Free Work

Recently I go a text from a friend telling me that the PA position I had recommended them for was not paying. That really made me mad as I was under the impression that it was and that having to be informed of it this way was rather insulting. Now, the director of this film is a friend of mine and clearly all of this is being done in the indie filmmaking world. Having been essentially raised in that culture during my time at NYU and my continued experience in seeing it after graduation (it's kind of a side-effect of living on the east coast), I am no stranger to the challenges of trying to create something with no money and can only imagine that trying to make a feature length film is 10x more difficult in that regard.

Shooting a film is hard -- especially an indie film -- it is boasts all the problems of launching a start-up with significantly less flexibility in procedure and NO immediately marketable product. Despite all that, however, it is NOT ok to advertise a PA position that will ultimately be unpaid -- and let me explain why.

The film and television industry is flooded with naive kids ripe for taking advantage of -- all just trying to get into the industry somehow. -- I used to be one of them, so I know first hand how quickly you become jaded once something legitimate comes along (and rightfully so). Generally, it's not until then that you come to realize that at the end of the day, asking a PA to work for free helps no one but yourself. Typically, asking someone to work for free comes with something for them. It is only a partially legitimate argument that you can use whatever work you did on the film for your reel and that working on this project will be a great benefit for you once the film goes somewhere. It is a shitty reason at best, but at the very least, a reason. If we look at everything realistically, the chances that your indie film will go anywhere are fairly slim. Alongside that, as a PA, the very simple question arises of "how does this in any way benefit me?". If you are making a film with the intention of profiting from it, which you are (don't give me any bullshit about artistic integrity) unless you're a moron who likes to waste money (in which case, you can afford to pay your PA's) or a nonprofit organization (in which case you should either have a legit budget or be working with a skeleton crew), it is not fair to be asking someone to sacrifice weeks to months of their time for nothing when you clearly aren't willing to do the same.

As I stated previously, your film has little chance of going anywhere and in the unlikely case that it does, no one is gonna look at the film and say "hey, that's a really great film! I think I'll look through the credits and see who the PA's are so I can hire them, because they clearly did an amazing job on this film!" Credits do NOTHING for PA's except provide minimal bragging rights in the off chance your film gets anywhere -- and even then, "yea, I was a whole crew's unpaid bitch on that production" doesn't really sound impressive.

Now, having said that, with an indie film I understand that there are always budgetary concerns, and I'm not asking that PA's be paid the full $200 a day rate (as is industry standard), nor do I expect you to pay them more than your DP or Sound mixer -- especially if they are bringing their own gear -- but I do expect them to be paid something -- anything to at least let them pay their bills (at least pay them the equivalent of minimum wage).

Comments not only welcomed, but encouraged.

Sorry

Over the past two days the plans had degraded from something definite and set in stone to "I'll let you know", a common line he heard which pretty much meant "go make other plans,".

He hadn't seen them in months -- the last time being a dinner in which some of the first words out of their mouth was "I can't believe that you actually came all the way out here". (And his thought was "wait, so you invited me to dinner but didn't actually want me to come? Why did you even bother asking me in the first place?!") It had come to the point where the only reliable thing about them was that they would seek him out and then flake out on him. It was almost as though he was the victim of a game of ding-dong-ditch and at this point he was beginning to wish that she would just leave him alone.

It wasn't so much the canceling of plans that bothered him, though he was getting pretty sick of it, as it was a common occurrence that he had come to expect -- it was that he knew that the most he would hear about it would be "sorry" -- or a long one-sided IM conversation several months down the road apologizing for their flaky behavior. The problem with this being that they weren't really sorry.

All in all, sorry was a word that was thrown around way too easily -- a word that had essentially lost it's power because those who said it, oft didn't mean it. Now, it didn't necessarily mean that people didn't feel bad, or that people were being intentionally disingenuous, as in most cases they did, in fact, feel bad and were not being intentionally disingenuous. The fact of the matter was that people said sorry, acknowledged the error of their ways and then went right back to being the same kind of people that made those errors. Ultimately, as he liked to put it, if people were really sorry for their actions, they'd stop doing whatever they were apologizing for -- bottom line.

Obama School Speech AKA More Politics

Read First: In school speech, Obama says education key to country's future

Again, I normally don't comment on politics but this, which has been going on for several weeks now, steps out of the realm of politics and just into the realm of plain stupid. Can someone please explain to me why president Obama making a speech to students telling them to stay in school is such a big controversy? Should he, instead of telling kids that an education is valuable tell our youth that their education is meaningless and their time spent in school is better squandered at home playing video games? Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is.

I realize that there are concerns of Obama trying to use the address to push a partisan agenda, but honestly, is that even a legitimate concern? Aside from the fact that the speech is typed out on the White House's web page for everyone to read, the idea of Obama using an address to students to stay in school to push a partisan agenda is just stupid. Are we really that concerned about our country's leader corrupting the minds of our youth? Really?

Another thing that got me pissed with this issue, and I guess with people in general is this quote I read from this CNN article:

"'The president's speeches tend to be [about] what's wrong with the country and what can we do to fix it,' said Bill Hogsett, a parent from Dallas, Texas. 'I believe this is the greatest country on Earth, and I try to teach that to my children. ... I don't want them hearing that there's a fundamental flaw with the country and the kids need to go forward to fix it.'"

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what's wrong with this nation.

During my trip with friends to go visit Mr. Holtzman we talked about the degradation of the education system and the blatant dumb-ing down of material being taught so we could make our youth "feel better about themselves". This, quote from Mr. Hogsett is a clear example of the kind of dumb-ing down that we subject the minds of our youth too. We don't want to hear that the nation has issues (which, clearly it does) because it's too difficult for us to accept our country as a great country without it simultaneously being perfect so we ignore the problems its facing. Is that something that should be taught to our kids?

Why would we teach our kids something like that? Rather, since we're not actually teaching them anything, why are we shielding them from a simple truth? Why are we preventing them from thinking about problems? Problems don't solve themselves and ignoring them certainly isn't going to provide solution to any of them. Is that what we do now as a nation? We ignore our problems? When did we become like this?

I'll tell you one thing that I just realized. the movie Idiocracy is wrong. People aren't getting dumber because of genetics (lack of smart people reproducing) people are getting dumber because we're not teaching our kids to think for themselves.

The answer to a problem is worthless unless you can use it to figure out a solution to another problem.