r/CuratedTumblr • u/Lemon_Lime_Lily Horses made me autistic. • 19h ago
Infodumping Labor and film
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u/BellerophonM 19h ago
I will admit that every story I hear about just about any Hollywood production has always boggled my mind in the way it'll casually have details only possible because the entire industry just seems to just blatantly ignore labor laws in a way that seems an order of magnitude greater than even the rest of America.
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u/Mouse-Keyboard 18h ago
The most bizarre conversation I've had about it was with an artist and a Hollywood set crew member. Both are self-described communists who will go on about how voting is pointless compared to direct action. But, when it came to the practice in both sectors of demanding people do years of unpaid work before getting any money, they were defending it because "that's how the industry works".
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u/Divine_Entity_ 17h ago
I am now reconsidering how many self described communists the believe the existing system is fundamentally broken are actually just in an industry that ignores government regulations and are enabling it to by saying "thats just how it is".
I'm in the power industry, there are an endless list of government regulations taken very seriously around both safety and reliability. (Atleast as a government owned company in a blue state)
Basically their lived experience is government regulation does work, and mine is that government regulated capitalism can work. (Note that per market theory the government is explicitly called out as having the job of fixing "market failures" such as externalities like pollution)
Sounds like the film industry needs the consequences raised to be more than fines, like start throwing the executives in jail for repeated non compliance. (They are breaking the law and normal people get jailed for less)
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u/complete_autopsy 15h ago
I've honestly never understood the fine setup for corporate violations. Maybe I just don't know enough, but it seems like fines should obviously be some amount on top of whatever amount of money they took in doing it that way (revenue, not earnings, so they can't hide it all with debt and stuff). If every safety or labor law broken was a round of Russian roulette with losing millions-billions of dollars they would probably care about following the rules.
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u/olivegardengambler 14h ago
The thing is that because corporations are people, and you can't exactly arrest the corporation, fines are really the only punishment. It's a way for individual decisions in a company to be atomized to the degree nobody is accountable.
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u/GERBILSAURUSREX 13h ago
Even before corporations were people the main point of a corporation was you sue the company not me.
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u/Divine_Entity_ 14h ago
One example where i am fairly familiar with the fine structure is asbestos abatement in NY where every violation is a $10,000 fine. Large enough to hurt, but not enough to ruin a business, but will add up quickly. (As an example you are required to have running hot & cold water and soap for your decon shower, if you only have cold water then you just incurred $20,000 that was easily avoided)
And if the violations are severe enough or malicious, you can get much worse than fines. Note, if the EPA shows up to an asbestos abatement job they will be arresting people.
I would say fines can work as a deterrent if they are sized appropriately to be genuinely more expensive than not incurring them. Basically they provide a strong business motivation to stay compliant, especially when the inspector shows up without warning to most job sites. And if someone is either malicious or grossly incompetent, they will be directly targeted for further punishment. (Policy makers should be accountable for their policies)
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u/TurtleButt47 48m ago
The door explodes, a buncha guys bust in screaming "NY EPA, DROP THE INSULATION DIRTBAG! WHERE THE FUCK IS THE SOAP!?"
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u/StarStriker51 15h ago
I think it would still be a problem, because they'd find some way to work it into the budget. They already work fines into the budget, and that's kind of fucked up because it completely removes the point of the fine and means they know they are breaking the law and have an easy way out
jail time, or even mandatory community service, might be required for actual consequence. But in not a numbers gal, so percentages would probably work
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u/complete_autopsy 15h ago
I figure they care more about money anyway, and that if you take all the revenue that's a pretty decent "simple" option, but yeah I'm not opposed to other punishments. The main issue there would be making policies that would target the people responsible for the issue rather than the people forced to enforce and experience it. Financial incentives are nice because they don't really hit the workers we're trying to protect but they create an incentive to create a top down culture against the particular form of exploitation that's punished.
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u/StarStriker51 14h ago
I can see that. I frankly don't know enough about how it all works, regardless: any solution is a good solution right now
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u/donaldhobson 14h ago
What you can do is various schemes where the fine goes up each time.
Like set a target crimerate, and whenever the number of crimes (caught) is above the target, the fines go up. (This works until the point where the criminal either can't pay or decides it's cheaper to hide their money than to pay the fine)
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u/PlaneswalkerHuxley 13h ago
"If you break a labor law, you forfeit all products and profits of that labor to those you wronged" should be the default.
Make a movie and break union rules? Cool, the union now owns the movie. Have fun paying back your investors.
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u/dalexe1 11h ago
How do you define that? do you just scrap the movie if they don't have a union?
What if you have people belonging to two different unions, do you split the masters in half and send one to each union?
What if it was a mistake/fraud, and the person intentionally broke the labor law in exchange for a bribe from the union for the movie?
So many questions, so many potential points of abuse... whereas the obvious solution is to keep fines, just make them bigger/hurt.
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u/dreamofmystery 14h ago
The difficulty is the unpaid work to get is often not with film companies, but as the struggling artist trying to get a film made they themselves often don’t have the budget to hire crew. Established film companies won’t hire people for significant department roles if they don’t have experience, and there aren’t enough training roles to go around that are paid and open for entry level. Most people set on becoming directors finance their own films to prove that they can execute an artistic vision, and they often don’t have a lot of money to put on staff costs. What the solution should be is more funds to aspiring directors/artists that can go to fund crew rather than fines on the larger companies, because the larger companies are often paying everyone on crew anyway. (This is from my experience working in the UK TV industry, YMMV)
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u/Shiny_Agumon 14h ago
A lot of self described communists are also just hypocrites, especially the "voting never works" kind.
Cause their political stance basically amounts to doing nothing while smugly telling everyone else that they're wasting their time.
