7 ms·

What Hollywood Can Teach Us About the Future of Work

79 points by Chinjut 11y ago

lkrubner 11y ago
About this: "Why was this process so smooth? The team had never worked together before, and the scenes they were shooting that day required many different complex tasks to happen in harmony: lighting, makeup, hair, costumes, sets, props, acting. " If the subject actually interests anyone, I strongly recommend the work of Ted Goranson, who has devoted decades to studying this issue: The Agile Virtual Enterprise: Cases, Metrics, Tools http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Virtual-Enterprise-Cases-Metrics/dp/1567202640/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430873067&sr=8-1&keywords=Ted+Goranson http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Virtual-Enterprise-Cases-Metrics... He offers a comparison of modern entrepreneurs and the old sea faring culture, in a small pamphlet called "Whale of a Tale.": http://www.amazon.co.uk/whale-tale-historical-perspective-Perspectives/dp/1885166109/ref=sr_1_3/275-6354883-8238151?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430873240&sr=1-3 http://www.amazon.co.uk/whale-tale-historical-perspective-Pe... It is tragic that this pamphlet is now out of print. It was only 25 pages, and did a brilliant job showing how the old laws and cultures of the seafaring nations became the basis for the modern understanding of entrepreneurs. In his pamphlet, Goranson did a great job of arguing that whaling ships were the worlds first Virtual Agile Enterprises. Very insightful reading. The whaling ships offered a model for modern Hollywood, and tech startup, culture: lots of skilled professionals, who had never worked together before, coming together and working together smoothly.
- Animats 11y ago
  No, film production is not "agile". On larger productions, it's very much a waterfall process. Everything is planned and costed in advance. There's a thread on here by someone in the industry who describes the process. As films became more effects-heavy, the process has become even more rigid. As someone said of a Star Wars film, "Three years of pre-production, six months of principal photography, three years of post-production". Some directors, especially ones who came from the stage, have problems with this. For a new stage production, actors are a debugging tool. The director and actors go into an empty theater with a bare stage and work through the script to see how it plays out. Scenes and musical numbers may be added, deleted, or rearranged during this process. There have been film directors who worked that way, including some of the greats. That process doesn't scale to modern blockbusters. Film planning today looks more like classical cartoon planning - it starts with storyboards, and gradually details are filled in. Nowadays, there's often a "pre-visualization" of the entire production[1], a videogame-quality cartoon with every shot that will be in the final product. That's done before actual production is green-lighted. The link below, from a Paris film school, shows previz and production scenes from some well-known movies side by side. Iron Man looks just like its previz shots, just with higher image quality. Even the camera angles match. This is not "agile". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHHMLyjrn4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHHMLyjrn4g
fsk 11y ago
The article missed one big point. All those temp workers are unionized. The union does not guarantee them a job, but it does guarantee them a certain salary and benefits when they do find a job. It's a closed shop, so if they do hire a non-union member for a job, they become a union member.
- jonas21 11y ago
  The author mentions this in the middle of the article: "It helps that, despite the work’s fleeting nature, Hollywood is strongly unionized, which keeps wages high. According to the rate card of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 728, which represents union film-lighting crews in Los Angeles, even entry-level electricians on a major film set make more than $35 an hour — i.e., more than 40 percent higher than the national average for electricians — and make that wage over 12-hour days."
  - fsk 11y ago
    I see now that it does mention unions, but it's buried in the middle. It really should be the one of the highlighted points of the article, rather than buried on one paragraph.
- salmonellaeater 11y ago
  The article does mention the union. It helps that, despite the work’s fleeting nature, Hollywood is strongly unionized, which keeps wages high. I wonder how the unions interact with the automation also mentioned in the article, such as robotic cameras. I'd expect some push-back from the grips' union against automation, at least while they still have some leverage with the studios.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    There's not much concern about automation - it's been a fact of life in the industry forever, because every producer wants every movie to have stuff that nobody has seen before. They're more concerned about the safety implications. I've never heard of anyone being told not to use a particular technology because it would reduce labor requirements, although I've heard plenty of stories about general work rules designed to inflate labor requirements from unions or professional guilds.
anigbrowl 11y ago
Why was this process so smooth? The team had never worked together before, and the scenes they were shooting that day required many different complex tasks to happen in harmony: lighting, makeup, hair, costumes, sets, props, acting. And yet there was no transition time; everybody worked together seamlessly, instantly. Because it was planned in pre-production. When you decide to shoot a film, the first thing that happens is the script gets 'broken down' into a database with every single production element involved in every scene. I mean everything - if a character has a handbag over her shoulder and later pulls a tube of lipstick out of it, the lipstick and the handbag get their own pages in the breakdown, they're linked with each other, someone is assigned the responsibility to procure, pay, maintain custody of it, and so on...and on and on and on. Your typical feature film has maybe 100 scenes, and even a no-budget film will probably generate an average of 10 things per scene. On a big-budget film as described in the article, it could be 10x that. This process takes 1-2 weeks minimum, and forms the basis of the budget and the schedule. Then you add in constraints for this and that (Famous Actress is only available for one week, so all her scenes will have be shot between these two dates; we'll have X hours and minutes of daylight available on any given date; union rules mean that if we shoot longer than 16 hours in a single day we start paying everyone their full day rate for each additional hour (yes that's really true, but it hardly ever happens). So at the end of this you have a realistic estimate of time and cost for the production itself. You end