Yahoo News 'I don’t sleep. I'm afraid to open the post': Covid's continued effect for film industry workers
The response to our callout in March for the experiences of people working in the film industry affected by the growing coronavirus crisis was overwhelming.
Many hundreds of people shared their stories with us; stories suggesting that the bigger picture back then – of Cannes continuing, of Chinese cinemas starting to reopen, of multiplex confidence holding up – might be optimistic.
Seven months later, the industry faces unprecedented challenges. The announcement that Cineworld, the UK’s largest cinema owner, would shut its premises until further notice has triggered a wave of similar closures from major chains – and many smaller venues.
Cineworld blamed its move on the decision to postpone once again the release of No Time to Die, the 25th James Bond film, until April next year. Was that the start of the final credits for cinema as we know it? Or is a new narrative beginning to emerge?
We caught up with the film industry workers we spoke to in March. They reveal how the summer that changed the sector forever has affected them.
‘I read film scripts, thinking, how on earth will these get made?’
Philippa Lowthorpe, director of Misbehaviour and The Third Day
What she said in March:
Misbehaviour’s release collided head-on with coronavirus’
The campaign for Misbehaviour started last November. Our premiere was last Monday; between then and Friday, it was like a runaway train – one that ended with us colliding head-on with coronavirus.
In the end, we made about half what was expected [£330,000, entering the UK charts at No 8]. It was just so, so sad. Everyone worked like mad, and we were all set for a lovely big hit. The kind of press we had is like gold dust. And then: agony!
Still, I don’t regret anything. We didn’t consider cancelling the release because it was an unfolding situation that changed hour by hour. And I’ve no qualms if the film winds up getting fast-tracked online. These are extraordinary circumstances, and there’s a real role for film in cheering people up now, so I’m happy for any joy we can give.
Plus, I’m grateful we managed to do the premiere – lots of the real time characters in the film who hadn’t seen each other in 50 years flew in, and it was the most moving experience. On the weekend, I did one Q&A in Bristol to an audience of about 30. For one tiny moment, I allowed myself to feel really gutted. But then the next day another Q&A was sold out – although the cinema had capped the number of people so that everyone could sit separately.
How she feels in October:
We were so sad about Misbehaviour, but as time went on and everyone else was having such a terrible time, it put things into perspective. Luckily for me I went straight from Misbehaviour to The Third Day, which is on now. We’d finished filming it and were just editing when the pandemic hit. The producers saw the it approaching like a juggernaut and were very quick off the mark to organise things. I was able to work at home in Bristol on this fantastic computer system, while the editor was in Surrey. It was amazing to reinvent how you work. The top of my house is now my little office: during the day I was doing The Third Day, then in the evening I was doing Misbehaviour publicity.
It did feel a bit weird being at home, with my family all here and the dog wandering from room to room, but we were so lucky to have a roof over our heads and something to do, and we are so grateful for the technology that allows it. As a mum and woman film-maker, how much would I have loved to have worked like this in the past? I hope that some of these ways of working can be adopted permanently.
We finished the finale of The Third Day two weeks ago. Now I am sitting reading film scripts, thinking, how on earth will these get made? I doubt if anyone will want to make things about a pandemic, we are living in it and it is too close. The scripts that make sense to me are the ones that take you out of your life. Or the more urgent political ideas reflecting, say, Black Lives Matter.
Personally, I was very, very lucky I was doing something already. I feel so sorry for the people who were about to do something. I still have a cutting with all the review stars we got for Misbehaviour above my cooker. Just so I know it wasn’t a dream.
‘We’ve had six burglaries in four months. Even our garden tools were stolen’
Blair Barnette, film art director, who had all her future projects cancelled over a one-hour period
What she said in March:
I’ve never felt this hopeless and bleak in my life’
I’m an art director on films; my partner is a producer and was recently diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease and made redundant. After Christmas, our minimal funds began to dry up. I lined up work to take us through until August and by last Friday I was down to the last £100 in my account.
Over one hour, everything was cancelled. That’s £28,000 gone in an instant. My head started spinning. I realised the knock-on effect this would have in the industry and felt sick. It will be months before it’s gaining traction again, and once it does, it will be a feeding frenzy for us freelancers.