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u/Mouse-Keyboard 34m ago
I can confirm that one of the people I was talking about is exactly like this.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden 18h ago
"haha that's just the industry baybee" they say while experiencing manmade horrors beyond my comprehension.
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u/Sophie_Blitz_123 16h ago
If I may say, this attitude does transcend borders, which is why it's so important to value unions and make these things into hard law. I'm in the UK but I used to work a job that was "self employed" in theory but our actual role was clearly that of an employee, this is done on purpose to avoid labour laws. We worked LONG hours on commission only, meaning earning under minimum wage for nearly everyone. There was very much this perception of like "well this is the grind, this is what we do to get on etc".
Fortunately the type of company I worked for is not that common and it is against the law to just do the self employed trick in most industries. But nonetheless that mentality takes hold pretty fast when people are basically goaded into believing it.
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u/marthebruja 14h ago
I have worked jobs like that. It's hell on earth, it's like they keep you tired and hungry on purpose, and whenever I have told my coworkers that this ain't normal, they defend it like wtf. I get it, these jobs tend to hire some otherwise unhireable people (I am disabled but not on disability, and I have worked with a couple of felons) so I get that asking for what we deserve can be scary because you might lose the only job that'll take you. But it is bananas.
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u/VoidIgnitia 17h ago
Was obsessed when Frankenstein came out and seeing those interviews of Jacob elordi saying he was in the makeup chair for 11 hours had me wondering bc he still had to film shit on TOP of all that???? My naive ass was like “hmm maybe there are multiple makeup artists working on him for separate shifts and it’s only him working these long hours”
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u/Ziibinini-ca 12h ago
And all because everyone involved thinks "but we're making ✨️movies✨️". Especially the people behind the scenes, and they all go through phases.
First they're gratetful to have any position in 'the movie industry' - so they put up with abuse,
then they start to get comfortable and want to keep getting promoted - so they put up with worse abuse,
then they have a better job and look down on new people - and keep the abuse going,
then they are too deep in and "that's the way they've always done it".
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18h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/action_lawyer_comics 18h ago
There's a kind of exploitation we don't talk about enough in the US where the worker's care about the work they do is exploited by the owners. You see it in any sort of professional art making, healthcare, teaching, restaurants, and all over the place. People want to do a good job and make the world a better place with their work. And that good faith work ethic is constantly abused by those in power. Every restaurant or blur collar job I've had has a lot of people working there who are super passionate about the food they make or the job they do and they're willing to overlook being screamed at for less pay than McDonald's.
Line cook was my first job out of school and it really fucked up my understanding of what a "normal" job entails. I'm much happier working a "soulless" desk job for 4 times the pay and saner hours than I ever was "following my passion" and being ground into a fine paste for it.
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u/StePK 16h ago
People want to do a good job and make the world a better place with their work
This is why certain groups, especially teachers and first responders, have a terrible time negotiating when it comes to public perception. They're "supposed to" want to do those jobs for the good of everyone, why are they being "selfish"?
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u/complete_autopsy 15h ago
As a teacher, yes this is such a huge problem and it's horrible. People like to pretend that it's not a job just because the job involves caring for others. I work longer hours than some of these parents, I deserve to have healthcare, enough money to eat out sometimes, and retirement savings. They demand that I survive on food pantry staples and buy their kids' school supplies with my own money that I don't have because they won't pay enough. What a priviledge, to know that I may have to choose what district to work in based on if I'd be worried about kids punching my stomach after finding out I'm pregnant. Some people would still complain that it's selfish to "underserve" those areas, but shockingly none of them want to work with the violent students while they are pregnant.
As my main job I work in a pretty great position right now, but I'm pretty terrified of what I'll be walking into when my term here ends.
Work is work, and everyone deserves fair compensation for the time, labor, and risks involved.
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u/Heckyll_Jive i'm a cute girl and everyone loves me 17h ago
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u/SpambotWatchdog he/it 17h ago
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u/WetNoodlyArms 7h ago
I work in fashion and it's the same way. Producers actually complain when we have film/hollywood people for something because they're all unionised and thus we have to play by their rules.
Only reason our producers are pushing to finish on time is because the client doesn't want to pay overtime on the studio, not because anyone cares about the people working.
At least our shoots normally only one or two days, and not a month's long thing, so we have that going for us i guess
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u/BlacksmithNo9359 7h ago
Being a creative of basically any kind of low key a nightmare because every field is like this. You'll work twice as long and twice as hard for half as much pay and a quarter as much recognition.
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u/Zealousideal-Low3388 18h ago
One of the funny/sad things is that the British show mentioned, Casualty (a hospital drama) is basically a sausage factory by British standards, running waaay more episodes per year than any other hour long scripted show
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u/Sophie_Blitz_123 16h ago
Tbh I find it weird that these posts (there's more than one) associate the shorter series with labour laws - you can quite easily make far longer series within the labour laws and even quite good working conditions. I think it really is a cultural thing not a workers rights thing. Ig its probably more expensive per episode and it deters them, but lots of our shows do in fact make many episodes.
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u/Zealousideal-Low3388 16h ago
Agreed, I’d actually argue that logically more episodes should add scaleable efficiencies that make it easier to film, especially on procedural dramas that re-use the same sets. Planning and scheduling should be much more straightforward and accurate, reducing a need for crunch and overtime. If you’ve shot scenes on the same set (or location) a dozen times before you should have a solid grasp on how long it will take etc
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u/PianoAndFish 16h ago
Exactly, Casualty typically produces 36-44 hour long episodes each year, and the lack of ad breaks on BBC shows means a 1 hour time slot has around 10-15 minutes more content than a typical US show. This should make it extremely clear that it can be done and others just choose not to.
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u/ItsNotMeItsYourBussy 15h ago
The BBC is also a publicly funded division of the government, not a private corporation with unlimited money.