up with a document called the 'Day Out of Days' which itemizes every single scene and possibly every single camera setup in the film, and what particular things/people will be required for them. Then you set about raising the money, and when you have all that in place you go into pre-rpoduction, securing locations, building props, getting signatures on contracts and so on. Things falling through at this stage can cause big delays (on reason that I'm reading HN today rather than shooting) but most contracts go into effect on the first day of principal photography so the financial costs are limited. During production, everyone on the cast and crew gets a copy of the schedule for the following day the evening before, telling them where they'll be working, what they'll be doing, what stuff has to be there etc. etc. This usually undergoes substantial revisions at the end of every shooting day depending on whether production is ahead of or behind schedule, what random things have changed and so on. You work for 12+ hours a day, and everything you do is scheduled down to 15 minute increments. Then you drink a beer and either go home or sit in a production meeting for 1-2 hours and work out the potential problems for the following day. Think of it as a cross between military logistics of setting up a forward operating base (minus the risk of being shot at) and planning a wedding. It's great, it's really rewarding, but like these events it is a ton of hard work and you probably go to bed mentally and physically exhausted every night. On your days off you probably hang out with the same people you are already working with and eat more food, watch a couple of movies, hold more production meetings, and then get up and start working again.
iiiggglll 11y ago
The point about unionization keeping wages up is important, and probably deserves a lot more coverage than it's getting. And on that front, us programmers are fucked, well and truly fucked. We won't unionize ever, because everyone thinks they are the one unique special super-smart snowflake who can do better without the union (here's a hint: we can't all be, and in fact by definition nearly all of us aren't). Since programmers' egos simply will not allow them to let go of the delusion, we'll be stomped into the ground while the owners laugh at us. In fact, it's already happening (see the recent wage-fixing "scandal"). Enjoy the ride, fellow egomaniacs!
- task_queue 11y ago
  "Ask Hollywood producers, and they’ll confirm that there are only a limited number of proven, reliable craftspeople for any given task. Projects tend to come together quickly, with strict deadlines, so those important workers are in a relatively strong negotiating position. Wages among, say, makeup and hair professionals on shoots are much higher than among their counterparts at high-end salons. Similarly, set builders make more than carpenters and electricians working on more traditional construction sites. It helps that, despite the work’s fleeting nature, Hollywood is strongly unionized, which keeps wages high. According to the rate card of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 728, which represents union film-lighting crews in Los Angeles, even entry-level electricians on a major film set make more than $35 an hour — i.e., more than 40 percent higher than the national average for electricians — and make that wage over 12-hour days." This is essential. The only reason the worker sees any of the massive amounts of money that are thrown at these projects is because of collective bargaining. It's an important lesson we should learn given the massive profits our industry sees. If you're a 10x engineer why don't you demand 10x pay?
- jpollock 11y ago
  I've only ever had violent and threatening interactions with unions. Why would I ever want to join one? I've had friends beaten, others threatened. They've consistently threatened other friends with forced membership. No thanks.
  - 11y ago
kijin 11y ago
> we have reached the end of a hundred-year fluke, an odd moment in economic history A lifetime of full-time employment is indeed a very recent invention in the history of humanity, and as the article says, it's going out of fashion already. But we must not forget that this "fluke" helped bring prosperity and stability to an unprecedented number of people in the developed world over the last 100 years, and especially in the middle of the 20th century. The middle class would not have existed without it. Even the freedom and equality that a lot of us take for granted today might not have existed without it, since a strong middle class is often said to be a critical prerequisite for democracy (at least until they grow older and get addicted to Fox News). Short-term, project-based employment is good when there are always enough projects to choose from. Both IT and Hollywood are having good times now, so a lot of people can afford to live project-to-project. But what happens when the projects dry up? Full-time employees of large corporations and government agencies can get through economic downturns with relatively little impact on their paycheck as long as they manage to stay employed. Even if they are laid off, they can often rely on unemployment benefits for a while. But if you're a freelancer and the projects suddenly stop coming, what do you do? Not many countries have the equivalent of unemployment insurance for freelancers, and no amount of unionization will help you survive for long in a world without projects. Unfortunately, there is no turning back. The world has steadily been moving away from the lifetime full-time employment model for the last 20-30 years, leading to a catastrophic increase in the number of young people with zero economic stability. The fluke is coming to an end, and we're headed back to the time when farmers feasted in the fall and starved in the spring -- only this time we have much more overall wealth and better technology. In the brave new world of temporary jobs, should every man fend for himself by setting aside a rainy day fund, the financial equivalent of a Tesla home battery to smooth out intermittent income? Will something like basic income save us?
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  >> "Full-time employees of large corporations and government agencies can get through economic downturns with relatively little impact on their paycheck as long as they manage to stay employed. Even if they are laid off, they can often rely on unemployment benefits for a while. But if you're a freelancer and the projects suddenly stop coming, what do you do? Not many countries have the equivalent of unemployment insurance for freelancers, and no amount of unionization will help you survive for long in a world without projects." Not sure what country you're speaking about here but in the UK at least you can get unemployment benefits for as long as necessary providing you can show you are actively seeking and able to work (i.e. applying for jobs, attending interviews). Your past work history doesn't factor into it.

