Written evidence submitted by ReelTime Media
Submission for DCMS Call for Evidence into British Film and High-End TV, focusing on the following questions:
The above question is relevant to our work and consultants and trainers in flexible working in film and TV.
In general, the terms of reference of this Call for Evidence are misguided because they show little awareness of the need to renew film and TV production by inducting a sustainable model – instead the Call emphasises old dependencies on ideas of heritage and purely economic incentives. We would instead like to argue for attending to the production culture to sustain the industry, which will require significant inward investment from the industry and government, and which cannot come at the expense of already parlous working conditions.
The current independent production model is broken. Freelancers, who form the majority of workers in the industry, are in crisis. They work punitively long hours (Swords, Mayne, Boardman, Ozimek, & SMTJ, 2022) and this is connected to an ongoing crisis of mental health (FTVC, 2023; Wilkes, Carey, & Florisson, 2020). Bullying is endemic (Raalte, Wallis, & Pekalski, 2023). A dependency on sporadic work engenders precarity which disallows financial stability or resilience. This perpetuates the long-hours culture because workers try to cram in as much work as possible, which increases the fragility of mental health. There is a skills crisis because people are leaving the industry (BFI, 2022; Wallis & Raalte, 2022), not because there is a recruitment problem.
People are leaving the industry because they cannot earn enough, they are burnt out, or they cannot do simple things like see their children. Without keeping the mid-to-senior level workers, those coming into the industry will progress too fast, inevitably fail and leave, or do such a bad job they cost productions more because their mistakes have to be repaired through costly reshoots or in post. This is exclusionary; it is a broken economic as well as care model.
Additionally, the British industry is overly dependent on the American, and subject to consequences of events in the US industry – see the current US writers and actors strikes and the negative repercussion here of increased unemployment among freelancers.
In adapting for the future, the precarity of film and HETV needs to be addressed through developing of a robust and fair indigenous industry. This will attract, train and retain workers, and over time ameliorate the crises that are currently engulfing the industry and threatening its significant economic value to the UK.
Building sustainability in UK film and HETV:
- Scheduled commissioning rounds: having a transparent commissioning cycle will allow production companies to make a financial plan, employ people on a longer-term basis and retain staff.
- Graduate tracking: funding to facilitate entry for media graduates from universities into commissioning organisations and production companies – these need to be post-graduate schemes of multiple years which can be evaluated to ensure a diverse entry is sustained across class, region, ethnicity, gender and ensure inclusion of disabled workers.
- Childcare provision: using the WonderWorks model[1], childcare provision can be made at point of commission by integrating a childcare allowance into the budget.
- Flexible working: to counter the long-hours, integration of job-sharing, WFH and part-time work needs to be emphasised as best practice by commissioning organisations, who can demand jobs be advertised as open to flexible working patterns and make it a condition of releasing the budget that freelancers are given the opportunity to work flexibly.
- Inclusion of progressive roles as standard practice: these include Intimacy Coordinators, Wellbeing Facilitators, Access Coordinators, Sustainability Officers and protect the welfare of freelancers, diversity of staff and environmental impact of productions – they need to be included at point of commissioning / greenlighting.
- Evaluation of production companies: commissioning organisations have claimed to have Duty of Care at the centre of their culture[2] but it remains unclear what this means in practice as most programmes are made independently. Developing a robust, transparent evaluation practice – e.g. through an independent standards authority such as CIISA[3], but with wider reach - for how commissioned businesses make programmes is a key part of ensuring welfare of workers and participants.
- Scrutiny of NDAs: related to the above point, the use of NDAs to silence complainants and stymie improvements to production practice must be independently assessed.
- Improved data on workers: Diamond data has plateaued and data collection on diversity needs to be improved to address the ongoing failure of diversity initiatives.
Conclusion:
In 2023, the PEC released a definition of Good Work in the creative industries. This can be achieved, but only with the above overhaul of the industry. It will be expensive, but without it we risk further decimating our greatest cultural product.
Dr Rowan Aust and Michelle Reynolds
ReelTime Media, September 2023
ReelTime Media is the forthcoming iteration of Share My Telly Job[4] and is run by Dr Rowan Aust and Michelle Reynolds. We provide consultancy and training on flexible working and sustainable practice in TV and film. This is based on the PEC’s definition of Good Work, and focuses on worker wellbeing and progression, career sustainability and employer transparency and accountability.
References:
BFI. (2022). BFI Skills Report. Retrieved from https://www.bfi.org.uk/industry-data-insights/reports/bfi-skills-review-2022
Charity, F. a. T. (2023). Mental Health in the Film and TV Industry: Three years on. Retrieved from https://filmtvcharity.org.uk/leading-change/looking-glass-report-2022/
Raalte, C. v., Wallis, R., & Pekalski, D. (2023). More than just a few ‘bad apples’: the need for a risk management approach to the problem of workplace bullying in the UK’s television industry. Creative Industries Journal.
Swords, J., Mayne, L., Boardman, C., Ozimek, A., & SMTJ. (2022). The Time Project: Understanding working time in the UK television industry. Retrieved from https://screen-network.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Currency-of-Gratitude-report.pdf
Wallis, R., & Raalte, C. v. (2022). Britain’s Got Talent? A Critique of the “Talent Pipeline” Crisis in the UK’s Film and Television Industries. Media Industries, 9(1). Retrieved from https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/mij/article/id/282/
Wilkes, M., Carey, H., & Florisson, R. (2020). The Looking Glass: Mental health in the UK film, TV and cinema industry. Retrieved from https://filmtvcharity.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/The-Looking-Glass-Final-Report-Final.pdf
3
[1] https://www.thewonderworks.co.uk
[2] For example: https://www.itv.com/commissioning/articles/duty-of-care and https://www.channel4.com/corporate/about-4/operating-responsibly/suppliers/channel-4-supplier-policies-and-standards