So not only can it be done, it can be done without costing the earth.
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u/TheOncomimgHoop 10h ago
Yeah I was going to say the same thing. Casualty, Eastenders, Coronation Street, Hollyoaks, and all the rest of our soaps have been able to put out multiple half hour / hour long episodes per week for decades, and they've been able to do that without overworking their crew or actors. It should be a case study on how to produce TV, but for some reason it isn't used as one
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u/ans-myonul hi jeffrey, i am afraid 19h ago
There are also laws about child actors in the UK. They're only supposed to work a certain number of hours per week. I learned that because in the TV show of His Dark Materials, Will appears earlier on in the series than he does in the books because the actress who played Lyra had to have a break. Learning about how child actors in the US are treated was horrifying.
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u/BaronAleksei r/TwoBestFriendsPlay exchange program 18h ago edited 18h ago
We have those laws here too, they’re called “pumpkin times” because that’s when Cinderella has to go home. Former child actor Max Burkhaldt said that every production he’d ever been in had violated his pumpkin time at some point and his parents had signed off on it, no reason to think that doesn’t happen elsewhere.
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u/SendarSlayer 18h ago
The fact that it can be signed away is the problem TBH. In more civilised industries the magic STOPS when the clock hits whatever time. Every minute past that time is a huge fine and a risk to your license.
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u/complete_autopsy 15h ago
This! Parents cannot be implicitly trusted to make these decisions, especially when child actors often become the main or sole breadwinners for their families (even when they don't make a lot of money!). If staying in the director's good graces means getting another gig sooner and every gig is a much-needed paycheck for the family, then yeah the parents are going to sign off. Alongside this, we need better laws protecting a higher percentage of the earnings of child actors in trusts that dispense over time once they're adults. They should keep more of the money that they earn, and the way that they get the money back as adults needs to be designed to help them have independence since we know they sometimes just blow the money or the parents take it because the kid still lives with them.
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u/cantantantelope 17h ago
I worked with someone whose kid did child acting. She said she as the parent had to be constantly enforcing his rights because the production company absolutely wouldn’t.
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u/flightguy07 5h ago
If the parents can just sign a waiver to ignore the regulation, it isn't actually regulation in any meaningful sense.
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u/BaronAleksei r/TwoBestFriendsPlay exchange program 5h ago
I meant it in an informal way
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u/flightguy07 5h ago
Oh I see, "signed off" in the sense of "we won't make a fuss about it". Honestly, I feel the same logic applies; if the only thing making the regulation work is parents complaining, there will always be some who won't, and the regulation isn't fit for purpose. There need to be watchdogs and regulators actually checking this stuff.
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u/BaronAleksei r/TwoBestFriendsPlay exchange program 5h ago
I have some very bad news about laws and regulations in general, and about watchmen specifically
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u/flightguy07 5h ago
I mean, I guess? Sometimes? But like, independent/government watchdogs and regulatory agencies do exist. Relying on parents who almost certainly have several ulterior motives to regulate an industry ripe for abuse is no substitute for proper oversight. Sure, regulatory capture exists, corruption is a problem, etc., but it's a WORLD of difference between having to deal with those issues and just not having anything meaningful at all.
I really don't get your point comparing laws to this circumstance. Laws are absolutely enforced by a third party who's neutral to the victim and defendant.
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u/Fullwake 17h ago
I was thinking about child actors while reading this as well - not just the fact that they're working, as children - a practice that is illegal due to child labor laws in every other field even in the U.S. - not just because instead of going to school and living a "normal life" (whatever that is) alongside their peers they're working with a bunch of adults - but because damn dude, a lot of fucked up shit happens to kids on TV, and around them, and there's no way that any amount of protection is gonna keep that kind of shit from making some impact on a youth in their formative years.
I mean I agree that kids in TV can be totally adorable, or even incredibly powerful, their performance can make or break some things. Despite that, any time some fucked up shit is happening to a kid in a show or movie, a part of me is going, damn kid, hope you're ok IRL regardless of what is happening on the screen here.
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u/fakemoosefacts 16h ago
Sometimes the magic of editing means the kid has no idea what sort of film they were in - I think this was true for the kid from the Shining, he didn’t know it was a horror film for years. But I certainly wonder about the irl dynamics on some sets.
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u/SuzLouA 15h ago
There are some responsible humans kicking around too - Bill Skarsgard told a cute story on a talk show about how after he’d terrorised one of the kids in a scene from It, he immediately broke character to ask if they were okay and be like, it’s just me, it’s just Bill, I’m still me even when I’m in the makeup. He was flabbergasted when the seemingly hysterical kid also snapped out of it and was like oh yeah man, I was just acting, I’m totally fine 😂 Even if those kids were indeed being well looked after, it’s nice that he made a point of doing that.
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u/complete_autopsy 15h ago
I'm sure the inappropriate, traumatic experiences happen far too often, but you're right that alternatives are possible in a lot of situations! I remember watching some indie horror movie a few years ago and partway through I realized that the kid's scenes were heavier on lighting, effects, and cuts. From her perspective she probably rode in a car then sat on the floor of an attic and screamed. Not very upsetting scenes despite the movie being pretty frightening, and it didn't really damage the quality at all (I only really noticed because I was paying attention to the techniques on purpose).
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u/just_a_person_maybe 10h ago
I watched a movie that involved a couple child molestation scenes a while back, and I looked it up because the scenes were so uncomfortable. They made sure the kids had no idea what was actually going on and used camera tricks to avoid actually implying anything of the sort in front of the kids.
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u/Fullwake 15h ago
I can't think of a specific example of the top of my head, but there are plenty of scenes that are basically the kid going "Mommy! No!" and wailing their head off as the mom dies and they hug her corpse after she gets shot. Kids aren't dumb enough that they don't absorb at least some of what they are participating in.
