Posts by Kyle Matthews
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
With the announcement of the Avatar sequels going to Weta it's all but guaranteed that four of the worst films of the coming decade will be made right here, in our fair country. One's heart fills with pride.
:P
-
Film industry vs TV industry - there is a lot of difference. I could write a long post comparing employment situations, but I'm sure I don't need to.
The situation we'll have after this law passes, is that if Bryson had been contracted to make models for the Lord of the Rings the movie trilogy, he couldn't successfully go to court and get himself redefined as an employee.
However if he was to do exactly the same work, with the same contract, nothing changed at all... except instead of Peter Jackson making LOTR into a movie trilogy he made it into a 15 part TV series, he could go to court and get himself redefined as an employee.
That makes no sense at all.
Why should Peter Jackson, whose career is a project to project existence, be at risk from a contractor from taking him to court to be re-classified as an employee, simply because Jackson was successful at securing one project after another, and loyal enough to keep re-hiring the contractor from one project to another?
Well for starters, that's not the reason that the court defined Bryson as an employee. I believe the primary turning point in the case was that Bryson had to be further trained part way through his contract, and the nature of contracting someone is that they know what they're doing already. But also he worked 9-5, his work environment was entirely the same as if he'd been an employee, he could not sub-contract etc etc. He was an employee in almost every way in reality, except he didn't have an employment agreement, he had a contract.
Why should Peter Jackson not be subject to the same laws as other people using contractors in NZ? -
And I think this is where Idiot/Savant blew an otherwise gold medal winning shark jump by dismounting on his head.
There's no guarantee that the situation he describes would be an employee dressed up as a contractor under the law. There were some specific narrow conditions in the Bryson case that don't apply to most contractors.
What he's described there is probably a general problem with contracting rather than employing, which this law does nothing to change. Something to be very wary of in the NZ film industry where contracts are common, but unchanged this week.
-
I think some clarification is OK.
As much as it's been called 'clarification', that's not what it is. This part of the law was designed to prevent employment relationships - a relationship that has lots of protection under the law - becoming contract relationships - which have a lot less protection. Basically the law and the judge said "it looks like, walks like, and sounds like a duck, hence it's a duck."
The law will now say that, except when it's a duck in the film industry (but not the same person doing exactly the same sort of work in the TV industry), when despite it actually looking like a duck, the government has confirmed that it's a goose because it's got "GOOSE" stuck on its forehead.
What appalling law making, and to find out that Warners didn't even ask for it (I wonder if 3 foot 7 did?) so it's entirely unnecessary.
Professor Paul Roth made comments a wee while ago about us prostituting our laws to foreign companies. Apparently we weren't even classy enough to do it because they left half a billion dollars on the nightstand, it was just a freebie.
-
Personally, as I've said elsewhere, I find that Electoral Amendment (Harry Duynhoven Arse-Covering) Act more outrageous, but mileage obviously varies on that score.
I wish parliament required some sort of super majority to move to urgency - two thirds or something.
Dealing with an earthquake where all the parties support a law change under urgency - fine.
Rewriting labour/education/electoral law and likely making a mess of it because it was done in urgency - not so fine, and the opposition could force you to do it properly.
-
The Bryson decision seems to have sent a cold shudder down the spines of some in the film industry (probably without good justfication). I'm pretty sure the intention of the legislators is to prevent another such case.
What we're really doing is making it OK for the film industry to avoid the obligations of employment by employing someone, and then writing contractor on them right?
I find the fact that we're only doing this for the film/video industry bizarre. If it's such a problem then it should be done for all employees. I'd put forward that it's actually not such a problem - we actually want judges to be able to say to people - "actually you were employing this person and trying to pretend you weren't. Don't do that".
-
I'm not sure what you mean. Four years' work is considered a pretty good gig in the film biz.
The inevitable question is 'what next?' After these movies finish, will we have to up our subsidy and who knows what else to keep the next four years of movie employees in work?
There's an assumption that because we got some big movies here, that we need to keep finding ways to keep getting big movies here so that we can continue to do the next thing and keep as many of those people employed. We're tying ourselves to an industry where we're entirely reliant on the benevolence of overseas funders and the lack of competition from other countries, some of whom will always be cheaper than us.
I wonder if our future lies in the post-production part of the movie cycle, which is much easier to just bring to NZ from whereever it's filmed, and which we've got a great reputation in, and in terms of actual filming we focus more on domestic productions.
'The industry' keeps its revenues up by making fewer and fewer bigger and bigger films (like, I dunno, The Hobbit or Avatar) and pays another hundred mill or so to instruct everyone on the planet to go and see them on the same weekend. In 3D. For an extra $3.00.
That's what is concerning to me about the way things are going. I don't mind it if big actors/directors/producers don't make a gazillion dollars per movie. Mostly because I don't think anyone in the world is so good that they should be making a gazillion dollars.
But that's not the end of the movie business that is drying up. It's the diversity of the marginal stuff with small audiences - docos, arthouse, curious wee stuff largely only of interest to an audience in one country.
-
1. It's very hard to move a coalmine offshore.
Nah. It's all down to where you start digging.
-
Film production work includes production work for video games, but not production work on programmes initially intended for television.
I find it bizarre that video games (all video games seemingly, not just ones related to films) are included, but TV productions aren't. Surely the modeller example that everyone is worried about is more likely to come up in TV production than video games.
Unless the law is just following the conditions set down by Warners - who will probably employ a couple of video game people here, but no TV production people.
-
Andre,
Yes. But the other possible explanations (and I'm not sure I've ever heard a reason why they targeted the hobbit instead of Spartacus) could relate to timing - they didn't feel they were ready - the belief that Spartacus as a production new to NZ was more likely to jump to another country than the Hobbit which has a history here, or plain tactics - target the big production which is going to have major NZ and international headlines.