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That's not really what I said....

 

 

I know! ;) I was exaggerating for comic effect but as you suggest in your latest posting they usually still have to apply for the job and everything.

 

It just sounded funny the way you wrote it! :)

 

Freya

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Also if you imagine that at the entry-level jobs, you may have 100 candidates, 10 of which can all do the job very well - it will often come down to the most likable.

 

With regards to physical attractiveness, yes it does exist, its not out and out exploitation (no wiggling) but again with so many candidates able to do an entry-level job, it may come down to physical looks or how well groomed a candidate is... that certainly seems very prevalent in the world of glossy TV broadcasting. Of course I'm saying this as someone who's observed the phenomenon and doesn't hire people!

 

I suppose its just the nature an industry, which hires very rapidly and doesn't rely on formal qualifications.

 

I'm afraid this is another one of those things that isn't just limited to the moving image industry.

It also isn't limited to entry level jobs but happens across the board for the most part.

It's one of those things about human beings.

 

Also the formal qualifactions thing, in the UK at least, is just nonsense they tell you is important. Having bits of paper makes minimal difference to anything. (I know I have a fine collection from various educational establishments)

That's just something they try and tell you so you don't start asking difficult questions about the setup here.

 

Confidence is a big factor in everything especially.

 

I would say a bigger factor in the broadcasting industry in the UK, is having the right mates at Oxford tho! ;)

 

Freya

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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,

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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.

 

Exactly, film crew must be babysat 24/7. :blink: Keeping them on set and under your thumb is a much better approach.

 

Film sets are not the like the real world where people go out to lunch and then come back after an hour and start work again.

 

R,

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If someone chooses film so they can work 10 weeks on and 10 weeks off they are somehow bad people?

 

Because practically nobody, especially not low-end crew, actually does that. You cloth fool.

 

You are, clearly and obviously, making up excuses.

 

P

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Because practically nobody, especially not low-end crew, actually does that. You cloth fool.

 

You are, clearly and obviously, making up excuses.

 

P

 

That's BS Phil, you're so full of it now your eyes are actually turning brown.

 

R,

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Exactly, film crew must be babysat 24/7. :blink: Keeping them on set and under your thumb is a much better approach.

 

Film sets are not the like the real world where people go out to lunch and then come back after an hour and start work again.

 

R,

Most jobs are in a fixed location, when I worked as a postman we had a canteen, open 24 hours a day, as we worked on three shifts.

When I worked on the buses we had a canteen open from 4 am to midnight.

 

You want a film crew to work in different locations, maybe everyday, to work late one day early another, expect them to turn up, all of them, any where in the world ready to work, supplying their kit, knowing all possible cameras and gear,

 

And when production f*** everything up as they do, for the crew to solve the problem, work the overtime, etc....

 

and you think you are doing them a favour feeding them

 

and you call that baby sitting....

 

We know who the babies are, the ones that don't know reality, the ones that think it is OK to take 7 wages to a normal persons 1/2 wage....

 

Oh and yes we are to be trained and ready for you to call when ever needed.

 

You are a very funny man

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I think I've spent a lot more time babysitting film crews than you have Maxim. And yes, most of them would not be able to hold jobs in the real world where people are expected to pay for their own lunch and drive themselves to work without getting paid mileage.

 

If I had you and Phil on my crew I'd be sure to have pacifiers, diapers, and a nanny on set for the both of you. Since all you'd do is sit in the corner, cry, and throw tantrums, until I fired both your lazy useless asses right off the set!!!

 

Good luck finding a single employer in the world, in any industry, that would hire either one of you after reading your posts!

 

R,

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I'm going to have to drag this back on target again.

 

Richard, this is not about you having to look after anyone.

 

This is about you making excuses, again and again, for a status quo in which you get much richer than everyone else. This is still not OK and nothing you have said makes it look any better.

 

Your entire argument to date has been reliant on reaffirming that this is the status quo (with which I have no argument) and that producers are just somehow special people who deserve more money than they can possibly have worked for.

 

Having a go at me doesn't really alter that. I don't know why there needs to be any politics about this. It's quite normal. Neither Maxim nor I have any control whatsoever over what you do. Why not be straightforward?

 

P

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Phil, Is there a real-world for-profit business model where the owner / manager does not get paid more than his employees? You and I and (I think) Maxim are all business owners, and I don't think I would pay an employee a higher rate than my own. As an owner I assume risk and responsibility that an employee does not, and that has value.

 

As business owners we can decide the most cost-effective way to operate our businesses. We can choose to buy computers manufactured with child labor, furniture made from slaughtered animal hides, and to stock our corporate kitchens with processed foods from stores that pay their workers pennies. We can decide to film in Romainia. It is unfortunately the way most of the world works. It's legal.