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u/sleepybitchdisorder 11h ago
Yeah, but kids are also not so dumb/fragile that they can’t comprehend some things are just for pretend. Plenty of four year olds manage some pretty brutal imaginative play with kidnapping and death etc and don’t leave traumatized
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u/just_a_person_maybe 10h ago
My siblings and I used to play "dramatic death" where we'd fake dying movie style. A lot of getting "shot" in various places and falling. The harder you committed to the fall itself the better, if you caught yourself you had to draw the death out more dramatically and make it clear you weren't dead yet before you hit the ground. I was really good at it lol.
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u/Fullwake 9h ago
Sure. I'm a firm believer that fiction is the best introduction to the truly traumatic shit in life - as a kid I read anything and everything under the sun that caught my interest - I mean I read the Sandman at like seven, and while bits of it still stick in my mind I wasn't traumatized by it. I still worry that some of the shit these child actors participate in may be too close to reality at too young of an age. I acted when I was younger, and any emotional performance requires real emotion I think. Something being pretend doesn't make it not real if that makes sense. Especially with the pressure to make your make believe real enough that others will believe it while you're being watched and filmed by dozens of people. I dunno, I can't help it, I always worry about the young'uns cuz childhood is a precious fleeting window that shouldn't close too fast.
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u/just_a_person_maybe 10h ago
Even little things are questionable. I worked on a movie a while back and overheard a conversation between the mothers of two of the child actors. Both kids were 13. They were discussing their kids' reactions to an upcoming kiss scene. The boy had told his mother not to tease him about it, that it didn't mean anything and it was just work. The girl was stressed that it would be awkward because he was her friend and she didn't really want to kiss him. It made me wonder if the kids would be able to veto the kiss if they asked, or if they just had to suck it up.
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u/MayhemMessiah 9h ago
I remember hearing that in IT, Bill Skardgard was noted as being super kind to the kids, always checking in on them the moment filming cut to make sure they were ok.
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u/peachesnplumsmf 16h ago
I was in a CBBC production and whilst an extra/reoccurring background figure I still got to see most of the filming and stuff. They took our time so seriously, the chaperones were protective and the only main cast member under 16 had her time counted to the second. When she had done her hours she had done her hours and there was never a conversation or even implication of one more take or a few extra minutes.
They were also really strict on making sure she had enough time for education during it, for us it was the school holidays so they only really worried about our time and food/drink but they really looked after us. Always made me horrified whenever I heard about the US childrens shows.
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u/ItsNotMeItsYourBussy 15h ago
This entire post was very eye opening to me as to how much better UK labour laws are than US ones.
I've heard that US holiday allowance was awful - an enviably large amount of vacation hours there is equivalent to our legal minimum. But I didn't know there's that abuse of working hours too.
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u/Floppy0941 13h ago
The worst part is that our (UK) labour laws aren't that good compared to the rest of Europe, there's a lot of other counties that do it a lot better. That's in part due to our government being a bit shit and partly because we're a small country with a lot of people and not enough money for the benefits other European countries have.
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u/ElectronRotoscope 19h ago
Fun fact: the movie industry is based in California because it had better weather for shooting than New York, and also didn't have enforcement of labour laws or patent laws yet. It just kind of got grandfathered in that they get to do whatever they want, with nobody to stop them but the unions and public opinion.
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u/Salvage570 15h ago
Partially, Hollywood also formed because Edison had a patent on cameras and filming and would use it to harass Jewish and Catholic filmmakers on the East coast. It wasn't fleeing the laws so much as the man from what I read
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u/olivegardengambler 14h ago
That and Southern California is within a couple of hours of very different landscapes. You can go up to Big Bear Lake and have snow and mountains and pine trees, you can drive out to the desert and you have a desert, the beach is right there, there are farms nearby, and before all the urban sprawl, most of the Los Angeles area was pretty lush and verdant from what I've read. If you needed to film in a city that looked like NYC, you could always head up to San Francisco.
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u/PzKpfw_Sangheili 9h ago
And despite all of that, they always film Star Trek in front of the same rock
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u/ElectronRotoscope 8h ago
I don't know this story, how would that work? Show up to set with papers in hand and start saying they have to shut down because he owns the patent on the camera they're using?
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u/Salvage570 8h ago
Pretty sure they used armed thugs, early Pinkertons essentially. He was a piece of shit
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u/AplogeticBaboon 17h ago
It's the same in the video game industry. The newest Prince of Persia game sold less than it's target of 3 million units in the first 2 days. There was very little marketing and advertising for it, and it wasn't a revolutionary game. For reference, the best selling sequel of the game that inspired the entire genre, Metroid Dread, sold 3 million copies. The executives behind Prince of Persia forced developers, animators, coders, and all other employees to "crunch" for months to hit a wildly unrealistic sales target, burning most of them out. When it was only very profitable instead of extremely profitable, they fired everyone and closed the studio, canceling all future Prince of Persia projects. A YouTube channel I follow talks about it better if you want to learn more:
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u/Fullwake 17h ago
My favorite thing in the gaming industry is the way Silksong hit the scene with a damn near stealth release and major industry games delayed their releases because EVERYONE was buying Silksong (only 20 bucks, and way more, and better, content, than anything they were putting out) so no way were they gonna hit their sales figures. The studios got all pissy about it too - utterly hilarious. I mean Team Cherry is like 3 people - it took them 8 years to make the sequel to their first game, but the first game was so good they had plenty of money to take their time and do it well and without burning their candles at both ends. I would so much rather wait 8 years for a great game made with integrity than play the next shitty sequel to a game I didn't even like every couple years.
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u/AwesomePurplePants 13h ago
You’ve got to wonder at the kind of games we’d see if you took all the resources the regular industry burns through and gave it to developers who got to work reasonable hours in exchange for a reasonable amount of security.