I’ve never felt this hopeless and bleak in my life. My partner can’t risk going outside because of his health. But the local supermarket won’t allow me to enter during the time slot dedicated to elderly and vulnerable people unless he comes too. So I’m bundling him up in a chemical face mask and Tyvek suit that I use for spray painting. I’m trying to keep him safe, but I can’t even seem to do that.
How she feels in October:
I’m still not working, I’ve tried a few things but they keep falling apart. In the film industry, some things have come back but not really to any great effect. There’s really not enough work for everybody, and it’s winding down again now. I have done some volunteering to keep my sanity, I’m helping out on a friend’s short film right now and I was shortlisted for a new BBC crime drama set in Liverpool – but Liverpool has just locked its doors so the show has just gone on hiatus. Because my partner is ill and needs my help I really have to stay in London.
Just as things seemed to be getting back to normal, everything reversed. Right now my aim is just to get through each day. Traditionally the film industry starts to slow down around this time of year – October through February not many people are doing things as the days are shorter. It’s very seasonal work – and it seemed like the season that our work is the busiest also happened to be Covid season.
I have been getting a furlough payment of just over £500 per month, for two of us to live on. It pays for our groceries so we are not starving. I got a bounceback loan, but that’s nearly all gone and I am not sure how I am going to pay it back. The credit card companies have been good and put a freeze on everything, so our outgoings were not so bad, but the rent was inflexible.
We had to move out of our flat, and we are living somewhere where the landlord is more sympathetic. The rent is delayed but we still have to pay it – so we get more in debt each week. I am absolutely stressed out. I’ve never been in debt before, and now I have a ridiculous amount. I just don’t sleep. I can’t see myself digging out of the debt – I am getting so many brown envelopes that I am afraid to even open. So I think I am going to have to wrap up my company and start again somehow.
On top of it all our particular neighbourhood in east London seems to have turned into the wild west. There’s been so much crime. We rented a van and within 12 hours it had been stolen, and we are being held responsible by the rental company, even though it was in a locked car park. We’ve had six burglaries in four months – even our garden tools were stolen. You just couldn’t script it.
‘I’m converting our third screen into a high-end luxury screen, with little tables and food service’
Kevin Markwick, owner and manager of Picture House, Uckfield, East Sussex, which closed in line with government advice a week before lockdown, and remained shut for more than four months
What he said in March:
People still want to come in on Mother’s Day – I think they should stay home and rewatch The Sopranos’
We were a pretty successful independent cinema until about a week ago. Our usual audience number on a Sunday is 1,000 – last Sunday it was 178. On Monday, 65 people came in, most of them elderly, which I thought was insane. Then on Tuesday, it was down to nine. And Boris Johnson finally advised cinemas close, rather than having the nuts to say they had to.
Luckily, we started the year with our best-ever takings, thanks to films like Little Women, 1917, Emma and Parasite. Our speciality is upmarket mainstream; if your mum wants to see it, we’re going to make a fortune. Our biggest film of all time is The King’s Speech.
We’re a restaurant too, which is currently closed, but when we rang people who had booked for Mothering Sunday, most of them said they still wanted to come. I don’t know if it’s Dunkirk spirit or lemming spirit. I think they should stay home and rewatch The Sopranos.
I’m going to try to keep the business afloat, but not at the cost of safety. I reckon we’ll be shut for three months at least. My parents started this cinema in 1964, when I was two years old. It’s the place I grew up in and in 1994 I took it over. It feels like a lifetime’s work is in danger of being lost.
How he feels in October:
It’s tough, there’s no denying it. Not least because we’ve been abandoned to our fate by the big studios, who seem content to sit back and let it happen. But there’s enough content out there for us to be able to cobble a programme together. We’ve also been doing event-cinema’s greatest hits, and that’s kind of saved us. Audiences for things like the NT Live’s Present Laughter are quite significant – we actually had a sellout the other night. As long as that sort of thing keeps coming we can keep our head above water.
We are down to a skeleton staff yet we are still not breaking even. Our reserves will run out eventually but we can can keep going for a while and will be OK should the BFI step up with the cinema part of the culture recovery fund. We will need some of that to get us through until … well, who knows how long?