 

Regarding the 8-weeks on, 8-weeks off scenario... I worked like that for years in my NYC days. Not always entirely by choice, but I did sometimes turn down projects after a long stretch of work so that I could take a break. I think it is fairly common in the feature and series world. The producer's perspective of this might be a bit skewed since most crew would rather report that they have been recently unemployed by choice and not by an 8-week lack of work.

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This is about you making excuses, again and again, for a status quo in which you get much richer than everyone else. This is still not OK and nothing you have said makes it look any better.

 

Your entire argument to date has been reliant on reaffirming that this is the status quo (with which I have no argument) and that producers are just somehow special people who deserve more money than they can possibly have worked for.

 

It really is quite simple Phil, so so simple:

 

1) A feature film is THREE(3) years out of my life. It is 5 weeks out of the life of a crew member. The idea that we should be paid the same is just so damn ridiculous words cannot even begin to describe the degree to which your position is just plain idiotic. There's no other way to describe it. How an intelligent person like you can believe the utter claptrap you post defies all logic.

 

2) As a producer I take great personal risk in assuming the bank loan. Only my signature is on the papers, and no one else's. The 1st AC doesn't co-sign, nor does anyone else from the grip dept. If they want to be equal to me in pay and stature then they can go through asset disclosure with the bank and co-sign the loan with me. Good bloody luck finding even one single crew member willing to do that!

 

So yes, I DO indeed deserve more than a crew member or dept head. I agree with Tim Tyler 100%.

 

R,

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The movie business is unlike any other business on Earth so you can't really compare it to a "regular" business. In general terms, crew are very well paid when they're working but that's because they spend a lot of time not working so it evens out. On the other hand, I have worked 16 hr days back to back on set for 50 bucks a day. I don't have a problem with owners and bosses making more money than their employees, I have a problem with a boss making FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY XXXXING TIMES what his employees make because the bosses are GREEDY SCUMBAG PIGS that have NO SENSE of right and wrong. I have a problem with guys like a certain "Papa" having an estate with it's own man made private lake on it while the people who made his money for him by busting ass in some pizza joint can't feed their families on the minimum wage he pays them. I have a problem with Wally world rigging the game and exploiting the law so their employees can't work a 40 hour week and Wally doesn't have to pay them fairly or give them benefits of any kind. I have a problem when Micky Ds puts up website that tell their employees to cut their portions into smaller pieces to to make it last longer rather than paying them enough money to put XXXXING FOOD ON THE TABLE! These worthless sleazebags think XXXXing with people's livelihoods is some kind of a twisted odious game they're playing and the only thing thing that counts is to win. Thank "The Great Communicator" and "Tricky Dick" for that one. Just because something is legal, doesn't make it right.

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The trick of comparing the business of being a freelance technician with the business of being a corporation is crass. Many small business owners exploit themselves more than many low paid workers are exploited. That is why corporations farm out so much work.

 

You find that a truck delivering Coca Cola will be owned by the driver and he has to run it like a business except that Coca Cola decides how much he gets and has all the power.

 

It is the same with the film industry, we are all freelance running our little businesses, but basically living off our work. We have to work to survive.

 

If a director struggles 3 years to get his project of the ground, I don't expect anyone here would say that he should not be rewarded for all his work. We want all people to have a reasonable fair life.

 

We live in a system where money makes money, also where there is very little social mobility, so it is people born rich staying rich and making even more money and, of course, power.

 

The idea that the rich should be rewarded because they take risk is as laughable as it is stupid. They normally do not risk their own money or money they could afford to loose.

 

The worse that could happen is that they would have to work for a living like the rest of us. (but they would still have their connections to power )

 

The risk that normal people take is working on a picture that fails to pay and loosing your house, having no food, no heating.

 

In the UK last year 30,000 preventable deaths caused by the cold,( not one producer was killed. ) (Energy company profits 3,700,000,000 pounds )

 

Chairman of Scottish power wage for one year. 10,500,000 pounds.

 

The risk these people run is the rest of society should put them in prison for their criminal greed.

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So how much of your own money did you invest in the energy infrastructure of the UK, then, Maxim?

I thought not.

That investment comes out of those profits, you know. Like when you buy a piece of equipment out of yours, and claim it as a business expense, and don't pay tax on that profit.

No-one tells you how much of your profit you can take out of your business as wages. No-one. What entitles you, or society, to tell anyone else how much they can take out of theirs?

Edited by Mark Dunn
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So you ask me a question to which you think you have the answer. Do we know each other?

 

How much money did I invest in the infrastructure? All the energy bills I have been paying all my life together with everyone else's have paid for the infrastructure when it was a nationalised utility and now.

 

What would you think of a person who worked in a shop at the till taking how ever much money out as they wanted where the other shop workers starved?