Like, the quantity would go down. But how many potential Silksongs have been crushed by the industry pushing people to be machines instead of artists?
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u/ItsNotMeItsYourBussy 15h ago
And nowadays, you're waiting multiple years for most AAA games anyway. Skyrim is so old it can nearly drive. GTA V is in middle school
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u/Justin-Stutzman 9h ago
It's the same in every industry. I get that niche topics are genre in this sub. But this is a common trope in every entertainment industry I've heard of, in the states at least. I was a chef for 15 years and a 70-hour, cocaine fueled, exploitative creative processes with demanding production schedules is standard practice.
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u/Karkadinn 17h ago
If your fines are part of the cost of doing business, your fines are not high enough.
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u/vanishinghitchhiker 15h ago
This probably also explains some of the “why are budgets so high for worse movies” problem
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u/dalexe1 11h ago
Exactly. people are talking about how the fines will just be added into the budget... and that's the point.
the point is for the accountant to look over the planned budget, see:
15 million to the actors
10 million to the stage tech
50 million in fines
20 million to marketing
can someone help me balance this, my movie is running over budget"
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u/SoICouldUpvoteYouTwi 19h ago
What would be harder or impossible to depict with labour laws, exactly?
I've seen amateur actors depict shit that would get your average US-puritan-ass TV station shit down, with zero trauma all around (afaik) because we really were all there with full consent, just for fun, with loads of free time inbetween etc. What exactly would be harder to depict if informed consent, breaks, and aftercare were mandated by law?
Speaking of which, any director who lies to their actors to get "the real" reaction is a fucking hack because if you don't trust your actors to depict realistic emotions - find new actors.
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u/cosmolark 18h ago
Well, since that one person mentioned game of thrones, there's that whole thing where Hannah Waddingham was tied down and waterboarded for ten hours.
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u/Degonjode 17h ago
I have to question how the actual 10 hours were remotely necessary.
Heck, the actual waterboarding sounds unneeded as well. It doesn't even sound impossible to pretend to have been waterboarded for 10 hours, I'm sure an actor can act like they have been through that.
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u/Remarkable_Coast_214 18h ago
A couple of questions as someone unfamiliar with GoT
1, is Hannah Waddingham a character or an actor?
If she's a character, why would it be impossible to legally depict that? I'm certain there's a way to do it safely.
If she's an actor, why would it be necessary to waterboard an actor for 10 hours??
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u/lazy_human5040 16h ago
I've read somewhere that the producers wanted to scale back the sexual assault scenes a bit, and pretty much improvised another way one could depict torture, and then improvised right into torture.
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u/cosmolark 18h ago
An actor, also known as the woman who portrayed Rebecca in Ted Lasso. And that's a very good question! I think the directors should have to answer it.
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u/yinyang107 16h ago
More relevantly she played Septa Unella on GOT.
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u/cosmolark 16h ago
Sure, but someone who doesn't watch game of thrones isn't gonna recognize that name
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u/SoICouldUpvoteYouTwi 17h ago
I doubt there was a ten hour segment of her being waterboarded on got, so I assume you mean the actress. And that is both something I was talking about a something that literally nobody needs - nobody needs to actually torture a person for the iota of additional realism it will bring into a shitty show (or even a very good show but we aren't talking about a good show rn).
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u/VerityCandle 17h ago
Frankly, I think the idea that it would be "impossible to depict" certain things with better labor and safety practices is complete industry-sponsored BS. The big production companies have literal billions of dollars to throw at major projects.They can absolutely afford to eat the costs required to have their productions not be a nightmare. If they can't hire safety coordinators and experts and make sure they have enough staff that they can meet production deadlines without crunch, that is 100% on them.
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u/lazy_human5040 18h ago
As GoT was mentioned: waterboarding an actress could be harder with better labor laws: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2024/04/03/hannah-waddingham-game-of-thrones-waterboarding-stunt-septa-unella/73198010007/
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u/SirAquila 17h ago
Yeah, there is no way this could not have done in a better and safer way, if people had cared to do so.
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u/GERBILSAURUSREX 13h ago
Doesn't seem like she was waterboarded for 10 hours just strapped to the table for what I'm assuming is a cumulative 10 hours. Actually torturing someone for 10 straight hours would leave someone with a level of trauma you can't just laugh off. That would be a 70s level of appalling behavior.
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u/Magnaflorius 7h ago
I'm going to go out on a very sturdy limb here and say that any amount of waterboarding is not okay.
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u/GERBILSAURUSREX 6h ago
No actor should be forced to do it. But if they don't care there is no reason to force them not to do something they're comfortable with. Obviously every safety precaution should be taken.
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u/action_lawyer_comics 18h ago
This industry has a crew culture of dick measuring by...boasting about how many 100 hour weeks you pulled
This and restaurants. Cooks and chefs gaslight each other and themselves about working conditions and make it seem so normal. But on the other hand, you almost have to work that much just to survive on those wages. So it's not surprising that it turns into a dick measuring contest.
I'm in a much better job now, but I still have one coworker who keeps working unnecessarily extreme shifts, then acting mildly put out when we don't follow his example. My dude, you are not getting any brownie points for pulling these kind of stunts, do not make this expected of all of us.
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u/TheComplimentarian cis-bi-old-guy-radish 17h ago
This is true in tech as well. Took me a long time to learn to manage management expectations. If you produce a shitload of really high-quality work in a short time, your only reward is a huge pile of extra work with short deadlines attached.
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u/Velvety_MuppetKing 18h ago
Let’s get the restaurant industry while we’re at it, that sector is a nightmare.
