Freelance Living Wage

[Phil Rhodes]

you honestly think that you and comrade Maxim are going to cause a revolution in the film industry that sees film crews throwing off their cruel overlords in something akin to a scene from Les Miserables?

 

Not for a heartbeat. I fully expect the world to continue being a comprehensively miserable place.

[Oliver Hadlow Martin]

I'm not normally a fan of interfering in free market economies, but where they are evidently not working, I tend to agree. The UK industry is currently so steamrollered by American imports that the chances of being able to get out of the situation by pure hard work become fleeting in the extreme. You might as well try to stop a speeding railway locomotive with a hard stare. It's still going to kill you.

 

But this is beside the point, which is that people should get paid a lot more than the UK minimum wage if they're going to be expected to live in southeast England. Right now, more or less the entire TV and film production sector is being supported by the chronic underpayment of many members of crew, to the point where they can't afford a place to live, decent food, a pension, and other things which cannot reasonably be written off as extravagant. With fuel prices as they are in the UK, even running a car, which is near essential, is becoming a lofty goal for people who work 100 days a year at minimum wage sort of rates (and another 200 finding that work).

 

This is not OK. More than the American steamroller, what this means to a great extent is that everyone who works in the industry will end up being an upper-class, parent-funded nob of limited intellect. The effect this has already had on British television is awful to behold.

 

What really winds me up is that we have the BBC, an immensely well-funded media organisation, which chooses to piss its money away on a separate penny-ante radio station for every field and ditch in the UK, feeble, awful local news stations each covering an area of approximately four square inches, and the usual inefficiencies of any big, politically correct organisation. But that's a topic for another day.

 

P

 

Well I couldn't have said it better.

[Oliver Hadlow Martin]

Wow just read the rest of this thread. Some serious hand bag throwing going on here. *quietly walks out the room*

[Guest]

Tell me Phil and comrade Maxim, what should happen under this scenario. And this is a very commonly used scenario in the indie film world. Producer/director/writer sort finances his own movie entirely on his own. Say he spends $75, 000.00 on a low budget zombie pic. The money comes from his own personal funds.

 

Well as luck would have it, the low budget zombie pic is a hit, and makes a 3 million dollar return. Is the creator entitled to his $2, 925, 000.00 in profit?

 

Orin Peli turned his $13, 000.00 into a 100 million dollar box office hit.

 

R,

[Phil Rhodes]

Maybe.

 

If he paid his crew enough for them to support themselves, to they could afford property, transport and sustenance, to achieve something approaching a lower middle class lifestyle, taking into account the fact that most freelancers work 100 days a year max - very possibly. Of course you would want to take into account the fact that this would cost a lot more than $75k, so he wouldn't be taking home the best part of three million dollars anymore.

 

But they never do pay people like that, which is the entire purpose of this conversation.

 

In any case the point is moot. The incidence of someone turning a few thousand dollars into a few million dollar movie is once every five to ten years. As I have mentioned before on this very forum, anyone who plans in the absolute expectation that this will happen is a liar or an idiot.

 

Said liars and idiots like to take these expectations to crew - ooh, deferred pay, ooh points in the movie - which is why producers get such a bad rap.

 

Does this go any way toward explaining why people who do your job look like such a bunch of brass-necked chancers from where I'm sitting?

 

P

[Guest]

What I see actually is people like you who can't stand to see others succeed where you have failed on such an epic scale, that's what I see.

 

With $75, 000.00, one could indeed make a decent little zombie movie. You could easily pay the crew $200.00 a day on a favoured nations arrangement. An 8-10 person crew would be all that you need. Success would lie in the creative spin put on the genre. $200.00 a day would translate into a yearly salary of 50K per year FYI. And please don't tell me the producer has an obligation to pay his employees enough money so that they can live for six months afterward as well.

 

Film is free-lance, job-to-job, always will be. If people don't like it, good grief get a job shooting and editing news. That goes on all year round, you'll get a steady pay-cheque, and most likely benefits as well.

 

This endless bitching and moaning from you and comrade Maxim about the unfairness of a career in film is really becoming a bore. You honestly think you are owed some sort of guaranteed yearly wage and 50 weeks a year of work? Again if that's what you want then get a job at a company of some sort.

 

I know for a fact that your bright sparkling personality will be the highlight of your co-workers day!!

 

R,

[Guest]

I'm guessing you don't want to hear the story of a producer I know who likes to boast that he made a movie for $1.00.

