very few industries I know of that provides a free lunch in the work place each day for its employees.

 

I spent five years at a TV network in Toronto, total number of times I was given a free lunch.....ZERO! Total number of times I got paid for travel to the workplace.....ZERO!

 

Ask your friends that work in other industries, hey does your employer provide you with a free lunch at work each day? What you'll get is a big laugh in return.

 

If you provide a film crew with steak and lobster for lunch, this what you'll hear.....oh man steak and lobster is that it? Let's go to the burger joint.

 

I also get particularly incensed by film crew members that constantly try and bill their meals to their room, even though they are being paid a handsome per diem and they know that the last meal is to be paid for themselves.

 

The list goes on and on. I can't believe some of the crap select film crew members have tried to pull. And the 1st ADs and UPMs I've had with me will agree 100%!

 

R,

Is it not a lazy way to discuss issues to make up what the other person thinks?

 

But I will tell you that the saying "An army marches on its stomach" applies to film making too, and a good caterer is an essential part of any film crew

So what is your opinion on the matter? I am sure you have one :D Was it acceptable for Phil to get coffee for someone in another dept?

 

I've been told off for making coffee for people from "other departments".

In Max's ideal world there would be a coffee maker in every department & nobody else could make coffee as it's potentially dangerous therefore highly paid coffee makers are required :D

 

This means that technicians have no prospect of moving up and there is less or no work for directors, cameramen or art directors.

 

Not correct, the individual technicians will be in greater demand & will be able to command a higher pay check in future, thats how it works is a capitalist system :D

Bear in mind that working in Commercials is hard work, your treated like poop, have to pander to fools but make a good wage. Only do a low budget or a freebee if you can do what you want & have fun. I shot a feature in the summer 28 long days, best fun I ever had in 35 years however I would have earned more on a 3 day commercial.

We all have a choice.....I could have sat on the beach but chose to work with a Director who has given me a huge amount of fully paid work over the last 5 years. Yes it was worth it & will happily do the same next August if he has written another script :D

 

 

The BBC drama rates are near the minimum wage for Camera Trainee, Costume Trainee, make up Assistants. £11 pound per hour would mean a big pay increase for a lot of grades and people.

 

Your opinion that freelances should earn twice the rate of full time staff would put you in the Maoist tendency.

 

Please try and bring some intelligence to the debate.

The double rate applies for single day jobs, I don't think you could expect that on a 13 week show.

Producers have been telling me I am too expensive for 35 years, I don't take any notice. I know how much I want to earn a year & divide by 100, sometimes I do more than 100 days , sometimes not, thats the 'fun' of being freelance :D

If people want to work for £60 a day, they are doing it as a hobby with no possibility of making it a career. I lost a film last year to a kid was going to supply a camera & be the DOP for free.

I'm not criticizing the Swiss, just saying that they probably shouldn't be held up as a shining example of financial ethics.

In Swiss society confidentially comes before anything else, that is why Tax evasion is not a criminal offence. If a banker even confirms a bank account exists he can go to prison. The social insurance fund cannot even pass data of employees to the Tax dept.

In 2 cantons even with a court order a banker may not testify in court against a client, it's very different to the US where what Uncle Sam people jump.

 

I spoke to Emma Kosmin of the Living Wage Foundation.

 

She told me that they were going to move from talking about an hourly minimum living wage to an annual minimum living wage.

 

For people in full time employment this would be

 

for London that would be £8.80 x 40 x 52 = £18,304 per year

 

 

The only thing for us to calculate is an average of how many days a beginning freelancer can expect to work.

 

And from that calculate how much per hour should be the minimum living wage hourly rate. So for example

 

a freelancer could only expect to work 30 hours a week 1664 hours a year, that would be £11 per hour as a Freelance Living Wage.

What do people think is a realistic amount of work a freelancer can expect to have?

I feel that having a concrete figure of a minimum would be very useful to bring pressure on companies to raise wages for the poorest workers in our industry and maintain wages for all.

 

Your having a laugh if you think freelancers should assume they will work 30 hours x 48 weeks a year. A freelance day rate must be a minimum of twice the full time rate, so min £136 a day. BECTU shows a min day rate for a clapper loader of £192 so I am in the right ballpark.

Problem with communists is they work too cheap & then cry about it :D

 

"I'm British." So am I. ;)

 

Yes, but Stuart....what country would pass such a policy if put to a vote? Certainly not the UK, America, or Canada, that is for certain. So I don't see how the Swiss can be criticized?