Mad man or mad genius? You decide. Desperate times bloggery. https://t.co/iRDUdKDU6O
— Kevin Markwick (@kevinmarkwick) October 11, 2020
The outpouring of support from the local community has just been really heartwarming. [Now we just need to] keep the supply of films going. Rebecca has been looking strong this week, and it’s our older audience that are coming, not the younger audience, which is counterintuitive. But we’ve worked really hard: keeping everything clean, one-way systems, all that. We’ve had no problems, people are very relaxed about it. The restaurant is also holding its own.
We were lucky we had something in the tank, what with the opening two months of the year being the best we ever had. Not everyone was fortunate enough to be in that position, so some have gone to the wall. But I think the independents can be pretty resilient because we can be fleet of foot and move quickly, unlike corporate behemoths like Cineworld and Vue. But we need the multiplexes to survive, because no one is going to release big films to a handful of independent cinemas.
Studios don’t seem to understand there is a wide world out there, and that we’ve all got to take a hit. So the Bond only makes half a billion dollars – why can’t they make a billion dollars on the next one? They seem to think they can make money by sitting there doing nothing. It seems such an odd way to behave.
This may be genius or a disaster but I am actually converting our third screen into a high-end luxury screen, with little tables and food service. We decided to do it after lockdown, to improve the offer as well as take advantage of social distancing. I want to do everything I can to help us survive. This place has been here for 100 years, and we as a family for 55 years. I’m not going down without a fight.
‘If there’s another lockdown in the next four weeks we’ll be blown out of the water’
Rebecca O’Brien, producer of Ken Loach’s films
What she said in March:
The film sector isn’t an essential service’
Coronavirus will change the content of any story we next tell. From an existential point of view there’s a lot to grapple with, and what’s going on outside at the moment is possibly far more interesting than what might be going on inside a writer’s head.
Right now, I’m mostly concerned that people do follow the guidelines. But my heart goes out to all those on zero-hours contracts, of which there are so many in the industry. It’s a gig economy with people usually working on week-long contracts, at best. I hope the government comes up with some clear support for these people quickly to allay their fears. I’m in the privileged position of being able to work from home easily.
The problem is that the film sector isn’t an essential service and I just can’t see how we’re going to be able to get going again until everything is over. What’s interesting is that the BBC has kicked into becoming a backbone, with things like their exercise regimes for older people and home school resources.
My plea to the government would be to put some proper support into the independent sector once this is over. We were in trouble before this; only 49 non-studio films were made in the UK last year, because of the rise of inward investment productions and high-end TV. Yet this is where people learn their craft before they bugger off to the big boys. If our sector perishes, so will the seed bed of all those skills and the main source of homegrown talent and stories.
How she feels in October:
I’m in the Scottish highlands where we’re just about to go into production on a remake of a French thriller called My Son, which is being directed by Christian Carion. It’s an eight-day shoot starting at the beginning of November, and while Covid does make it even more difficult, I am delighted to be just working on something.
Ken and I had had been planning to make a film in August. But we needed to have been getting the show on the road when the first lockdown started, so we had to call it off. Sixteen Films is only a small company, and we make one film a year, if we’re lucky. Without Ken’s film, we’d have struggled to keep going. Then I got a call from some French producers about My Son, and that was an absolute gift: now we have a film for this year, and it has made a real difference.
To do it we’ve had to take over a whole hotel, and everybody who comes in has to be tested. We are a bubble, which is a good thing – knowing everyone has been tested makes you feel secure. People need to be reassured, especially off the beaten track where we are. They are concerned that outsiders will bring the illness in.
But the problem with Covid is that we are still not guaranteed we’ll get to the end of the shoot. It depends on what the Scottish or UK government do: we might be in lockdown any minute. To make a film you need certainties and there are no certainties with Covid. If there’s a lockdown in the next four weeks we’ll be blown out of the water. Because it’s a French-British co-production, half our crew are French, and it’s been particularly difficult for them, what with the quarantine and that they are so far away from home. And now we can’t even go to the pub.
