The instinct is to react to something like this as a potential trolling move but… You could be sincere. I can’t say my brushes with Producers has given me much faith in their understanding of interdepartmental property management. Kind of makes sense since the general attitude I’ve noted regarding most potential Producer caused property damages from people at my level is “if they want to ruin the equipment we’ve rented they are the ones paying for it in the first place.”
I don’t tend to think of our industry as being very grounded. I have had production designers, directors and decorators ask for things that are quite frankly impossible by the easily observable laws of physics with no idea about how absurd they sound… But it’s something of a career limiting move to frame their request as being astronomically dumb when suggesting the potential complications. The “Emporer has no Clothes” effect is alive in film. But when you look at things from an outside legal perspective you have employers and employees and the chain of responsibilities to maintain a safe work environment. Most of the time the actual nuts and bolts work is the domain of the PM to mitigate potential damage to the overall investment.
I think union film work is in part generally pretty well inoculated against the majority of criminal negligence cases by the culture of highly regimented structure… And endemic jadedness at the bottom. A newbie will light themselves on fire to keep production warm but that isn’t good for production or the newbie so it’s unofficial job of the seniors in lateral positions and the boss directly above to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Most of the time it seems like the creative captains and financiers of the ship keep their eye firmly on what they want to creativity achieve and rhen the bosses below look at their first job as being to impress. We play very risky political game with our own supervisors if we call foul. Put a call into an IATSE steward about a safety concern that makes a boss look bad and they will give you the straight rule as best they can apply it to your complaint but they also give you a caution that just because the rules are there to protect your safety doesn’t mean that you as a laborer won’t have your career harmed for standing your ground.
We’re all just day calls. We don’t have to be fired. Our bosses just don’t have to hire us back for the next show and the people at the top never need to know.
This is new info to me (producer). Thanks for enlightening me.
The instinct is to react to something like this as a potential trolling move but… You could be sincere. I can’t say my brushes with Producers has given me much faith in their understanding of interdepartmental property management. Kind of makes sense since the general attitude I’ve noted regarding most potential Producer caused property damages from people at my level is “if they want to ruin the equipment we’ve rented they are the ones paying for it in the first place.”
I don’t tend to think of our industry as being very grounded. I have had production designers, directors and decorators ask for things that are quite frankly impossible by the easily observable laws of physics with no idea about how absurd they sound… But it’s something of a career limiting move to frame their request as being astronomically dumb when suggesting the potential complications. The “Emporer has no Clothes” effect is alive in film. But when you look at things from an outside legal perspective you have employers and employees and the chain of responsibilities to maintain a safe work environment. Most of the time the actual nuts and bolts work is the domain of the PM to mitigate potential damage to the overall investment.
I think union film work is in part generally pretty well inoculated against the majority of criminal negligence cases by the culture of highly regimented structure… And endemic jadedness at the bottom. A newbie will light themselves on fire to keep production warm but that isn’t good for production or the newbie so it’s unofficial job of the seniors in lateral positions and the boss directly above to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Most of the time it seems like the creative captains and financiers of the ship keep their eye firmly on what they want to creativity achieve and rhen the bosses below look at their first job as being to impress. We play very risky political game with our own supervisors if we call foul. Put a call into an IATSE steward about a safety concern that makes a boss look bad and they will give you the straight rule as best they can apply it to your complaint but they also give you a caution that just because the rules are there to protect your safety doesn’t mean that you as a laborer won’t have your career harmed for standing your ground.
We’re all just day calls. We don’t have to be fired. Our bosses just don’t have to hire us back for the next show and the people at the top never need to know.