tellymole.com

So first off, apologies must be made for the length of time inbetween blogs. 5 months or something like that? The obvious excuses would be that I’ve been super busy, which I have, but then there have been a couple of lazy weekends too. Suffice to say, the blog is alive and well, just slightly neglected.

So what’s been happening in TV in the past few months? Well the credit crunch still seems to have a firm grip on the industry… Even the BBC, who don’t have to worry about advertising revenues seem to be as sluggish as ever in their commission processing. There are fewer commissions in general and they’re harder to get than ever before. It goes without saying that budgets are looking about as grim as I’ve ever seen them, which sort of brings me around to what I wanted to talk about today; the cheapening of TV and poor pay and conditions as a result. I touched on elements of the issue in my rant on the Sony Z1 a few months ago. That was more about production values really, but you can certainly conclude that low production values quite often will be stuck over the top of a particularly shitty budget, like a manky old plaster clinging to the infected flesh surrounding a unsightly gaping wound. (Too strong? Nah, I’ll leave that analogy in for now).

But a bigger problem, I think, is that of freelancer wages. I don’t know about anyone else, but a couple of years ago when script writers in the US all simultaneously threw their pens down and shouted ‘NO MORE’, I couldn’t help but think ‘You bunch of absolute bastards’. Not because they disrupted a stream of awesome HBO Dramas..and ‘Heroes’ (well, maybe a little for this reason), but mainly because I instantly became furiously jealous of the strength of their union.

Its hard to imagine that happeneding within the UK television industry, isn’t it? Do we have just cause for such a revolution? Probably. As a whole we’re expected to take on  more work for less or equal pay. We’re working to tighter budgets, multi-tasking like never before and all while delivering programmes with supposedly the same level of quality. Is this fair? Its not uncommon to see jobs like this on productionbase; ‘Self-Shooting Producer/Director with fluent Japanese must have own FCP suite’.. Undoubtedly paying sub 1k a week.

Is it within our power to anything about it? Yeah, I think so. Now might not be the most appropriate time to begin a revolution, though. Even before the current financial crisis people were relieved to be in work in the freelance world. Now more than ever, there are hundreds of people would take a piss-poor weekly rate over unemployment. My worry is that even once the resession subsides, rates and conditions will continue along the same shitty path that they were long before we were talking about bankers bonuses and negative equity.

Think about how sickening it is when purchasing your Oyster card top-up, knowing that the driver of your tube train is enjoying a nice, steady 36k per annum, 38 days holiday a year, and a health plan to rival a top city executive…not to mention free travel across London. How do these jammy bastards do it? Union. And people need the tube. Well guess what, people need ‘the tube’ too!!

What on earth would happen if suddenly the freelance world went on strike? I’m pretty sure there would be suicides if suddenly there was no X-Factor. You can bet that even amongst a sea of tax-dodgers, benefit scammers and general lay-about scumbags… even the poorest of the poor would rather sell their children to some weird child circus (I’m assuming they exist) than ditch their subscription to Sky or Virgin. So how would the nation cope if suddenly their screens went blank? Would they JUST watch American TV? Here’s hoping that they’d miss out humble contributions.

In order for that to happen of course, we’d have to ensure widespread union membership throughout the industry. While there are still thousands of young-uns coming out of media courses willing to sell their kidneys to work in telly, it just aint gonna happen. The sad fact remains… If YOU don’t want that self-shooting-sound-recording-editing-japanese-speaking-trainee/junior-series producer role for £800 a week, some other cheeky fucker will. And the programme will be shit. But it’ll come in on budget and some mindless morons will love it and make a Facebook group about it too, while you’re at home gutted that someone else got your job because you got precious about how much money you were after….. ‘well not next time!’ you’ll tell yourself… ‘next time I’ll just take the bloody job!’

This is the world as the mole sees it at the moment. It needs to change, but I’m being completely hypocritical by spouting all of this nonsense without doing something about it myself. Maybe that’s the problem.. I find it ‘only just acceptable’ at the moment. In the same way that they seem to set train ticket prices ‘only just’ cheaper than if you drove to work, paid the congestion charge and parked. They know you’ll eat the shit sandwich because its almost too much hassle to complain. Rates are bad, but you can just about survive on them. Workload increases, but I’ll just end up staying in the office later. Crews keep getting smaller, but I’ll just do more of it myself. Programmes feel more and more like, ‘that wouldn’t have been acceptable 10 years ago’, but nobody cares now anyway. You see? A culture of acceptance has crept in! Will I ever be compelled to stand up and rally around support for a strong union? Maybe not. Maybe I’ll just pussy out and quit TV, bitter and miserable like so many others that just give up and start lecturing in a media faculty.

Quick show of hands then…who else is willing to stand up and fight?….