‘Perhaps we’re glimpsing a future where cinemas aren’t flooded with films with infinite marketing spend’
Tricia Tuttle, BFI festivals director
What she said in March:
Film-makers were flying in from all over the world … would we really cancel “Queer Christmas”?’
The London Book Fair, SXSW, Tribeca film festival … over the last few weeks, one by one, we watched them cancel, with a dawning sense of inevitability. This was going to be us. BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ film festival was not going to happen.
We were loth to let people down. Many attendees call the festival “queer Christmas”. Film-makers were flying in from all over the world. Festivals are one of the principal ways LGBTIQ+ film-makers connect with a queer audience. Our team – events, industry, hospitality and guest coordinators and the programmers who spend half of the year putting together the 200+ screenings and events – were going to be gutted. Plus, it would be a devastating financial blow for the BFI, a charity.
But as the hours passed, continuing became untenable. We made the tough decision over countless war room calls last weekend, just ahead of the new official advice that prompted the closure of BFI Southbank for the foreseeable future.
Still, we will not go quietly. We’re going to recreate a little virtual Flare on BFI Player, with every original booker getting a free month’s subscription. It’s not a queer Christmas, but hopefully it’s a small concession present.
How she feels in October:
In March, when I reflected on the overnight, forced pivot to digital of BFI Flare, our LGBTQI+ film festival, we assumed the worst of it – the dreaded Covid restrictions – would be over by autumn. Little did I imagine we would be delivering the London film festival in an ambitious hybrid digital/physical form all over the UK. As we were planning the LFF this summer, we occasionally wondered if people would be so fatigued with zoom and screens that it would diminish the festival. But everyone who loves cinema wants good news stories, and LFF really has been one.
Across the country, a “full house” of 800 people watched the LFF digital cinema premiere of the restoration of Mohammad Reza Aslani’s 1976, presumed-lost Iranian gem, Chess of the Wind (the “Persian lovechild of Tennessee Williams and Ingmar Bergman”); together we dried a tear after the premiere of Harry Macqueen’s Supernova, a gay love story about a couple struggling with early onset dementia; and Elisabeth Moss wowed sell-out physical and digital audiences as a wickedly funny Shirley Jackson in the eponymous biopic on the horror writer.
It’s vertiginous. We went from the sky crashing in with the move of key autumn blockbusters and the closure of Cineworld, to a collective mini-euphoria of Saint Maud, by British debutant film-maker Rose Glass (who won the IWC Bursary at LFF last year), storming the UK box office.
I am an optimist. Perhaps we’re glimpsing how hopeful, and hopefully resilient, real cultural cinema is when the venues aren’t flooded with films that have infinite marketing spend.
‘We had the 103rd birthday party of one veteran over Zoom’
Tammy ‘TS’ Botkin, writer/director of Legacy of the Fighting Filipinos
What she said in March:
Coronavirus is killing off the subjects of my film’
For the past 18 months I’ve been working on a documentary about second world war veterans from the Philippines, racing against the clock to wrap before they all die without appropriate recognition.Now, Covid-19 has taken aim at my subjects: elderly Filipino men and women who served in the US army but were denied benefits and citizenship by the US Congress in 1946. Some of the subjects of the film who are in lockdown have stopped responding.
Coronavirus has also shut down the final two scheduled shoots for the film, and donors have withdrawn support as they watch their portfolios take massive hits. I’m unable to pay myself or my producer, Amanda Upson, which threatens to put us both out of our homes.
Freelance film-makers cannot access the stopgap provided by unemployment benefits or the emergency funds provided by unions. We are many, and we are out of luck. Still, perhaps not so out of luck as the veterans in my film. I’m worried for my livelihood; they for their lives.
How she feels in October:
It’s been challenging. We were unable to film our last two planned shoots, one in the US and one in the Philippines. A woman guerrilla I wanted to interview hasn’t been able to return to the US from the Philippines – and where she is now is too remote to reach. We also lost touch with others we were hoping to speak to.
Big donors pulled out because they’d been watching the pandemic wreak havoc with their portfolios, and they haven’t returned. Then we had others who said: talk to us after the election!