 

Everyone donated their services, no unions. The actors were all kids who acted for free. To my knowledge the movie has never been distributed and might even be un-watchable. But he did create a 90 min feature he claims for a $1.00.

 

I would never in a million years want to go down this path, ever. But he did it.

 

R,

[Keith Walters]

I must say, it's been many years since I seen a debate get this heated on this forum. :o

Usually, when a forum debate gets this vituperous, someone eventually brings the Nazis into the discussion. We've now passed that milestone :wacko:

In fact there is some spoof "Law of the Internet" which allegedly predicts (depending on the initial Thread subject) the approximate post count at which this will happen. :rolleyes:

It occurs to me that with the technology of Instant Hitler spoofing now available to all who care to access it, I daresay this will be happening somewhat sooner now. :lol:

No wonder Mr Jannard stopped posting! :wub:

[Guest]

It occurs to me that with the technology of Instant Hitler spoofing now available to all who care to access it, I daresay this will be happening somewhat sooner now. :lol:

 

Well Keith I was the only one that made a Hitler spoof for this thread. I am disappointed you did not post a review.

 

R,

[Keith Walters]

 

Well Keith I was the only one that made a Hitler spoof for this thread. I am disappointed you did not post a review.

 

R,

Unfortunately, our office server won't let us download YouTube videos, and I can't rmemeber how to access the internet on my smartphone, which shows what a total dotcom-cyberdude I am.

So I'll just have to wait until I get home

[Guest]

Unfortunately, our office server won't let us download YouTube videos,

 

Ha Ha, you work for a nanny state company. :D

 

R,

[Keith Walters]

 

Ha Ha, you work for a nanny state company. :D

 

R,

No, I work for a tight-arsed one.... :P

 

As for your Hitler video, the dialogue isn't bad, but it's awfully chopped-up. Is that simply the software or was it meant to be like that?

 

Excellent how you managed a plausible explanation as to why they were looking at a map of Germany; that's always a significant hurdle!

[Maxim Ford]

What I see actually is people like you who can't stand to see others succeed where you have failed on such an epic scale, that's what I see.

 

With $75, 000.00, one could indeed make a decent little zombie movie. You could easily pay the crew $200.00 a day on a favoured nations arrangement. An 8-10 person crew would be all that you need. Success would lie in the creative spin put on the genre. $200.00 a day would translate into a yearly salary of 50K per year FYI. And please don't tell me the producer has an obligation to pay his employees enough money so that they can live for six months afterward as well.

 

Film is free-lance, job-to-job, always will be. If people don't like it, good grief get a job shooting and editing news. That goes on all year round, you'll get a steady pay-cheque, and most likely benefits as well.

 

This endless bitching and moaning from you and comrade Maxim about the unfairness of a career in film is really becoming a bore. You honestly think you are owed some sort of guaranteed yearly wage and 50 weeks a year of work? Again if that's what you want then get a job at a company of some sort.

 

I know for a fact that your bright sparkling personality will be the highlight of your co-workers day!!

 

R,

What I see actually is people like you who can't stand to see others succeed where you have failed on such an epic scale, that's what I see.

 

What you see is wrong. It is not jealousy, we want a better film industry and better working conditions.

 

With $75, 000.00, one could indeed make a decent little zombie movie.

 

This proves my point about how the free market restricts subject matter. ANOTHER zombie movie , Really?

 

You could easily pay the crew $200.00 a day on a favoured nations arrangement. An 8-10 person crew would be all that you need. Success would lie in the creative spin put on the genre. $200.00 a day would translate into a yearly salary of 50K per year FYI. And please don't tell me the producer has an obligation to pay his employees enough money so that they can live for six months afterward as well.

 

So what can the producer buy for his $75,000 to turn into millions. If he buys a ready made film it will only be worth $75,000 unless its badly priced. No he needs the skills and creativity of a film crew to turn a very bad idea of making yet another zombie into a million dollar movie.

 

Now the producer does not want to pay for training the crew, he does not want to pay for the cost of keeping freelance films makers alive waiting for that call. Or holiday pay, health service or pensions. Those costs he wants society to pick up and to be paid for from taxation. ( I bet you the producer is against tax too!) So he wants private profit but social support. he is the one who wants society to have films crews trained, ready to go, and for cheap money. Then I can make my moronic movie.

 

The rest of his arguement is a rant about if we don't like it we can find another plantation to work on.

 

To which my answer is NO.

 

We are going to build the film industry we want. We are going to demand that some of the money that comes from showing films comes back to production.

The films will be made on all sorts of subjects and by directors and writers of all back grounds and not just those who are privilaged.

