75% of UK Film/TV workers considering leaving the industry!

[Hugh Robjohns]

Not even slightly surprising, sadly, but very disturbing.

https://www.screendaily.com/news/three- ... tson_email

[Martin Walker]

As you say, not surprising at all, but still sad.

More and more people in all parts of the entertainment industry must be viewing the implications of AI as a reason to find a different avenue of employment.

[amanise]

Its even affecting the household name level actors now. My acting friend was trying to empathise with the plight of the musical artist (in other words, me moaning at her on the dog walk) by telling me a recent story about a colleague who just completed a movie shoot for a full scale motion picture. When he got to location, he found he was the only one there. Just him. Everything else was/is to be being done with AI. She's looking forward to being able to concentrate full time on enjoying her garden, she says.

[Hugh Robjohns]

I'm sure AI (and CGI) is changing the nature of film (and TV) making quite dramatically in some cases.

But the industry instability referred to in the article is much wider than that, and with older roots. The fact is that film and TV programme makers aren't big studios employing full-time staff anymore.

Instead, they are mostly small independents or commissioning houses who only employ a few producers and administrators full time, and they buy in everyone else they need purely as and when needed. So they hire a freelance director, freelance scriptwriters, freelance composer, freelance set design, freelance camera crew, freelance sparks, freelance set builders, etc etc etc. And then they drop all those highly skilled and experienced crew when they're no needed.

The accountants love it as a very efficient way of maximising short-term profits.... And in a thriving industry with loads of work around it rolls along quite reliably.

But that's not the world we have here today. As the article highlights, the average time interval between paying jobs is now 7 months, and that's just not sustainable for anyone.

The obvious and inevitable consequence is that more and more freelancers are being forced to find reliable employment elsewhere, leaving the industry and taking decades of skills and knowledge with them. And it's largely irreplaceable.

For the film-makers, if they start to find they can't hire the talent then need in one location, they'll have to go somewhere else, and so all the work will tend to centralise on one or two places where the volume of work supports a freelance workforce once more.

It seems like the UK may be losing out on this centralisation, purely because of the economics, which is very sad and ultimately likely to be to the lasting detriment of the global industry as a whole.

I know an assistant producer, ten years into her UK career, who has had to emigrate to the USA purely to find a reliably consistent flow of (freelance) work. And I know of several sound recordists, boom ops and location mixers who have decided to sell up and find something else to do, just because they couldn't reliably support their families and regular living expenses from the freelance work they were getting.

While no body is 'owed a living' I would question the wisdom of the film and TV industry bigwigs when it comes to the deliberate lack of maintaining skills and experience in the workforce they rely so heavily upon.

[OneWorld]

Reminds me of the time when DTP became the industry standard. I knew several people that worked for newspapers, printers and advertising agencies. It was considered a very highly skilled profession, doing the Linotype, and those that worked for newspapers made a mint, and they worked only on their terms - then DTP came along and a whole industry was decimated.

[Drew Stephenson]

Similar result, different root cause I think.
One is an industry disrupted by an unforeseen technical innovation, the other is an industry neglecting it's future in the name of short-term profit.

[BigRedX]

Reminds me of the time when DTP became the industry standard. I knew several people that worked for newspapers, printers and advertising agencies. It was considered a very highly skilled profession, doing the Linotype, and those that worked for newspapers made a mint, and they worked only on their terms - then DTP came along and a whole industry was decimated.

As someone who successfully made the transition from "traditional" typesetting and artwork for print to doing most of it with a computer - there are still some instances when it is quicker and easier to grab a drawing pen and layout pad; I can fairly safely say that IME those who got left behind only had themselves to blame. The core skills didn't change they just moved from the drawing board to the computer screen. Almost 40 years on, those basic core skills are what keep me in work, much of it sorting out "designs" done by people who don't have those skills.

[Watchmaker]

While no body is 'owed a living' I would question the wisdom of the film and TV industry bigwigs when it comes to the deliberate lack of maintaining skills and experience in the workforce they rely so heavily upon.

Just the other day in another thread (I can't recall exactly) we hit upon what is essentially greed underwriting worse outcomes for everyone, including the greedy bastages. Once seen, it is evident pretty much everywhere.

At some point the hairless ground ape is going to have to figure out that self interest is actually self detriment. Championing ideas of "Free Markets" is rather inane when one considers the cost benefit ratio. Besides, there have been exactly zero free markets in all of history, so there's that. Trying to make money from art is like dancing about architecture, or words to that effect.

Nearly every job we rely on usurped a prior generations income anyway. Think of long shoremen, or coal miners or Fortran programmers. Look at any company's books twenty years ago and compare to today's and see the change in "deferred maintenance." I blame the MBA and the fools (yes, truly) who use that as an indicator of competance. Would the last Oak were still standing, I would lament its loss again.

[OneWorld]

Reminds me of the time when DTP became the industry standard. I knew several people that worked for newspapers, printers and advertising agencies. It was considered a very highly skilled profession, doing the Linotype, and those that worked for newspapers made a mint, and they worked only on their terms - then DTP came along and a whole industry was decimated.