 

R,

In Switzerland a referendum can be forced if you get 10,000 signatures from the public, so there are many crazy subjects that are put to the public vote every month or so.

So there we have it. There is nothing to do because the US is powerful Imperialist country. Sounds a bit like communist propaganda

 

The French have a vibrant film industry and it is possible here. Of course there are problems and the Americans want to continue there dominance.

 

There are lots of things that can be done, support for alternative distribution, funding for production, etc

 

The political will is missing and the reason it is because not enough pressure is put onto politicians to make an industry good for purpose.

 

I understand that much of the French business is made with people getting unemployment benefits. The unemployment office will pay half of the days worked, so clever producers say the shoot has twice as many days as it does, thus getting free labour.

I have shot many commercials, feature films etc and work with Camera Assistents, we were then all employees.....

 

So what?

 

I don't know what or who is Landon Parks?

 

You are not trying to say that because 1% of my income could be described as similar to capitalism that I would therefore not be allowed to criticise capitalism?

 

That really would be moronic, like comparing a person who makes their own sweets with Nestle.

 

Well Max, you have not denied that you have used camera assistants with your time lapse filming, it's all very funny, thanks for the entertainment. It's been a long time since we had such a great thread here!

Where is Landon Parks :D

Does he use capital? No he uses his own labour to make something himself. He then sells it. No other person is involved. No one else makes any contribution, no one is exploited.

 

To exploit other people you need the ability to pay them while they work CAPITAL . They have to produce value greater than their wages = PROFIT.

 

This is CAPITALISM.

Often films make a loss a capitalist has to accept that.

BTW I have seen the CV of a camera assistant who claims he has been your camera assistant shooting time-lapse....................

But he's not selling his labour, is he? He's marketing a product made by him, and expects to profit from that one day's, or week's, work many times. If he had a crew, presumably he paid them by the day. They sold their labour.

He's a capitalist alright.

Of course thats correct, Max is a capitalist, he just does not accept it as he earns 10's of thousands rather than 100's of thousands.

I'm not a producer, nor even much of a capitalist, except by inclination, but it's not obvious to me why someone who risks, say, $5M shouldn't make a 20% ROI on a deal that probably took 5 years to put together.

Thats a very poor return, anything below 100% profit in view of the risk is an extremely poor. With 1 in 10 films making a profit, that great return has to pay the losses on the other 9 & still leave something left over for the producer.

I know the producer of the MR Men cartoon series, they signed a contract in 1973 with the BBC to produce 13 episodes, the BBC paid £100 per episode for 7 years use. The episodes cost £2000 to make. They sold in 35 countries & costs were covered.

The production company owned the film rights & 'thereafter', it's the meaningless phrase thereafter (at the time) that made the money in the end, video rentals, computer games etc. When the author Died his family sold the book rights, the buyer also wanted the film rights and paid £6,000,000 some 35 years later. It's the only speculative venture the production did that ever produced a big return 35 years later.....

 

Not true. The whole of the Italian neo realist movement was not made for profit. All Russian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian post war films were not made for profit.

 

Film lovers, critics and audiences find these films some of the best films ever made. Do Americans like these films?

 

No because the "free market" says they will not watch them. Are they shown on TV ? Again no.

 

The free country where they watch only their own films , in the totalitarian communist countries they watched US movies, so what does that say about your society. More closed than the Soviet Union.

 

But the free market gives you such great movies like "Pearle Harbour" , "Iron Man 3, " "Avatar" "Sex and the City 2"

 

There are real problems about how and who should fund films but the free market is not free and it does not make that many good films.

 

The real hope is that film makers get involved in running their own industry, and train up commisioners.

What is stopping you & your friends making films that aim to loose money? If some of you own houses then they could be sold & the money spent for the good of your workers. Sounds like a great idea why don't you do it :D

I am looking into investing in a true anamorphic glass for a B4 mount body. I shoot live action so a zoom is a must. I cant afford a new Optimo or the like. What is the most prevalent mount on older anamorphic zooms? And have you guys seen adapters to get it on a B4 mount? I have a nikon F converter. Thought a PL to nikon would exist but it looks like the ffd is too close. I guess it being that close I could get a custom mount fabricated for the lens. But you can start to see where this is going. I really dont want to experiment a whole lot with this. And that converter, as nice as it is, has glass in it. Id like to get it out of the image path for this purpose. Thanks.

Generally zooms are not used as you don't get the true effects as it's just a rear module on a lens. Cooke 20-100 has been used in the past. Why B4 mount? there is no 4x3, 2/3 sensor to use it on.