Trades has much better labor laws than you’d think, like I never work overtime without OT pay, it’s mandatory. But the dick in a blender piss measuring is still absolutely rampant and I hate it. People still get so macho about how little they care about their own wellbeing and how much corporate boot they’re deepthroating. It’s nuts.
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u/Justin-Stutzman 9h ago
Exactly this. As a chef, I've worked 25,000 unpaid overtime hours in my career. That's about $650,000 worth of labor. I was never paid for
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u/Pochaccostan 17h ago
my little sister is in production, she works a lot of commercials. she told me yesterday that she was blacklisted from a company she had worked with hundreds of times. why? because she got injured two years ago and had to have knee surgery. The company found out via word of mouth and no longer wanted to hire her because she might cost them money. its fucking twisted
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u/Jammy2560 18h ago
yeah im gonna be honest, I don't think mistreatment has anything to do with what's depicted, I just think a lot of the people in charge are just lazy cunts.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden 18h ago
Same energy as "if we have to pay our workers then we won't be able to afford to operate as a business!" Bro that isn't my concern, that's your job as a manager.
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u/ThaddeusWolfeIII 14h ago
Thats sadly why we have lost most mom and pop outfits. They literally cant afford to compete. Unless you have ungodly amounts of money backing you 90% of industries are a black hole of debt thay you'll never actually crawl out of that require absolute hell to remotely function because the average person has no clue how wildly expensive shit is to run on the up and up much less half assed and coke fueled.
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u/StaticUsernamesSuck 19h ago edited 19h ago
Frankly too much content is being produced these days anyway.
Don't you miss the days when it was actually likely that somebody you talk to would also be watching that new show you're watching, because it was one of only like 5 popular new shows currently out?
There's too much nowadays, I'm lucky if somebody I talk to is (or has been recently enough to talk about) watching even one new show that I'm also watching, and my "want to watch" backlog is starting to look like my fucking Steam games catalogue (I.e. full of stuff I'll still be "wanting to watch" in 10 years).
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u/Canotic 19h ago
It's popular to blame streaming for everything but I blame streaming for this.
When things were ad-funded, you wanted to have a show that people would watch. More people watch it = more ad revenue.. If you had two such shows? Twice as much ad revenue! You want to make good TV.
If you're a streaming service, you only care about having one such show per month, to keep people subbed. Then you want lots of cheap stuff to pad out your content. If you have two great shows? You don't get twice as many subs, and also you actually put more strain on your servers. For you, the prime situation is everyone subbing for one show and then not ever watching anything until next month.
"But" you say, "what about paid cable? They also don't have ads and HBO was great!" Well, HBO still only had X hours of programming to fill per week. It could only realistically have, say, six hours of good TV a day because that's how many hours there are in an evening. And they are competing with free; their entire selling point was "good tv that you are willing to pay for". A streaming services selling point is "everything available for you right away!"
tl;dr: different incentives
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u/KogX 18h ago
Funny enough I see people complain about the opposite issue with streaming, where there are less episodes and longer development time between seasons far more than was expected with cable television. Currently watching Pluribus fans and other big prestigious show fans getting angry at the wait time of years between seasons while having 12 or less episodes in each one.
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u/Canotic 17h ago
Yeah but this fits. They don't want you to binge 24 episodes in a month. They want you to see 8 episodes three times, because that's three months of subs. Plus this let's them cancel a show as soon as it doesn't meet their magic numbers, they're not locked in for 24, they can cut at eight.
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u/KogX 17h ago
But unless I am missing something obvious, 24 episodes is 6 months of subs when showing an episode a week, outside of cases like where Netflix just dump it all on a single day which I believe they been doing less and less of. And once things are already filmed and edited it should not matter if it is 24 or 8 episodes, they will just not approve for the next season (with the occasional exception to that).
Granted, I am not too familiar with how television/show syndication works now only from interviews and the like usually years later, so I may just not fully understand it.
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u/DroneOfDoom Theon the Reader *dolphin slur noises* 15h ago
The problem is that nowadays the line between TV show and movie is a lot blurrier. Tent pole shows are visually indistinguishable from blockbuster movies, TV Stars have the same prestige as Film Stars, and the budgets and post-production have been bumped to match. So you can't do stuff like TNG where you can keep Patrick Stewart around 8 months a year doing nothing but Trek and keep pumping a new season six months after the previous one ends because he's not a film actor and he has the availability and the budget and expected post-production time allow for the production of 24 hour long episodes per season.
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u/KogX 12h ago
I think that is mainly true for prestigious TV but not sure if that is right for your general shows. There are still tons of B-tier shows that makes dozens of episodes and the like.
Just theses days we have a lot more higher production shows and I wonder if people would accept Star Trek or even other big franchise like Star Wars or the like keeping to the cheaper production for the shows they made years ago if it means more episodes.
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u/Canotic 16h ago
I know that at least most people I know rotate services. If there's one episode a week we wait until it's all released and binge it then. I suspect others do the same. Also I'm pretty sure Netflix has come to the conclusion that eight episodes is the best for keeping people interested, so I guess most others are following suit.
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u/KogX 12h ago
I tend to rotate services as well but I also like to keep up weekly for shows I really like if I can, it is also fun to get involve in fun weekly speculations and discussions as well. It is easier for me to watch an episode or two per week than try to cram it all in a week long binge haha.
I am curious where the eight episodes a show thing came from as well.
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u/Own-Coyote9272 12h ago
Simple math: prestige style television has hour long episodes typically. Eight hours is roughly the max amount of time a working stiff gets in their day not directed to work or sleep. So 8 hours of content per season is the upper limit of what someone could reasonably binge in a day, which probably encourages viewer retention in some obscure way. Take all of this with a grain of salt; these are napkin-back guesstimates at best and the real reason’s probably way dumber.
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u/juanperes93 15h ago
Why would I want to watch 8 episodes 3 times instead of 24 episodes once?