We took a look at what we had and decided we owed it to our elderly veterans to finish telling this story as soon as possible. Because we couldn’t reach our subjects safely, we made the decision to include more animation to complete the film. The problem is that animation is far more expensive than talking-head interviews. Now we’re seeking funding for that.
We continue to enjoy support from the Filipino-American and veteran communities for our audience build, and we are talking to distributors. Another bright spot: I got to celebrate the 103rd birthday of one of our featured veterans via Zoom. Mr Almeda decided, for some reason, to show up as a disembodied head that was inverted on screen. He was quite amused with himself. And he was really pleased to have a bunch of people wish him a happy birthday from a safe distance!
But it’s been tough getting to a fine cut in post [production]. The National Archives remain shuttered. Our editing crew has worked on deferment. I had to take a second full-time job just to keep things going, processing grants for families to keep them from being evicted.
It’s also been challenging for my producing partner, Amanda, who’s deaf. Trying to get people to make pretty simple accommodations once you’ve switched everything to phone and Zoom has created a lot of issues.
There are days I get up and say, ‘We’re doing this!’ and we all plough forward. Then there are days when we all have to drag ourselves to our feet and curse our way through. But we remember: our veterans did not have an option to quit. We won’t either.
‘I think audiences would have gone to see Bond’
Kevin Macdonald, Oscar-winning director
What he said in March:
This will be a devastating blow for a sector already under stress’
So far, I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m working on an edit for my new film [a drama set in Guantánamo with Jodie Foster, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tahar Rahim] in a suite five minutes’ walk from my house. We finished shooting two weeks ago when we flew back from Mauritania. Lots of people were reluctant to travel there because few people have shot a film in the country before; it’s all desert with a tiny Bedouin population. But it all went really smoothly – no illnesses, no problems. Then we flew home.Our problems will come when it comes to the film getting seen. It’s the kind of movie that relies on exposure at the fall festivals like Toronto or Telluride; we’d also hoped to release a trailer at Cannes. But perhaps none of those will happen this year.
Who knows if cinemas will even be open in the autumn? Will coronavirus be the final nail in the coffin for the mass cinematic experience, or will people be desperate for it once this is over? Does the old model still work or will Netflix and the other streamers manage total domination over the next few months?
It was striking that Universal announced they were moving to stream new releases, having fought for years to keep that theatrical window open. I suppose they felt they had to in order to survive. My fear is this will be a devastating blow for a sector already under a lot of stress. Still, thank goodness for streaming, otherwise the film industry wouldn’t have any sort of fallback.
I once made a film set in a sort of postapocalyptic scenario [How I Live Now (2013)] and it seems people are now more drawn to watching movies that fictionalise this sort of situation. Perhaps they want to see their worst fears realised on screen – then they become less frightening.
During the second world war, film-makers thought audiences would want escapism. In fact the most popular films of the period were war movies, which realistically reflected the drama happening every day.
How he feels in October:
We didn’t take our film to the fall festivals in the end, because they didn’t really exist in a way that seemed to make it worthwhile for the financiers. It’s a frustrating time to be involved in a film that is designed and then sold as a theatrical proposition, territory by territory – with all of them following America. We’re hoping to take it to a festival in the spring instead.
But who knows? The uncertainty is, if anything, greater now, and that sense of jeopardy for cinemas has reached fever pitch. Nothing has become any clearer. And I’m getting more pessimistic because it’s just gone on so long.
I think audiences would have gone to see Bond. They could have still had very good numbers. Around Christmas people might have taken the chance – and cinemas would have made it as safe as possible. I think it was a real opportunity to get people to go back. I can understand the decision, but you wonder whether, six months down the line, there will be any cinemas left in which to show these hugely expensive films.
I’ve been back to the cinema a few times in the past few months and it was actually really nice because every screening was practically empty. I didn’t understand a word of Tenet, but there was something extra exciting about it because it was on the big screen.
At least production has opened up again and shooting is possible, if tricky. Things are being made, but for streaming. I’ve been editing Life in a Day 2020, 10 years after I made the first film – and it’s been a real antidote to those other anxieties.
