‘Shooting People’ surveys opinion HERE.
27/01/10 Comments on this entry are now closed. Thank you for your contributions so far.
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Thanks for drawing attention to this Ed.
No one in film wants to see young people being commercially exploited because they are passionate about working in the field but the minimum wage legislation is now being applied to projects of all sizes and made from all motivations.
I believe that one of the pre-conditions for a successful high-end creative economy is a wide, grassroots engagement with creative projects. Lots and lots of people getting together and making low budget animations, experimental music videos for new bands and short films that will never make a profit = a vibrant creative community that produces talent and ideas.
The majority of our filmmaking members (75%) want people in junior roles to be able to choose whether they volunteer to be part of this community and get valuable experience, fun and self esteem from participating in such projects but the increasing application of the minimum wage rules is making this impossible for the first time.
Please take a look at our survey results http://shootingpeople.org/poll/ and leave your thoughts here about how to get the balance right between protection from exploitation and creative freedom.
Many thanks
Jess Search
co-founder Shooting People
This is the creative edge of low cost filmmaking, which in an industry that no longer has apprenticeships and has very few traineeships, allows new filmmakers to grow their experience and skills and actually make themselves more employable as a result..
However this should not allow successful TV companies to exploit experience seekers by giving them "internships." These companies are certainly benefitting from their exploitation. Broadcasters should be ensuring that workers in the TV industry are not being exploited by their contractors.
James MacGregor
Having the freedom to volunteer unpaid on short films and independent low budget features is absolutely crucial in order for filmmakers to learn and develop and for talent to progress to the mainstream film industry.
The question you have posed (The Minimum Wage: Help or Hinder to Low-Budget Film-Maker?) is very partial and might be better expressed in terms of how to protect young workers from being used illegally unpaid in this popular industry. The issue is that, while many people undertake hobby film making as an enjoyable and fruitful creative activity, it is also a field of work and a way of paying their bills for others. It is also clearly and demonstrably the case that commercial filmmakers have recruited and used huge numbers of (mostly young) people illegally unpaid and continue to do so. Apart from the basic immorality and illegality of using young people in this way, it also means that access to careers such as film and TV production becomes limited only to those who can afford to work unpaid for lengthy periods at the start of their career.
There are many in your party who have never liked the concept of the Minimum Wage, and some still active in seeking to reverse it. It would be upstanding of you, and your party, to publicly proclaim your support of the regulations and your intention to ensure that they are enforced, particularly in your field of work. Will you do that?
Unfortunately, I think that preventing people from advertising for unpaid volunteers will simply result in people giving opportunities to close contacts of their friends and family who they know and trust not to be tempted into speculative legal action and career suicide by a union pursuing its own agenda. In effect, the industry will become even more closed off to a talented outsider than it already is.
Most short films are only a couple of days work – often over a weekend – and can easily be interspersed with flexible part time or full time paid work or even a 9-5 job if people use their 5.6 weeks / 28 days statutory holiday pay fruitfully.
Does someone coming from a poor / underprivileged background have to work harder than a trustafarian in order to get their break in the industry? I can say from personal experience that the answer is 'yes'!
You have to make sacrifices in order to achieve your aspirations and the choice is always there to pursue a career in another sector, if the film industry does not live up to your dreams and expectations.
Success is more down to commitment, tenacity, passion, talent and a measure of good luck than to what social class you were born into or how rich your parents are.
No-one cares in the slightest if like minded people want to get together to collaborate on a film. A Minimum Wage claim that arose out of that would quite rightly be laughed out of court, if it ever got there. However when people put out adverts for film workers, recruit them and then treat them like workers then of course people should get paid, and governments shoudl do all they can to defend people's rights in those situations.
It is akin to the diference between a gardening club where people help each other out and a landscape gardener who advertises and hires people to do a day's work for them unpaid. People who do the gardening in both situations might get valuable experience and both enjoy what they do while they are doing it, but why should the landscape gardener not have to pay that worker simply because of that?
Unfortunately, "collaboration" had no meaning in law under the National Minimum Wage Act.
The key question is whether a 'Volunteer" is treated like a "Worker". My guess would be that most independent filmmakers do not pay their Volunteers (except for out-of-pocket expenses) and do not otherwise put them under any obligation to work, which clearly makes them a Volunteer.
I wrote to my local MP – Keith Hill from the Labour party – about this issue and his reply is worth quoting in detail:
"Volunteers do not qualify for the national minimum wage. Volunteers are defined as those who are under no contractual obligation to perform work or provide services, though they may come to informal arrangements with those for whom they carry out tasks. They offer their time and effort for free, though they may receive reimbursement for expenses."
Ask yourself this question: if the runner offering their time and effort for free (other than expenses) comes to you on the second day of your three day shoot to tell you she can't make the final day of the shoot because she has a paid job or that she will have to take that afternoon off for a hospital appointment, what do you do? If the answer is "thank her for her time and wish her well" then it's difficult to see where the "contractual obligation" is.
But the national minimum wage isn't being applied to projects of all sizes. That's a blatant untruth. In practice , it won't be applied to student films or charities or low budget shorts those films simple wont register on the HMRC radar… So I'd appreciate it if you'd stop misleading the debate. I'd love Shooting People and you to direct your energies into ridding the practice you allure to in the first line of your sentence. But I won't hold my breath because Shooting People's policy on such advertisements encourage the exploitative elements who do pray on the naive and desperate.