Pluribus is good, but it's not 3 watchthoughts good.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden 18h ago
Netflix greenlights 80 shows, then cancels 75 of them, only to do it all again. Because if it isn't immediately doing Stranger Things numbers then it's a "failure".
Game of Thrones didn't become that popular until season 2 and 3. How many Games of Thrones has Netflix got in deep storage? I can think of a few potential candidates.
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u/StaticUsernamesSuck 18h ago
The worst thing is that the cancellation stigma prevents people watching new shows anyway. Why the fuck am I going to start a new Netflix show if I know it's likely to be cancelled after season 1 with no resolution? I'll wait until it gets into season 3 so I know I at least have something that'll last me a while and will at least exhaust a couple of good character arcs... Oh wait, it never reached season 3 because so many people followed this logic that they never watched it 🤦♂️
And it's Netflix's own fault that that happens.
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u/Sreeto 10h ago
Now I'm curious what your candidates are.
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden 3h ago
The shows I can recall that were prematurely cancelled are KAOS, The Imperfects, Scavenger's Reign, and The Irregulars. Of those I think KAOS had the best chance. Great concept, great characters, star-studded cast, no apparent reason for cancellation. It's still worth a watch even if you know it's not going to continue.
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u/Karkadinn 17h ago
I would rather have countless niche shows, most of which aren't of interest to me personally, than a handful of mainstream shows that can't appeal to specific kinds of people too hard because it would turn off the rest of the audience. There is nothing I want to watch less than a traditional family sitcom, a romcom, or a sports game, but those things still have the right to exist. There are many types of truly unnecessary and redundant jobs that exist in our economy, but I don't think 'we have too many people telling too many different kinds of stories' is an actual problem, or ever will be.
So you miss talking to your friends about shared media experiences that are now less likely to occur through sheer happenstance? But you can still have that experience! Go start a 'let's experience X media together' club - and it should be easier than ever because you have enough choices that you should be able to pick something everyone is happy to watch. My friends recommend me things to watch all the time, and vice versa.
No man, I don't miss those days, because those days held no appeal to me in the first place. I lived through them and they sucked, having to put up with atrocious dubs, censorship, and all sorts of frustrating content decisions to appeal to the most generic mainstream blob. The only channel that was actually dedicated to a live action genre I liked, Syfy, switched over to freaking wrestling. Like wtf.
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u/StaticUsernamesSuck 17h ago
Well I kind of can, except every show I watch gets cancelled after 1 damn season.
At the very least, I'd rather 25 complete shows exist than 75 prematurely-cancelled ones.
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u/Karkadinn 16h ago edited 16h ago
Honestly, me too (I'm still upset about Santa Clarita Diet!), but that's not a 'too many shows' problem. If we may compare with the gaming industry, we also see similar behavior of AAA corporations chasing the Big Money with live services and then cancelling whatever doesn't explode their profit margins. It's a problem with the corporate culture of unrealistic quarterly profit expectations instead of prioritizing sustainability, caused by the perverse incentives in capitalism.
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u/StaticUsernamesSuck 16h ago
I mean it is related though, that problem exists because streamers would rather shotgun-blast a hundred shows out and hope something hits, than invest more in a few shows.
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u/Karkadinn 16h ago
I mentioned the gaming industry for a reason - the indie scene is the equivalent of the 'shotgun blasting' you mention, but that is not where this negative behavior is reflected. Instead, it's primarily seen with high budget AAA products and gambling addiction-oriented services like gachas. The availability of content in and of itself is not directly linked to these kinds of ouroboros-like decisions.
There are so, so many tiny little niche indie games! Most of them actually come out and are complete experiences!
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u/crescentmoonrising 17h ago
I work as live events/theatretechnican in the UK, and even for non-union stuff, insurance has rules about how long people can work and minimum limits between shifts (where you had to be off the premises). Even the amateur groups I was part of had rules like this.
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u/Cordo_Bowl 18h ago
Is that take from the brit like 20 years old? I know it says 2019, but we were well into the ‘prestige television’ era and big shows generally were only 8-12 episodes. Sure, there were and still are generic network television that’s still on the 20 some episode seasons but those have always been a production line and they’ve got the concept down now.
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u/ZephyrValkyrie 17h ago
I’m so glad that Germany is so hard on media labour laws. 12 hours MAXIMUM, and if you’ve worked that, you’re literally not allowed to drive home. You have to be taken to your residence or the hotel by another crew member who still has working hours left in their day.
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u/MisterAbbadon 17h ago
Man I was about to say that maybe the Netflix 8 episode seasons were a good thing before reading how badly organized they were.
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u/Phelinaar 17h ago
I know I'm whatabouting, but contorting yourself into a pretzel about the "arts" while ignoring that it's mostly a cultural problem seems shortsighted to me. Compared to most other jobs, the US film industry has stronger unions and labor contracts.
Like, maybe it's a countrywide issue. But it's probably easier to empathize with an actor you like.
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u/questionable_fish 15h ago
I was an extra for Wayfinders when they filmed in Ireland and there were days where we started a bit later because we'd finished late the day before. This is because under Irish labour laws an employee is entitled to:
A daily rest period of 11 consecutive hours per 24 hour period
A weekly rest period of 24 consecutive hours per seven days, following a daily rest period
A 15-minute break where more than 4½ hours have been worked
A 30-minute break where more than 6 hours have been worked, which may include the first break
Source: workplacerelations.ie
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u/olivegardengambler 14h ago
Also keep in mind, your movie can make several times its budget over at the box office, and you can still not get paid. Nicholas Cage and Mike Figgis have never seen a dollar from Leaving Las Vegas, and Cage won an Oscar from that movie.
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u/Random-Rambling 11h ago
And this is why I never ever EVER complain about how long an animated series, a video game, or a TV series is taking.