It reminds you of the wider world. There’s a lot of joy there, as well as a lot of darkness and misery and people suffering from Covid economically and physically. We’ve had some brilliant contributions from far-flung farms in Russia and people living in communes in the middle of Siberia. You sort of think, actually life can still go on. And anything to do with nature feels much more alluring than it probably did eight months ago.
I still think people want escapism; films that are feelgood. During the Great Depression people liked jolly musicals with dancing girls. Now, everyone’s on edge, so something that’s entertaining is paramount.
But they also yearn to be well-informed. I think the echo chamber of the media and social media has got people down and they want to be able to rely on their sources of news, and for that news to be thorough and well-researched. So documentaries may come out of all this quite well, if they can react to that appetite to understand the world and those fears about misinformation.
‘Might multiplexes closing present an opportunity?’
Kelly Jeffs, CEO of the Light House cinema, Wolverhampton, which closed in line with government advice
What she said in March:
Our income dipped 90% day-on-day’
I run the only independent cinema in the Black Country, which also acts as a community hub. Our core business is our two screens, but we facilitate events like national conferences and vegan fairs, and host local health and wellbeing groups, including a singing group for lung health, a deaf group and a carers’ group.
The slowdown started on the weekend – our big film was Military Wives, which would usually have our demographic queueing out of the door. But the screen was only about 10% full. Then when the government advised people to socially isolate, our income dipped 90% day-on-day.
We hung on as long as we could but we’re shutting up shop on Thursday. We’ve had people in tears on the phone, worried we might never reopen. I feel like I’m drunk all the time. This place has been running for 30 years and I’ve been here 21. We’ve already dodged lots of bullets and refocused. But this is really serious.
How she feels in October:
We’ve been closed since 20 March. The government said cinemas could reopen from 4 July but we weren’t in a position to do so. My team has been furloughed for the entire time. There are 19 on the books and four salaried staff. My operations manager and I have been there for more than 20 years.
In May, we got some funding from the BFI, part of the resilience fund, which helped cover costs to bring me off furlough so I could look for other fundraising and keep some sort of communication strategy going.
In August, we launched a crowdfunder for a month and we raised more than £12,000 to help towards reopening costs. It was great to re-engage with our supporters and we had fantastic support on social media and lots of press, and the mayor of Birmingham came and donated.
We’ve just been offered some smaller grant money from the BFI, which has given me some sort of hope that they care, and we’re now waiting on the decision for more major funding from the DCMS. We’re at a fork in the road. If we don’t get funding, there’ll be some difficult decisions ahead.
I’ve never worked from home before, and it’s been a very difficult transition to go from being immersed with people all the time – audiences, staff, my peer network – to suddenly not seeing anybody. There have been some tough weeks where I’ve felt really isolated and others where you connect with the team again and it’s really helpful.
It’s been great over the past month or so to have new products coming through, and things like the London film festival. The whole debate around the future of cinema has kept us busy in terms of thinking of the effects and opportunities of multiplexes closing. I don’t want to start sounding insensitive, but we have to think about repositioning ourselves if we can get up and running again.
I understand the Bond decision. It’s not just about people consuming a film, it’s about the sponsorship and partnership deals – watches, cars, pure consumerism. But it does all trickle down to a small, independent cinema like ours. We’ve had all the recent Bonds on release and had a really good bread and butter income from them.
Sometimes I still wake up and think, “Really? Is this what’s happened?” And then it starts to become a bit of white noise in the background. That’s one reason I think has meant things aren’t going to plan: people are tired, there’s a malaise.
And it does make you question whether your own cultural organisation is absolutely necessary. Should it be a priority for society? And then you think, well, actually, yes. The arts is the fifth biggest contributor to the economy in this country. And our cinema was never exclusive. No one would ever have said they wouldn’t come to us because we were cliquey. We were a family.
‘Will I, like many mothers, be forced into giving up my career?’
Samantha Kent, film costumier
What she said in March:
I can’t now qualify for statutory maternity pay’
My last job finished in November and I have spent the quieter winter months resting and enjoying early pregnancy, knowing that come March the industry should boom as usual and there will be work.
Come the end of February I had five weeks booked. Rather than having a full-time contract, I’m employed as a “daily”, which is common for many of us in the costume department. All my work has been cancelled.