The there will be good wages and conditions

 

Will you have a place in this industry?

 

Maybe, but you better have better ideas than another zombie movie.

[Phil Rhodes]

And please don't tell me the producer has an obligation to pay his employees enough money so that they can live for six months afterward as well.

 

Point of order - they are not his employees. If they were employees, they'd get sick pay, holiday pay, time off, various legal protections, all equipment provided and many other things that most film crew don't get. And they'd get a fulltime job with a more or less guaranteed number of days per year.

 

So yes, if you're going to hire freelancers who you expect to be available when you need them and then get lost when you don't, you are expected to pay very much better hourly rates for them, because 200 a day absolutely does not work out as 50k a year. If you want the flexibility of workers on call when you need them and costing you nothing when you don't, you need to pay for that flexibility.

 

Once again this seems to be coming down to the fact that you should get all the money because you're just special and fantastic and better than everyone else, which is more or less a perfectly charicatured ultra-capitalist bad guy attitude.

 

P

[Stephen Williams]

Just to make it clear that this is a change of subject, you haven't addressed my concerns over the equitability of very wealthy people profiting, at zero effective risk, from the risk

 

P

Phil, people become rich by continuely spending less than they earn, ie living within their means. Over time they may become very wealthy if they invest wisely, however they are always at risk of being blown out in a capatilist system.

[Stephen Williams]

Why?

Anybody can be a producer, so you would think it's OK :D it's just the talented ones that make any money.

[Freya Black]

 

Many films are not financed with 100% pre-sales. This may be true if you take as your sample commercial feature-length filmmaking as practiced in north america, but as I mentioned above, big American union movies represent a microscopic proportion of the world's human beings who actually work in film, TV and related trades. I have only ever worked on a single-digit number of feature films in any case. One or two of them may have been pre-sold. The others simply weren't sold at all. Most of the narrative stuff I've ever worked on was never sold because it was short films. And I'm probably quite lucky compared to a lot of the people currently coming out of media courses in the UK.

 

So no, there are not many films that are financed with 100% pre-sales. There are not many films that are financed to any great extent at all. I would assume the producers of these short films, music videos and the like went into production knowing this full well.

 

P

 

Okay, hang on, so now we appear to be talking about no-budget producers who don't actually have any money and are trying to cobble something together. I don't see how these people are so awful. They don't pay people a great deal of money because they don't have it, not because they are withholding the money from people.

 

Having said that it's not so good if they are mis- representing themselves and telling everyone what a fantastic opportunity it is to work on their movie. Some of these people are just a bit high on their own supply tho.

 

I think it's died out completely now but there was a long period when students would try to big up their movie by saying they were going to send it to Sundance. It was really ridiculous because aside from the fact that anyone can send a movie to Sundance, it was also long, long, long after the point in time when Sundance was "a thing". It was a big give away that they were actually really out of it and had no idea of what was actually happening in the movie industry at that time. They had just read an old book. I can probably guess exactly which one even! ;)

 

It's usually quite easy to tell when someone is misrepresenting themselves, their production etc.

 

Don't work on these peoples movies if you don't want to.

 

Freya

[Freya Black]

Slave: Why are we building this Pyramid we could build houses for ourselves.

Slave Boddy; You crazy you need a Pharaoh, only a Pharaoh has the skills

 

Serf: Why are we working the Lords land and not our own

Serf Boddy: You so stupid, like arguing with the flat earth society, only a Lord understands and has the skills to do farming.

 

 

They would. They're not the victims.

 

 

 

YIKES! You guys really need to get away from this kind of thinking. Nobody is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to work on crappy little low budget productions for other people. I sometimes wonder if the reason people don't chain slaves to the wall anymore is because they no longer need to as people have the chains in their heads already.

 

There are some awful situations in all the places on this planet where people are forced to do awful things against their will. This is not one of those situations.

 

You are both adults and actually have a fair amount of choice about what you can do in your lives.

 

I would certainly encourage you to look at other options if you don't like the way things are at the moment.

 

Certainly I think Maxim should definitely forge ahead with his co-op idea.

 

Freya

[Freya Black]

Beasts of the southern wild was supposedly organised along more collective lines. This is not something that most articles about it talk about but it's worth checking out this article for a bit of info:

 

http://nofilmschool.com/2012/08/beasts-southern-wild-making-demonstrates/

 

I hope it will be inspiring in some way. :)

 

Freya

[Phil Rhodes]

If you actually did want a solution to the problem, crowdfunding would seem to be it.

