Welcome to Zombieland

OMG, look, there is a Zombie-

Stumbling around, blind to everything.

Over there, another one, eyes closed, wickedly pretends to be asleep in the middle of all the mayhem.

And here, oh no, this one is getting into a car, about to drive away, taking his dangerous infection with him.

Welcome to Zombie-land. Welcome to North America’s film sets.

Here we are, with the Zombies who work “below the line” (the wage earners, who do not get a bonus or a percentage) and behind the camera, sometimes up to 18 hours per day – and very seldom less than 12 hours, five days a week and sometimes even six.

If that isn’t enough, every workday begins at a different time…shifting shifts, so to say. Starting Monday morning at 6 am, Wednesday at 10 am and Friday at 4 pm and consequently finishing when the sun comes up on Saturday, is considered a typical week. 

A new name was even created for the end-of-the-week-phenomenon, “Fraturday.”

There is no extra pay for night-work, which seems to increase the temptation for the networks to do it consistently.

Jet-lagged every weekend, without the need to spend money on travelling.

During the workweek, there is no time for anything but work. 

Crazy ideas like meeting friends in the evening or reading bedtime stories to children are quickly forgotten since one never knows when the work will end.  

If the daily target is not met, the lunch hour gets pushed, and/or halved (all this compensated through the payment of fines), and more overtime is added. 

A second meal, to be eaten while working, gets delivered around the 13th work-hour. 

Other measures, well proven not to work either are: cutting into the turnaround between work-days, pushing call times for the next day, adding whole weeks to the shooting schedule, hiring a second smaller team for second-unit shots, and increasing the work hours for post-production to fix the mistakes of the sleep-deprived shooting crew. 

This results in an endless loop of exhaustion, mistakes, lack of communication, diminished creativity and problem-solving skills … more overtime…and more meetings.

The crisis management is done by people, who are neither authorized to cut down the overloaded schedule nor to change the way the work is done.  Additionally, they are at least as tired as the shooting crew. 

Real decisions lie somewhere in Network-heaven, where the belief in the fairy tale of “this is how it was always done in the film industry” (not right, even as recent as 30 years ago the hours were much shorter) still lingers, on top of shareholders counting any additional cent spent for equipment and labor because more days spell higher costs for them.

The truth is that a standard 8-hour work-day does not pay a living wage. Questionable, meanwhile, is the assumption that working long hours is proof of commitment or enthusiasm, and that long workdays are more productive than short ones.

“Brent’s Rule,” named after Camera Assistant Brent Hershman (who died falling asleep at the wheel after working 19 hours) tried to implement a maximum 14-hour workdays for the Film and Television industry, so far without success.

Since then many more film-workers have died, been injured in car crashes, or barely scraped by.

Meanwhile, in the real world, more and more research concludes that shift work and extremely long hours are indeed awful for one’s health.  Depression, heart disease, obesity and, according to the newest study, even Alzheimer’s, are related to a disrupted Circadian Rhythm and lack of sleep. Some researchers go as far as claiming that sleeping only 4 to 5 hours per night is comparable to being legally drunk.

In the 2006 Documentary “Who Needs Sleep” by Haskell Wexler, Hollywood workers still looked with longing at Canada’s labour laws.

Things have changed since then.

By now, the film-productions in Canada are exempt from all rules restricting hours and setting minimum standards for turnarounds and break periods. 

To get away with all this and not be legally responsible for the impact, the networks need to be quite creative. 

What they came up with includes the complete outsourcing of labour and equipment, lobbying for relief from labour laws in the name of job creation, designing contracts that are nothing short of legal art-works, and even humane society watchers (from L.A.) that make sure that worms and oysters get treated better than the crews.

One cannot even blame foreign competition for the worsening of working conditions in the Entertainment industry.  Film and Television work is highly unionized, but the Union leaders seem to entirely agree that long hours are justified if somehow compensated. 

You might wonder why you should care about film-work.

 Well, first, the same people that work these crazy hours then get into their cars and drive home on public roads and highways, often for quite long drives, since the distance one must travel to work expanded even faster than the work hours.

Second, if Labor Laws can get totally ignored even for such a non-essential industry like the entertainment industry, what does this mean for emergency services or air controllers and pilots. 

Third, we should expect from a Union that operates North America wide to fight as ONE, instead of letting every one of its chapters be played against the others. 

Fourth, while the profit gets privatized, the health and social costs are there for all to bear. 

Finally, this might be the reason for the very tiresome decade-long explosion of zombie movies. All the exhausted writers need to do is look at the crew to observe what life without sleep and shift regulation accomplishes.

What needs to be done? 

More money and fewer hours would probably lead too much higher productivity.

Directors and show-runners, who know their job and come prepared, might help as well.

Having the Tech-Union, Actors-, Writers- and Directors Guilds fight together in all North America for shorter hours would even be better.

MARCH 14, 2019