Since Boris Johnson’s press conference on Monday, I am now considered “a high-risk group”. So do I earn while I still can or follow government guidelines and self-isolate for three months? I have 14 weeks left until my due date.
As I am self-employed I have to have worked 26 weeks to qualify for statutory maternity pay; I am currently two weeks short for this. This is my first baby and the usual fears are compounded by having no income and no prospect of the benefits I’d anticipated.
How she feels in October:
I thankfully did qualify for maternity allowance. My little boy was born during full lockdown in mid-June. The allowance takes me to March [2021]. What was panic a few months ago is now relief as at least I have some money coming in and I’m not competing for the jobs that are out there.
My main concerns now are whether there will be an industry to return to, and any childcare. Or will I, like many mothers, be forced into giving up my career?
‘I’d naively thought realisations about “what matters in life” might change people’
Michael Reynolds, treatment writer in LA
What he said in March:
I have no work and I’m owed payment on 12 jobs’
I live in LA and I’m a treatment writer for films, TV shows and commercials. Since last Friday, I’ve seen an almost immediate shutdown of jobs. Directors at the top of the food chain who work regularly will be OK. But that’s not the case for many.
For me, this sudden shutdown brings up issues both around future earnings and money already earned but not yet paid. Not to mention larger issues around worker rights and, frankly, my role, even if small, in feeding a rapacious capitalist system that also keeps me in business.
There are never contracts. So no legal protections and little recourse for non-payment. By and large, companies honour their commitments, but every now and again, one won’t, and you have to accept that as part of the cost of doing business.
At present, I’m owed payment on 12 jobs. And there is nothing legally I can do to induce companies to pay me. If they have closed their offices and no one is at accounting, they aren’t writing cheques. If they’ve just seen future earnings dry up, I don’t imagine many of them will be keen to send me (and others) money, even though it is for work I’ve already done. It highlights the fragility of a freelance system that has no real regulation and no worker protection.
How he feels in October:
I’m happy – and I must say, surprised – to report that I’ve been paid for all 12 of those outstanding jobs. I’m very lucky. I’ve had issues getting paid for a couple of jobs begun right after the restart in June, but if I emerge from this experience having gone unpaid but once or twice, I’ll consider it a remarkable escape.
Advertising fell off a cliff during the initial lockdown but seems to be coming back – if not to levels of production in 2019, then certainly to a point where I’m marginally busy.
That said, Covid has accelerated a process of personal disillusionment that started a long time ago. I know that all of us – literally every American – is in some way complicit in a system that pushes consumerism and myths of meritocracy as cover for a kind of corporate serfdom. I am certainly part of it.
But I’d naively thought Covid and the realisations about “what matters in life” might change people enough to change the systems. I didn’t expect revolution, but perhaps a kinder, more considered approach to work, to what we’re putting out into the world. Something like, “Is this the life we want to lead and the world we want to inhabit?”
In macro, this doesn’t seem to be happening. Many of the “Covid ads” have been spectacularly cynical and craven – Wells Fargo (as always) wins the prize – and at least in my limited experience, there has been very little pushback against the resumption of life and orientation as they were before all of this happened.
But I’ve had some really meaningful conversations with colleagues who have become strong friends. I think in any job, there’s a mask you have to wear to conceal your deeper feelings, and when there are clients and pressures and the need to please, the need to keep your job, you wear the mask tightly. These last six months, a number of people in my work life have opened up about their deeper beliefs and ideals in a way that’s made me feel a part of a hopeful and positive discussion. It’s been a bit like discovering the robots were human all along.
Finally: I’ve had ambitions of “making it” in film/TV for a long time. This period has helped me to see how these ambitions – and my failure to achieve them – have contributed to a lot of unhappiness. I can only control what I can control, which for me has meant focusing on things I like to do and that make me feel alive rather than striving to succeed so I can fill the void. Life is happening here and now, it is short, and this is the only one there is.
‘I might have to sign up as a fruit picker’
Jesus Garces Lambert, Mexican director working in Rome, who made a video diary about the pandemic with other ex-pats
What he said in March:
I was working on a documentary about the virus when I had to go into quarantine’
I am a Mexican who has lived for the past 24 years in Rome. A couple of weeks ago, I was aware of the problem, but didn’t believe we were about to become the epicentre of the pandemic.