 

I'm not aware of any downsides.

[Guest]

Now the producer does not want to pay for training the crew, he does not want to pay for the cost of keeping freelance films makers alive waiting for that call. Or holiday pay, health service or pensions. Those costs he wants society to pick up and to be paid for from taxation. ( I bet you the producer is against tax too!) So he wants private profit but social support. he is the one who wants society to have films crews trained, ready to go, and for cheap money. Then I can make my moronic movie.

 

Well in Canada free lance film crew get access to all of the above. In order for the producer to qualify for the tax credits he needs to use a payroll company. The payroll company will deduct the taxes, which also includes the Canada pension plan and workman's compensation should a crew member be injured on set.

 

Does a producer have an obligation to pay people while they sit around, "waiting for that call?" No, he most certainly does not.

 

As for the producer paying for people's training, what the heck? Myself and thousands of other filmmakers paid for our own training at various film schools across the globe, you can do the same.

 

You know it's hilarious that you decry producers for supposedly wanting stuff for free, and yet here you are advocating that film crew get free training and be paid to sit around between jobs doing nothing. Free seems to be a great word, when it's applied to you. So I found a shot on your website I would like to license. I have no intention of paying for it, I want it for free. Since free is such a great concept as far as you are concerned.

 

This discussion is becoming more of a moot point by the minute. I can pack up and shoot my next movie in Romania. I'll be free of everything I mentioned above, and best of all, there isn't one thing you and Phil could do to stop me.

 

And before you start freaking out, a long list of American movies have already been shot there. I mentioned the very American Hatfields and the McCoys from Kevin Costner, and the very American Red Tails from George Lucas was shot there as well.

 

I have a DOP friend shooting there right now, he reports that the crews are excellent. Why am I shooting in Canada again?

 

R,

[Phil Rhodes]

 

 

Does a producer have an obligation to pay people while they sit around, "waiting for that call?"

 

Yes. This is why freelance hourly rates are higher than employee hourly rates. You're paying for the convenience of not having to support employees. Again, this is not particularly controversial.

 

One of the problems we have in the UK is that the quality of crews is dropping, directly because of this. There was a time when people interested in promoting this place as a place for filmmakers to work could use the quality of crewing as a selling point. This is at least less true than it was and possibly no longer true at all. All those people are retiring. Eventually, if you keep this up, it will become difficult to get good crews under any circumstances, anywhere other than LA. That's a big part of what we're discussing here, and I don't think you'll like that any more than I would.

 

Throughout all of this, the one common theme is that Richard seems to think it's OK for him to get very rich at the expense of everyone else, on the basis that he thinks he's special. Ultimately this discussion is going nowhere until we can persuade him that this sort of narcissistic greed is...

 

...well...

 

...wrong.

 

P

[Maxim Ford]

I think we can all agree that Romania is the place for him.

[Guest]

Throughout all of this, the one common theme is that Richard seems to think it's OK for him to get very rich at the expense of everyone else, on the basis that he thinks he's special. Ultimately this discussion is going nowhere until we can persuade him that this sort of narcissistic greed is...

 

...well...

 

...wrong.

 

P

 

No idea what you mean by, "at the expense of everyone else," once the crew has been paid their wages, the producer owns the finished product, period end of story. Same for any other business under the sun.

 

There's no such thing as a "very rich" independent producer. They all take huge risks and flirt with bankruptcy at every turn.

 

I think you need to read back through this thread, the clear majority of posters here agree with me, not you. So bugger off.

 

R,

[Phil Rhodes]

 

 

No idea what you mean by, "at the expense of everyone else," once the crew has been paid their wages, the producer owns the finished product, period end of story.

 

You're just reiterating the status quo. The problem is that increasingly the crew make the movie for a pittance, and the producer then goes and makes a fortune out of it.

 

Yes, I know that's how it usually works.

Yes, I know you are in law free to do that.

Yes, I know you can, as a practical matter, do that.

 

I think the exasperation from people like me and (especially) lefties like Maxim comes when people just like you use the force majeure argument: you can do a thing, therefore you should. Ultra-capitalists, in the Ayn Rand tradition, tend also to have terrific problems with separating the concept of "money" from the concept of "good", in that if this thing makes me rich it is automatically the right thing to do, regardless of absolutely any other consideration whatsoever.

 

I splutter in disbelief that it's necessary to explain this, but ultimately if you are going to do these things, and use the "I'll do what the hell I like" defence, then you cannot in good faith complain when people don't like you. It's the most obvious circular relationship imaginable.

 

P