Secondly, what is creative freedom in this sense? The freedom to expect people to work for you for nothing. Because in practice and reality, this is what happens time and time again, and a large proportion of Shooting People members are guilty in this regard.
Eddie Singleton.
Those targeted by minimum wage campaigners include registered charities, student films and low budget shorts. I don't see how Jess has been misleading the debate.
The current economy relies too much on inflation. Inflation of house prices means inflation of housing prices which requires wage inflation for people to get by.
People need to learn to earn their wages, to ask their boss for a fair price, not rely on speculative investments.
The low-budget filmmakers who can't afford to pay people minimum wage should be willing to accept that they are amateurs. This doesn't mean the quality is low.
Many people are amateur cooks at home and make better Christmas dinners than the top restaurants. The coaches of junior football leagues, scout troop leaders, and others volunteer their time for nothing in return, and our society is better for it.
However, if someone is making money off my efforts, it's only fair if I get a cut.
Many beginning filmmakers spend too much money on over-priced software and equipment. And many people spend too much on film degrees that aren't valuable in the marketplace, not even in the entertainment market place.
If these short films will never make a profit, they should be registered under non-profit companies.
Many fish and chips shops fail due to rising costs, so do bed and breakfasts. Independent Film isn't the only industry that has trouble coping with wage inflation.
I have a friend who got his job at a supermarket after working for them for free (he called it a "grey area"). In some cases, people who are deemed "unemployable" need a chance to prove themselves.
However, on small films, working for free doesn't offer the same career prospects. Most companies fold after just one film.
We need to stop teaching filmmaking at school, stop encouraging it as an art. Teach them the basics like reading, writing, drawing (and not graffiti, but drawing the beauty they see, so they are less inclined to destroy it.). And of course, some math and economics.
If people realized that Warren Buffet, the world's richest entertainer, didn't get his money from his music, or that lawyers and plumbers get paid more than actors, we might have fewer unemployed young people (and fewer skills shortages).
If people are in art for art's sake, I'd encourage it. But those in it for the economic potential would be more useful in another industry.
Thank you for listening.
Vasco de Sousa
Screenwriter
registered voter in Ceredigion (and I believe the conservatives could win here if they openly stood for what we all believe in.)
I have made many low to micro budgeted films & videofilms and have always paid something in the way of wages in addition to meals and carfare and copies and screenings and clips for showreels, etc–I always have set some minimum cash payment for time worked for everyone on my crew. Whether that fee was in a scale from $50 per day to $250 per day or somewhere in between, it gave both myself and the apprentice film worker the feeling that exploitation of any kind either way was just not in the firmament on my film.
This was both a gig and an experience grabber if I as the Director was to be respected for both what I could teach filmically as well as a human being.
I, therefor, come down solidly on the side for some minimal pay for any kind of work scheduled as film or video production work for anyone called to that shoooting days work…..
I am a member of shooting People and I do taker issue with jess's assertion that 75% of "our filmmaking members want people in junior roles to be able to choose whether they volunteer to be part of this community and get valuable experience……..etc…etc"
Shooting People claim to have about 30,000 members yet when I last looked at the survey I would guess that about 1,000 people have responded to the questionaire on this subject . It would be more accurate to say that the so-called "majority" was actually of those who responded – not the membership as a whole.
I think the Shooting People survey was flawed by the way in which the questioned were framed. The issues of the NMW as it relates to Low/No budget filmaking are complex and I feel the Shooting People Survey didn't address those issues properly in the survey.
The problems come when unscrupulous employers in the industry see the willingness of young peple to get a foot in the door of the television and film industry as a source of free labour. Minimum wage legislation is there for a purpose: to protect the rights of citizens to be paid for work they do. Do away with it at your peril.
The sad truth is that there is an ever-growing number of people wanting to work in media, yet there are fewer and fewer paid jobs for them every year, and most careers fizzle out within a few years because the industry is unable to pay reasonable salaries, salaries that support home ownership and the raising of a family. Only the young people of independent means/wealthy parents can survive in the industry, and that makes broadcasting and film an elitist and effectively closed industry. The minimum wage at least establishes a precedent that recognizes that this is a professional industry and not just a hobby for the rich: and that businesses should toe the line. Of course collaborative films made by groups of individuals as collectives shouldn't fall into this category: very few people take issue with this. As things stand now though, the line is quite blurred between such projects and professional profit-making ones.
The law on national minimum wage should put the onus on the employer to prove that a role is exempt from NMW rather than on the employee to fight retrospectively for pay that they are due. When there are dozens of rivals snapping at the chance for work in media it takes a brave employee to fight that battle, and unscrupulous employers know that and continue to exploit the fact. The law is the law.
It's a fatuous argument put forward by Jess Search that NMW stifles creativity. If a film is truly collaborative then junior roles like all the others can be filled by people taking a stake in the film. Those junior roles can be contracted in such a way that should one of these film make a profit they receive a share of the profit in line with their role. But if a film is being made with the express intention of making a commercial profit or as part of a promotional campaign or similar then employment law, including NMW, should apply and individuals should be paid. End of story. There is no excuse for flouting the law.
Part of the problem is that organizations like Jess Search's Shooting People don't make distinctions between collaborative film projects and professional profit motivated films clear themselves. They have in the past failed to vet advertisements for unpaid work that appear to flagrantly breach national minimum wage law and that sends a message to their membership that its OK to flout the law and the norm for young people to work unpaid. It's not. It's completely illegal.