Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Does anyone (Simon other other people who have been in the industry) know why NZ has developed a contract culture with actors and crew? As compared to Australia which has an employee based culture say?
Did other countries used to use contracts and changed, or have we always been a bit different? How many other countries use contracts rather than employ people for film and TV?
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Well, I like how you can earn experience points...
Very appropriate for the Hobbit. How that worked for Strictly Ballroom I'm less sure. Level 5 Waltz?
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They wouldn't be able to 'moonlight' or juggle multiple engagements at the same time - an employee status implies specific commitment to one job and one place of work - goodbye voiceovers, TVCs and public speaking engagements juggled around shooting schedules. As employees, they could be required to attend the workplace for the full working week, whether required on set or not.
There are a bunch of disadvantages to moving to being an employee, but neither of these are on the list. There's plenty of flexibility in any employment contract to allow people to do outside work as an employee or contractor, and to only have to work certain hours. Heaps of people have two jobs on shift work for example.
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So long as you use the phrase "at a reasonable level" without qualification, I can't argue. But I don't think the impact on others is ever a secondary concern.
They're all judgements. Yes the people who need to catch the bus are really inconvenienced by the bus not turning up. You have to make up your mind as a person considering industrial action which is the greater 'evil' - your long term position which you obviously feel is wrong vs the short/medium/long term damage your action will have. As well as the likely chance of the action leading to positive change.
But if you always put other people ahead of yourself when considering industrial action, you're almost never going to take it. If it's not inconveniencing or hurting someone financially, it's not done right.
It's meant to mainly adversely affect the employer.
Well that's a limited view of it. Some employees can't directly adversely affect the employer. The most likely people adversely affected are customers, and them being affected hurts the employer.
In the current dispute, the union has a hard line to walk. The employer they're trying to get to is Warners, and the possible consequence is the films going elsewhere which probably doesn't hurt Warners much at all, but it does hurt other colleagues and friends in the industry.
I think I'd like to hear more from actors involved in the dispute and their reasoning. What we've heard from that side so far seems to have made little sense, it's not helping them at all.
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Bouquet to Ben Gracewood for leaving his technical slot with Breakfast today after Henry's performance.
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It's not irrelevant just because "principles" are involved. That's a cop out, a way of hiding self-interest behind words.
Well you called it principled first. I think it's self-interest, but as long as it's self-interest at a reasonable level, I think 'who gets impacted' is a secondary concern.
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Yeah, catching up from quite a long distance. The auntie sent the tapes by ground, so we're only in the middle of season three.
Oh look, we have our limits! Is she re-filming them without the nudity for you or something?
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In which case, why the singling out of The Hobbit? Where are the advisories for all the other foreign productions that have been made here since 2002?
Here. Or I don't know if there are any NZ ones in there, the page only goes back to 2008.
I don't follow. PJ is saying that he can't legally negotiate a collective agreement here. If he can and does in Oz, then how does that make his position here look bizarre?
Union approved contracts under the Global Rule One have to match the contracts that would be offered in Hollywood in terms of conditions and salary.
Jackson has said that he couldn't offer those sorts of things here because the production company couldn't afford it and it would devastate the local film industry by raising expectations.
If it suddenly went to Australia and they found the umpteen million dollars to make the contracts union approved the first claim is going to look bizarre. And it would presumably have the same impact upon the Australian industry as on the NZ one.
I suspect the real question is going to be: If they were to go elsewhere and do it non-union who would decline to be involved? Major actors and crew? The media so far have only speculated on a couple of actors that are re-appearing.
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The actors' actions don't just affect themselves, they affects thousands of other NZers
I think the assumption is that actors supporting their union aren't fully aware and concerned about this.
It's always a prime concern of industrial action - how others are affected.
If "impacts upon others" stopped unions taking industrial action then industrial action would never happen. If it didn't adversely affect someone then it would just be ignored.
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I'm interested for informational purposes. Who, how many, why, where are they? Helps to inform whether this alleged union is actually representing who they say they are.
But of limited value.
For every actor in the movie there's probably 10 crew who are getting nothing out of this dispute, except the possibility that work might not be there for them.
That's like saying the people that use the buses would like the bus drivers to get back to work.
If it was limited to actors it might be of more value for assessing the performance of the union - they obviously had a different reaction between Auckland and Wellington where the work would largely be.