 

 

 

I agree. To an extent.

 

 

 

I can imagine a society without people earning more than £50,000, Society would collapse without people earning minimum wage.

 

Again, I agree. To an extent.

 

Look; there's a happy medium to be had here. The societal problem at the moment is the enormous gap between rich and poor; the fact that the DIT on a shoot might be on £150/day while an actor is on £100k/day (based on a big name earning 10 million to do a film that shoots 60 days). And the DIT brings his own gear.

 

I'm going to keep saying this until someone hears me, but it is not possible that the actor is bringing one thousand times more value to the job than someone else. People can still have their desperately-clung-to ability to say they're making more than someone else, whatever that says about an individual's psychology. They can make ten times. Maybe even twenty times. But if you allow this fifty-times or hundred-times stuff to go on, there's going to be a problem.

 

P

An A list star will not work for an advertisement for a £100k a day, they will want way more, however the person paying thinks it brings value. A DIT with equipment charging £150 a day for a single day needs to put up his rates, if he is any good he won't have a problem

In truth the vastly wealthy find ways to minimise their tax burden and often contribute less than your average citizen.

 

Of course thats not the truth in £ or $ terms, possibly in percentage terms.

I know a retired banker who has paid in excess of £20,000,000 to the UK government to date, as he says the government believe all your money actually belongs to them, depending on tax rates on his death he fully expects the revenue will have taken over 90% of his money over his lifetime, Max would like them to get even more.

Failure defined as the lack of ability to play the system to get rewards far outwaying your contribution.

 

 

I can imagine a society without people earning more than £50,000, Society would collapse without people earning minimum wage.

If you did not have high earners, then the poor would have to pay vastly higher taxes, it's explained rather nicely here:-

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this…

• The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing
• The fifth would pay $1
• The sixth would pay $3
• The seventh would pay $7
• The eighth would pay $12
• The ninth would pay $18
• The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.

“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20″. Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men ? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

The bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

• And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
• The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving).
• The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving).
• The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving).
• The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving).
• The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,”but he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”

“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

Hi,

 

Even though I had never used an SR3. personally you probably still want to measure it just in case the camera does not have a ground glass.

A camera without a ground glass :D. Thats the reason you do a camera check out, you won't be able to frame the camera either without a GG.

In the Uk the highest personal tax rate is currently 45%, was 50% last year, it's been 83% on earned income before & 98% on unearned income I'm my lifetime. It's also exceeded 100% at one point!

So the government is actually the biggest benefactor from greedy producers who make millions, it's lucky as they have to get the money from somewhere to subsidise housing benefit for those on minimum wage & families earning substantially more.

Douglas Slocombe earned substantially more than 250k when he shot Raiders of a Lost Ark over 30 years ago & he is still enjoying the benefits at 101 years of age. I can't see why anyone should begrudge him, he got lucky once in a very long & successful career.

So, what you're suggesting is that no matter how hard I work, no matter how successful I am in my chosen career, any time my earnings exceed an arbitrary amount, the greedy hand of big brother will swoop down and redistribute the money I have worked for, and give it to the 'needy'. Who the needy are will be determined by the same faceless politburo that sets the 'maximum' wage.Hmm, maybe we should try it, after all, communism worked so well in Eastern Europe...

That pretty much already happens , it's called taxation.

Hey folks,

 

I'm shooting a music video on an SR3 soon with some superspeeds. I had a look through the viewfinder the other day, wide open at t 1.3 and I 'seemed' to be able to pick the focus fairly accurately. I don't want to eyeball the whole shoot however and get back soft rushes. Has anyone judged focus by eye and been ok? Or should I always be measuring? By the way, I'm not going to be shooting the clip at t1.3!

 

Cheers!

 

If the FDD is correct eye focusing will be fine, you may have a problem with very wide angle lenses so be careful with wides.

 

As one lottery winner gets £1 million richer 2 million losers become a 1 pound poorer.

 

This has nothing to do with what dif with time-lapse The time-lapse that I did was film based, computer controlled and successful in its day.

 

The cameras have all been sold and I am doing other things now.

 

How stupid to accuse people of jealousy because they stand up for a decent living wage, better working conditions and a well funded film industry.

Those people lost their £1 due to greed, the person won £1,000,000 was LUCKY just like George Lucas .

Clearly your not doing very much now or you would not be complaining, as Richard said why don't you share your stock footage income?