A US production house commissioned me to make a documentary about the virus, and I was working on this when I was told someone I had been in contact with was infected. This meant going into strict quarantine.
The industry will collapse here in Italy. The worst thing is we still don’t know when the wider crisis will end; I can see now military trucks transporting hundreds of bodies from the hospitals to be incinerated.
These are terrible times, but I am trying to respond positively. Speaking to friends in Mexico, I realised the low levels of consciousness about coronavirus over there, and the minimal government efforts. So I made a collective video-diary of expats explaining the impact.
How he feels in October:
After the documentary I had been working on before lockdown was called off, I started developing a bunch of projects at home with big production companies – though not about coronavirus this time. We were supposed to start filming one in October-November, everything was looking super good, but with the pandemic returning it has been postponed to 2021.
So I have to change the way I think as a film-maker. One project meant filming in Miami, but the producers didn’t want to take the responsibility of sending a crew there. Instead I concentrated on being more local, filming just in Italy, like the project we were supposed to start in October – but after the second wave started the protagonist said: “OK, I don’t want to have anyone with a camera near me” and that was that.
Financially I have just about kept going. When you are a freelance you are used to this sort of situation: you have very good months, and then put money aside for when you don’t earn anything. There’s really no money in development in Italy, but the producers wanted to work with me and paid me a little. I have also been filming some interviews for American companies who can’t come to shoot in Italy. Production companies here are not insured for pandemic, so you have to sign a release for if you get ill. Otherwise you won’t work.
If nothing happens in the next six months I might have to sign up as a fruit picker. But I am confident – even though we don’t know when this is going to end.
‘The mental health of people in the industry has been worsened by the government’s response’
Jo Rae, owner of Kraken Films
What she said in March:
Watch Netflix while you self-isolate – but spare a thought for the people who made those shows’
I run a London film fixer company that organises film locations, production, crew and kit hire for overseas clients. Now all productions are on hold or cancelled. But as an industry we cannot work from home. That advice is near useless. Our offices are film studios, outdoor locations, meetings at agencies and clients’ offices. Ninety per cent of my team at any point will be freelance.
The public are told to take comfort in watching Netflix while self-isolating, but everyone who created this content has now had their livelihood put on hold. Most won’t get sick pay or universal credit. Many are struggling to try to pay rent, let alone fighting over bog roll.
It’s like we are living in a bad zombie pandemic movie. The irony is, we can’t even be part of the production.
How she feels in October:
Everyone thought we were going to come out of the worst of it by the autumn, so it’s beginning to really hit people hard. A very close friend has started getting anxiety attacks aged 50. If you haven’t suffered the blues before, they’ve really gone into the mean reds, to quote Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It has rattled me a lot but because I’ve suffered from clinical depression for 20 years I’m a bit more used to dealing with it.
Still, across the industry, those mental health issues have been really exacerbated by the lack of financial support from the government – and their lack of recognition of the arts. It’s been a real knife in the back. Our creative industries are world renowned and respected and then the government tells you to retrain in tech. My mum is an 82-year-old former ballet dancer and she was livid at the Fatima ad: “They don’t know what hard training is! Your toes can fall off!”
Related: Swabs, masks, action! Film-making through a pandemic
It’s so insulting. It’s as if art is just something that’s nice to have. I think there should be a one-day blackout across the entertainment industry. Let’s see how people get on without music, Netflix and so on. Something needs to happen; I know so many companies who are just going under.
Still, I’m far more positive than I was in March. I made a decision early on not to just wait. I wanted to find out as much as possible about how to survive in the new world. I’m a qualified Covid supervisor for film sets now. I did my own shoot, for a four-minute film on anamorphics, and I wrote and produced a self-funded short film, based on the experiences of lockdown back in June – basically to keep myself busy and mentally occupied.
There are two types of people: those who just complain – for the right reasons – but perpetuate this really negative vibe. And there are the others who just want to move forward and make content. My company was six months old in March. It was exhausting but I just had to keep the conversations going.