 

Because this is the stage of capitalism we are at now, where capital is moved around the globe to find investment, which do make things happen, cars built, films made etc, but the people that control that movement of gigantic amounts of wealth just help themselves to chunks of it. They also use it to control the political system to allow themselves to continue to steal.

 

For us film workers it means that our wages are falling and the films are getting worse.

 

What entitles us to change things, logic, justice and changing political power to make a more just society.

 

What entitles them to take 80% of societies wealth while old people die of cold and children go to school hungry?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0

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Phil, Is there a real-world for-profit business model where the owner / manager does not get paid more than his employees?

 

No, and that's arguably fine to a point - this, as I've said, is a matter of degree. As Mr Beverly put it, it becomes abusive when one person is being paid dozens or hundreds of times more, per hour, than someone else.

 

I don't view myself as a business owner.

 

 

It is unfortunately the way most of the world works. It's legal.

 

At risk of coming off as abrupt, lots of things that are wrong are legal.

P
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No, and that's arguably fine to a point - this, as I've said, is a matter of degree. As Mr Beverly put it, it becomes abusive when one person is being paid dozens or hundreds of times more, per hour, than someone else.

 

Phil,

 

The producer is not earning anything per hour for 3 years, if they then make a huge profit you cannot possibly pretend they had any idea how much they could draw out of the bank to live on. It's a 3 year investment that paid off.

 

What about people who mined bit coins ? Someone even bought a 2 pizza's for 10,000 bit coins a couple of years ago, if the person held onto those bit coins is he suddenly abusive ?

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I don't view myself as a business owner.

 

 

 

If you fill in your own tax returns and own your own kit, or rent it on your own account, your view is somewhat distorted, in law and in fact.

Edited by Mark Dunn
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Maxim,

 

There is no "trick". Just about anyone can choose to become a business owner in most places, although it would seem that the majority choose not to. Yes, some people are born into wealth, but often you'll find that their parents or grandparents struggled hard to create that wealth through hard work, sacrifice and perseverance. Businesses farm out work when the project's revenue stream forecast is limited and the business does not want to commit to hiring employees for the long terms. It's hard to fire/sack an employee but simple to terminate a contractor relationship.

 

We want all people to have a reasonable fair life.

I think most people care more about their own well being than the well being and success of others. What is "reasonably fair" to you might seem like absolute extravagance to someone starving in a third-world country.

 

> The risk that normal people take...

 

We're all normal people. Some people are more ruthless. Some have different moral judgement. There are heroes and villains everywhere. We all are presented with situations throughout life and make choices that will affect our futures. Some of us will travel a route towards success and others towards poverty. I don't think that bitter feelings towards the wealthy are productive.

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So how much of your own money did you invest in the energy infrastructure of the UK, then, Maxim?

 

Careful, Mark. Most of the infrastructure in the UK was built when the system was nationalised. It was then given, effectively free, to companies who now make money out of it, with more than a little suggestion that they are profiteering. The same situation pertains with this new high speed rail link they're talking about, which will be built at titanic public expense, then given, effectively free, to extremely profitable companies with executives on eight figure pay packets, who will then charge the public some of the highest rates in the developed world to use it. I have no interest in whether a particular service is provided by the government or not, but this worst-of-both-worlds halfway house is absurd.

 

This extended discussion seems to be boiling down to a few basic tenets, which I would summarise as follows:

 

- It is not OK for the executives to make hundreds of times more than non-executives, per hour, under any circumstances.

- Wealthy people do not generally take significant risks to the sustainability of their lifestyle when they make investments and thus should not be compensated for this risk.

- Paying people to assume responsibility in executive roles is unreasonable if failure in that responsibility has no greater consequence than it does for non-executives.

 

P

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Yes, some people are born into wealth, but often you'll find that their parents or grandparents struggled hard to create that wealth through hard work, sacrifice and perseverance.

 

Wait? What does this have to do with anything?

I don't get it. If someone's grandparents or uncle or whatever accumulated wealth through hard work or some other means seems kinda irrelevant to any current situation with their decendants surely?

 

I mean if people are born into wealth they are just born into wealth.

 

Freya

Edited by Freya Black
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The trick of comparing the business of being a freelance technician with the business of being a corporation is crass.

 

Wait? Where does anyone actually make this comparison?

Are you confusing business with corporations or something?

 

We have been talking mostly abour freelancers and producers.

I missed the bit where corporations became a joined up part of this discussion.

 

Freya

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I was addressing Maxim's post #91

 

"...so it is people born rich staying rich and making even more money and, of course, power. The idea that the rich should be rewarded because they take risk is as laughable as it is stupid. They normally do not risk their own money or money they could afford to loose."

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