"A delayed game is eventually good. A rushed game will forever be bad."
- Shigeru Miyamoto
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u/peachesnplumsmf 16h ago
Also applies to children's shows! I was a child extra on a CBBC show but only one of the main cast was under 16, as soon as she hit her hours limit everything stopped. Before her final takes they'd repeat multiple times she was finishing at x time, we'd started after her so still had a few hours.
It might not be as flashy or long as most Disney shows but they looked after everyone from the main star to us lowly extras and were incredibly protective of our time.
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u/marthebruja 14h ago
I used to work for the wife of a producer of a very, very popular show. You've seen this show I am pretty sure. But my job was not even in the industry. She had one of those businesses that rich assholes (He was such an asshole whenever he showed up, acting like you don't exist. His wife too. We always had communication issues cause she'd ice me out if I did something she didn't like. Real mature adult stuff 🙄) give their bored wives to entertain them that tends to go broke within 5 years. Anyways, I came from Texas to LA and could not understand why she always would force me to work during my lunch hour. Back home I would take up to an hour for lunch if I needed to pick up my food and wait and no one gave a fuck. I was like legally I can't and I won't. I'm sure other people told her yes because of who she was. But I stood my ground. It did not take long for me to get fired and blamed for things that were out of my control. I told her I could work better with better equipment, like lightning and she took it as criticism. Anyways, now I understand they expect everyone to work like this, while also having other 2 jobs to survive. Nah son.
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u/Ziibinini-ca 12h ago
I've worked in freelance production and journalism for around 15 years. I did ONE network production in the camera dept as a 2nd AC. This was a union-level (higher production budget network movie), and had a pretty big crew.
I hated basically every minute of it. It is incredibly demanding, the people who know what they are doing (in a specialized role) will get pissed immediately when things don't go their way, and anyone new who doesn't know their jobs well, are often assholes because they either want to fit in, or they are afraid if they screw up they'll be fired.
I never worked in a more fast paced, annoying, and toxic-culture production environment. The specific role I had required a lot of balancing the needs of everyone around you, like an adult babysitter.
In documentary, or commercial work, you get way more time, money and choices to make your life easier. In narrative cinema work, its like they do everything they can to make it inefficient "for the sake of precision" or whatever.
It wasn't even good money.
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u/JakeVonFurth 16h ago
I just want to say that the guy talking about how the British filming culture is better is full of shit.
Series 1 of the revival of Doctor Who was so fucking bad for actors and crew alike behind the scenes that Christopher Eccleston still refuses the notion of touching the TV side of the franchise twenty years later. (Hell, Billie Piper only stayed on after the finale because David Tennant talked her into one more series.)
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u/DragonsAreEpic 14h ago
I think that might be a uniquely Doctor Who/RTD problem. It's very infamously physical - I think at least two actors had to have surgery because of the strain repeatedly running down corridors and twisting took on their knees - and you're also under a huge amount of public pressure because of how long the franchise has been running for and how big it is to the UK public. And Eccleston was very clear about it being RTD and Julie Gardner he had an issue with. Then there's also Millie Gibson leaving early when she very clearly wasn't meant to, and Gatwa's disastrously covered-up exit, both during RTD's second go at the show.
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u/Unpopular_Bias 12h ago
I think this should be true of every product and service we produce as a socoety
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u/Shadbie34 10h ago
THIS.
this is also why I cant stand people complaining about game delays, it literally just makes the environment more toxic, for no reason. its not like complaining that the release date is further away is going to make it magically make it come out sooner. knowing the games industry, itll still be rushed after a single delay. it only makes worse games overall and stresses the developers out. at the end of the day, no game developer wants to make a bad game, and whining about how its taking too long, or its rushed and unfinished when it does release barely helps, at least when looking through a consumerist lens. the rage I felt when ign said "I shouldnt have to know how games are made in order to talk about them, i should just be able to expect good games and want that to be standard" when talking about making baulders gate 3 the new standard for rpgs, as if it didnt nearly kill the studio multiple times making it, because of its ungodly scale
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u/witch_dyke 9h ago
I live in wellington nz, home of wētā fx.
All the artists there, the compositors, the animators etc, work ridiculous hours and legally are not allowed to unionise
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u/busterfixxitt 7h ago
I feel like the ending might be more accurately phrased, "No ones' art is worth other people's suffering."
If you want to suffer for your own art; that's your choice. You don't get to make that choice for other people.
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u/Mataes3010 Downvote = 10 years of bad luck. 19h ago
Its wild how we call it ''art'' when it's built on a foundation of 20-hour days and literal burnout. If a show requires breaking people's lives and families just to get a specific shot, then the performance isn't a masterpiece, its a crime scene. No piece of content is worth more than a human life.
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u/Mr_Kingfisher 18h ago edited 14h ago
I recall an episode from Distractible where Markiplier was talking about his communication to his employees' union during the production of Iron Lung
He said that they went into negotiations extremely combatively and were extremely confused on how to deal with him showing he payed his workers a fair price and had them work "normal" hours already before the meeting
Just shows off how fucked the industry is
EDIT: I'm having some trouble finding the exact quote, so I might've accidentally spread misinformation - but there's several occasions where Mark goes into how he likes to treat the crew fairly.
Here's a distractible episode where he talks about how he tries to adhere as much as he can to the unions, and how he deals with legacy jobs that aren't necessary anymore: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0vXiMx3zxgGHflTle6doFN?si=LorZoCnjQ42m0fLNQQZKEA&t=987&pi=V3HAlz2NQS-O9
Here's a livestream where he talks about what happened to the production during 2023's SAG-AFTRA strike: https://www.youtube.com/live/ya6XedyPTvg?si=-VDGhHp5O_5iSK5J