unpopular opinion but i think the film and tv industries should have better labor laws even if it makes it harder or impossible to depict certain things
i dont care if it makes it harder to produce game of thrones or whatever, acting should not leave women traumatized
Okay I know this is about acting and people are getting more traction about it (sexuality safety coordinators are a job! yell about them. demand your shows get them) but
Any person who has worked on a set for more than a few years has at least one person they know who died.
Not usually on set, but afterwards. Because we don’t have anyone shutting down production for unsafe practices when “unsafe” means 16 hour days. Or more. For weeks. Finishing a day before hour 12 (not including lunch) is considered an early leave.
I had teachers tell us not to, unless we absolutely had to, take music video gigs because they’ll work you for 24 hours and send you to drive home. And if we had to work that, pull over and nap in our car because multiple people per year fall asleep at the wheel and go over the canyons around LA.
I know you mean acting but please. Don’t forget the crew. We have a shockingly high rate of suicide because these working schedules leave us with no sleep, no time outside of work, and it destroys lives, relationships, and families. Burnout is high. Chronic illness and broken bodies are common. Cocaine use in order to get through a 20 hour day is rampant. Every single one of your reality shows is fueled by cocaine.
The number of days that are scheduled to shoot a feature has shrunk dramatically in the past two decades. Which means longer days.
Netflix shows are notorious for being poorly organized, understaffed, and long days.
There are labor laws but what they do is levy fines. Those fines are either factored into budget, people are bullied into not reporting actual hours, or crew members see them as incentive to take those jobs because more money and cost of living is high. (Also this industry has a crew culture of dick measuring by sticking your wang in a blender and boasting about how many 100 hour weeks you pulled.)
this can be applied for people working in animation as well. Like I know people who work at Pixar and they straight up work 12 hour days and go into work on weekends to meet their deadlines. The incredibles 2 made over a billion dollars and Pixar still cut jobs due to “budget”. The entertainment industry is a business at the end of the day. There here to make money and they are going to do it at the expense of workers because they know no one is going to do anything about it.
This is why I get pissy when people have a go about British TV shows only producing 10-12 episodes per season at most, instead of 24. Do you know why? Because the UK has fucking labour laws.
When I worked on BBC Causalty, as soon as it hit 5pm, everything stopped. The producer/director etc would have a quick meeting to decide if we’d go into overtime or schedule it in later in the week. And I got an extra payslip in the mail for every minute of overtime I did, even though I was paid a weekly rate.
I don’t care if it means producing less content. I don’t care if it means it costs twice as much - if treating your creatives and your crew like shit is needed to make your show, then your show doesn’t deserve to get made.
And that’s aside from the fact that actors are often exploited, neglected, coerced into doing scenes they’re uncomfortable with etc or outright abused by directors for the sake of ~performance.
No art is worth that.
ALL OF THIS! ^^^^^^^
In New Zealand this industry pressure is reflected in The Employment Relations (Film Production Work) Amendment Bill of 2010 - also known as ‘the Hobbit Law.’ This has led to a nine-year struggle for actors and filmworkers to get rights as employees, not as contractors.