As someone who successfully made the transition from "traditional" typesetting and artwork for print to doing most of it with a computer - there are still some instances when it is quicker and easier to grab a drawing pen and layout pad; I can fairly safely say that IME those who got left behind only had themselves to blame. The core skills didn't change they just moved from the drawing board to the computer screen. Almost 40 years on, those basic core skills are what keep me in work, much of it sorting out "designs" done by people who don't have those skills.

I'm always reluctant to use the word 'blame' because there are a myriad of reasons why change does not come as easily to some as it does for others. For example those working for bosses that are reluctant to change, unions that clung onto the old ways because they were sitting pretty having domain and indeed influence when it came to bargaining. Then those that tried to adapt but simply couldn't. They were used to, and favoured the more tactile methods and computers seemed unintuitive. However, if and when the right circumstances present themselves, that same person who might have been reluctant actually goes on to flourish with the right encouragement and support? Don't you think the word 'blame' has a judgemental inference to it?

[amanise]

...
At some point the hairless ground ape is going to have to figure out that self interest is actually self detriment. ...

I don't think there's the time left for this. This once essential survival mechanism is baked into every thought we have, and the generations necessary to unbake it will, unfortunately, not be available to us. If we were a virus, we'd be Ebola, killing our hosts before they can get to any airport.

[Arpangel]

Trying to make money from art is like dancing about architecture, or words to that effect.

Money is the cart so often put before the horse.
I look around me, at the hairless monkeys, all dancing around their consumer gods, until one day when the hand of judgement will descend.

[RichardT]

I’m not surprised by this.

An angle that also worries me is that I don’t want to see films and TV generated by AI, but I’m not going to have much choice about it.

If there is no skill required to produce it and no human involvement then I’m really not interested.

Even the latest Bridgerton, which uses green screens more than ever before and lots of CGI to generate the backgrounds (which may or may not use AI) is starting to leave an unpleasant taste.

[MOF]

Ofcom can take some of the blame, they’ve allowed the ITV franchises to go from 15 to 4,2 and then one franchise which doesn’t even have to be renegotiated every ten years.
This means that there’s no competition between regions to get their programmes on the network (each region would be able to commission programmes they could take a punt on, can you imagine Auf Wiedersehen Pet being made today?) then variety and quality goes down, that in turn allows the BBC to not bother competing.
Apart from regional News there’s no real sense of being in the Yorkshire TV, Central TV etc area. I used to work on truly local programmes outside of the local News.
The other thing that has decimated studios and the number of full time staff was ‘Producer Choice’ this allowed production companies to get a commission to produce a programme(s) with YTV for example but not have to use their studios and staff, so they’d get all the facilities to give their best price and go somewhere where it was a few pounds cheaper but still YTV would have the fixed costs of staff etc who might not be busy that week or month. YTV wouldn’t even own some of the rights to that programme, just the right to show it.
A lack of political will has allowed these companies to have to do next to nothing when it comes to public service broadcasting at the regional and national level.

[Drew Stephenson]

I feel that at some point in the future, this period of history will be introduced by teachers with a monologue along the lines of, "And yet, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that was well known and widely understood, governments continued to behave as if the only important metric was short-term financial return."

[OneWorld]

Ofcom can take some of the blame, they’ve allowed the ITV franchises to go from 15 to 4,2 and then one franchise which doesn’t even have to be renegotiated every ten years.
This means that there’s no competition between regions to get their programmes on the network (each region would be able to commission programmes they could take a punt on, can you imagine Auf Wiedersehen Pet being made today?) then variety and quality goes down, that in turn allows the BBC to not bother competing.
Apart from regional News there’s no real sense of being in the Yorkshire TV, Central TV etc area. I used to work on truly local programmes outside of the local News.
The other thing that has decimated studios and the number of full time staff was ‘Producer Choice’ this allowed production companies to get a commission to produce a programme(s) with YTV for example but not have to use their studios and staff, so they’d get all the facilities to give their best price and go somewhere where it was a few pounds cheaper but still YTV would have the fixed costs of staff etc who might not be busy that week or month. YTV wouldn’t even own some of the rights to that programme, just the right to show it.
A lack of political will has allowed these companies to have to do next to nothing when it comes to public service broadcasting at the regional and national level.

I agree entirely, we could have a 1001 TV companies but that wouldn't mean the product would become a 1000 times better, the same amount of money spent on production is spread wider. I could never see the wisdom of having any number of TV companies each getting a thinner slice of the cake, so in order bring in more money, we get more adverts and more subscription services. From what I have seen there is nothing that our BBC, ITV, C4, C5 can't produce that isn't the equal of the alternatives being foisted on us. I am one of those odd people that thinks the Telly Tax is value for money. Next door neighbour pays £80 a month for Sky and his missus tells me it's bobbins

[amanise]

Only thing worth having on Sky is the Sports, and then you don't get the what used to be BT Sport channels. It is indeed pants. We junked it and got a Fire Stick with the Now TV app.