The Mole

There’s a recurring cycle in this business, whereby it seems a few weeks after you start a new contract – you’re on the lookout for a new one. If you’re lucky or extremely well-connected you’ll find yourself on a good run of back-to-back contracts, unless of course you’re one of those jammy gits who’s landed themselves a nice cushy ‘staff’ position (for those of you who actually believe these types of roles are cushy, staff doesn’t mean permanent, like a job for life… it purely means; ‘you’re employed here until our commissions dry up and then you’re out on your arse’). Anyway, all I’m assuming that you’re aware that a freelance TV world exists…

I want to talk about the conditions in that weird little void we all find ourselves in sometimes, that magical place in between contracts where something, somewhere has gone horribly wrong. Maybe that special commission which your friend told you was ‘just about to be green-lit’ didn’t happen, or you weren’t able to coincide your last finish date exactly with the start date of this new thing, or whatever… fact is, you’re now out of work and looking frantically for something worthwhile or at least something that pays ok. For those new to the industry, this can seem quite alien and strange. You life can draw parallels with that of a jobbing actor in Hollywood, you’re forced to wait tables and pull pints while looking around for work that might pay you a couple of hundred quid a week (assuming they’re paying you at all). For the more senior of us, we feel annoyed with ourselves that our supposedly extensive list of contacts have let us down on this occasion and we’re reduced to the lowly and embarrassing levels of sending out CV’s and cold-calling companies that we’ve not worked with before. The fact is, it can happen to anyone, because if you’ve been working in TV for any length of time, you will have realised by now that the ‘right place, right time’ element of getting any job in telly places a massive part.

But don’t worry! There are plenty of things in place to help you through this dark period. First off, we’ve got job ads in Media Guardian, Broadcast Freelancer, et al. Fine, if you’re going for a job at ‘the beeb’ and can afford to be out of work for another 3 months while they take you through a simple 7-part recruitment process, or if you’re after a job as an ‘in-house scheduler’ or ‘technical supervisor’. For those of us with dreams of more than a thankless £19k a year, we need to try and dig a little deeper.

So what else is on offer? Mandy.com? Productionbase? Well, you would have thought so. Mandy still seems to be the place to go if you fancy working for NO money whatsoever. I can’t believe they still have a function to search for ‘unpaid’ or ‘lo-paid’ jobs if you fancy it. Why the fuck would I fancy that? Oh yeah, I forgot, it looks good on my CV. Apparently. Productionbase actually take the biscuit as far as con-artists are concerned though. For months we received emails promising us brand new and exciting content, but when they launched their new site late last year – we found that it was exactly the same set of tools, set out in a different colour scheme with the inclusion of a new method of displaying showreels and media, although now you have to pay hundreds of pounds a year to display it. Thanks pb. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do more when I’m looking for work  than spend more of my dwindling supply of cash on stupid productionbase things that I used to get for free with my subscription. Turds.

The answer is simple, save that money you’re about to chuck at productionbase or the premium bits of broadcast and put the money towards doing things your own way. Don’t be lazy, you can do it. How many jobs has pb ever got you anyway? Seriously. How many ? More than three? Were they good? Anyone calling you because they found your CV on productionbase is scraping the barrel, because they exhausted the list of people they actually want to work with and they’ve begrudgingly turned to a list of people they know nothing about. It really isn’t the best way to work. They’ll probably offer you a lower rate, too. That money you’re about to pay someone else to do the job for you, you might as well do yourself. Nobody is going to put as much effort in finding you a job than you are, seeing as, erm, you’re you. Do your research, find out who’s who at each indie you’re going to be contacting if you don’t already know. Contact them individually, address them by their name, show you know something about them – but not too much to seem creepy. Send HARD COPIES of your CV as well as emails, I can’t stress how important this is – you’ll be surprised how often they get picked up, even if its a year down the line.  If you’re desperate and you’re out of work, you need to plan a full-scale assault on the industry to make sure you get work.

Fancy online galleries of your showreels? Simple, that can be done yourself , you don’t need to pay productionbase to do it. If you insist on having a productionbase account – you can still link directly to your own website from you pb page and have all that nice shiny video content on there for a fraction of the price. A domain name will set you back from £3 a year, hosting on a really snazzy web host (which will make your content look awesome in a simple ‘drag-and-drop’ interface) will cost a comfortable £5 a month and there’s plenty of free software lying around on the internet that will turn your impressive showreel into a web-friendly video. There are snakes in the industry that are more interested in lining their own pockets than actually helping to find freelancers work.

Luckily most of us are able to find work, at least most of the time. I think if you’re finding it tough all year round – there’s probably something wrong. It’s tough, but it’s not that tough. As much as people like to moan that it’s getting harder and harder, I’ve actually found it easier as my career has progressed. I guess if I was a cameraman and I had shooting APs snatching up all my jobs, then I might have something to grumble about – but thankfully, I’m not. I guess maybe it’s karma, for all those grumbling cameramen who like to whinge if a shoot overruns by half an hour and moan if there’s not enough rocket in their ‘Pret’ sandwiches.

I’ve normally reached the end of post, fairly happy that I’ve driven home something I think is particularly to-the-point – but today, I’m not sure exactly what it is I’ve written about. Erm, okay – how to handle things when you’re out of work? Career advice?…

..okay, I’ve just read back through. This post doesn’t really seem to have much point to it at all, it’s been a bit of a ramble. Good job I’m not getting paid to blog, eh? Well hopefully you’ve at least identified with some of the points I’ve made today and maybe I’ve given you some food for thought regarding chucking your money down the drain in between contracts.

That’s all for today. Something better to talk about soon, I’m sure.

The Mole