[Albatross]

Pretty much given up on the tv these days. I removed the one I used to have here near my chair. I look at the BBC news on this laptop now and again and I watch the news for half an hour or so when I go to bed just to see what's been going on, but its the radio for me. Love the radio, it doesn't demand my attention.

[MOF]

I am one of those odd people that thinks the Telly Tax is value for money.

Me too, though I do think it should maybe be funded by a set aside amount paid out of general taxation, indexed to the rate of inflation.

[MarkOne]

I feel that at some point in the future, this period of history will be introduced by the central teaching AI's avatar with a monologue along the lines of, "And yet, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that was well known and widely understood, governments continued to behave as if the only important metric was short-term financial return."

fixed that for you

[MOF]

More and more people in all parts of the entertainment industry must be viewing the implications of AI as a reason to find a different avenue of employment.

And other industries and professions too.
When the legal, accounting and computing sectors are all not recruiting, and maybe will be reducing their existing workforce, then it’s hard to know what to suggest you should retrain for.
The trades are where there’s a labour shortage, currently, but not everyone is cut out for that life and eventually that sector would saturate too.
Then what happens when robots become available cheaply. Maybe then what Tomorrow’s World promised will happen, a life of leisure for all of us.

[amanise]

Arms production. Chancellor Merz has been talking about plans to introduce shorter working weeks across Europe as being unwise in the light of the current shortfall in armaments stockpiles in the face of the growing threat from Russia.

Pretty soon he won't be the only one. The subtext being, if you think we can wind down to 4 days a week - think again, we need more bullets and bombs.

And so the Sabre rattling continues from the military/industrial alliances of the world.

[OneWorld]

Arms production. Chancellor Merz has been talking about plans to introduce shorter working weeks across Europe as being unwise in the light of the current shortfall in armaments stockpiles in the face of the growing threat from Russia.

Pretty soon he won't be the only one. The subtext being, if you think we can wind down to 4 days a week - think again, we need more bullets and bombs.

And so the Sabre rattling continues from the military/industrial alliances of the world.

erm, what has the above got to do with "Re: 75% of UK Film/TV workers considering leaving the industry!"

[OneWorld]

More and more people in all parts of the entertainment industry must be viewing the implications of AI as a reason to find a different avenue of employment.

And other industries and professions too.
When the legal, accounting and computing sectors are all not recruiting, and maybe will be reducing their existing workforce, then it’s hard to know what to suggest you should retrain for.
The trades are where there’s a labour shortage, currently, but not everyone is cut out for that life and eventually that sector would saturate too.
Then what happens when robots become available cheaply. Maybe then what Tomorrow’s World promised will happen, a life of leisure for all of us.

It's hard enough to get hold of a plumber as it is, without them going to become MPs, it'll be impossible, and I cannot see a robot re-plastering my front room, but if there is one that can, what's its number?And if I don't have to make it cups of tea, will a squirt of WD40 do?

[amanise]

Arms production. Chancellor Merz has been talking about plans to introduce shorter working weeks across Europe as being unwise in the light of the current shortfall in armaments stockpiles in the face of the growing threat from Russia.

Pretty soon he won't be the only one. The subtext being, if you think we can wind down to 4 days a week - think again, we need more bullets and bombs.

And so the Sabre rattling continues from the military/industrial alliances of the world.

erm, what has the above got to do with "Re: 75% of UK Film/TV workers considering leaving the industry!"

It was in response to this in the preceding post;

And other industries and professions too.
When the legal, accounting and computing sectors are all not recruiting, and maybe will be reducing their existing workforce, then it’s hard to know what to suggest you should retrain for.

[OneWorld]

Arms production. Chancellor Merz has been talking about plans to introduce shorter working weeks across Europe as being unwise in the light of the current shortfall in armaments stockpiles in the face of the growing threat from Russia.

Pretty soon he won't be the only one. The subtext being, if you think we can wind down to 4 days a week - think again, we need more bullets and bombs.

And so the Sabre rattling continues from the military/industrial alliances of the world.

erm, what has the above got to do with "Re: 75% of UK Film/TV workers considering leaving the industry!"

It was in response to this in the preceding post;

And other industries and professions too.
When the legal, accounting and computing sectors are all not recruiting, and maybe will be reducing their existing workforce, then it’s hard to know what to suggest you should retrain for.

Oh.....I was just at the point where I had woken up to read that the same old faces are bombing another country again as if they get hold of Iran and its oil, and that means they will be able to take over OPEC, another step towards world domination......."The Rule of Law?" hahahahah MABA - Make America Bomb Again.

" Europe as being unwise in the light of the current shortfall in armaments stockpiles in the face of the growing threat from Russia"

It would be nice if all of us had a shortfall in armaments. The USA spends more on weapons than the world's other big spenders - Israel, UK, India, Russia, Saudi, Qatar, China together.

If anyone were wondering what to re-train in, there's no shortage of bomb makers, seems that industry is booming.