79 points by Chinjut 11y ago

About this: "Why was this process so smooth? The team had never worked together before, and the scenes they were shooting that day required many different complex tasks to happen in harmony: lighting, makeup, hair, costumes, sets, props, acting. " If the subject actually interests anyone, I strongly recommend the work of Ted Goranson, who has devoted decades to studying this issue: The Agile Virtual Enterprise: Cases, Metrics, Tools http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Virtual-Enterprise-Cases-Metrics/dp/1567202640/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430873067&sr=8-1&keywords=Ted+Goranson http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Virtual-Enterprise-Cases-Metrics... He offers a comparison of modern entrepreneurs and the old sea faring culture, in a small pamphlet called "Whale of a Tale.": http://www.amazon.co.uk/whale-tale-historical-perspective-Perspectives/dp/1885166109/ref=sr_1_3/275-6354883-8238151?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430873240&sr=1-3 http://www.amazon.co.uk/whale-tale-historical-perspective-Pe... It is tragic that this pamphlet is now out of print. It was only 25 pages, and did a brilliant job showing how the old laws and cultures of the seafaring nations became the basis for the modern understanding of entrepreneurs. In his pamphlet, Goranson did a great job of arguing that whaling ships were the worlds first Virtual Agile Enterprises. Very insightful reading. The whaling ships offered a model for modern Hollywood, and tech startup, culture: lots of skilled professionals, who had never worked together before, coming together and working together smoothly.

Animats 11y ago
No, film production is not "agile". On larger productions, it's very much a waterfall process. Everything is planned and costed in advance. There's a thread on here by someone in the industry who describes the process. As films became more effects-heavy, the process has become even more rigid. As someone said of a Star Wars film, "Three years of pre-production, six months of principal photography, three years of post-production". Some directors, especially ones who came from the stage, have problems with this. For a new stage production, actors are a debugging tool. The director and actors go into an empty theater with a bare stage and work through the script to see how it plays out. Scenes and musical numbers may be added, deleted, or rearranged during this process. There have been film directors who worked that way, including some of the greats. That process doesn't scale to modern blockbusters. Film planning today looks more like classical cartoon planning - it starts with storyboards, and gradually details are filled in. Nowadays, there's often a "pre-visualization" of the entire production[1], a videogame-quality cartoon with every shot that will be in the final product. That's done before actual production is green-lighted. The link below, from a Paris film school, shows previz and production scenes from some well-known movies side by side. Iron Man looks just like its previz shots, just with higher image quality. Even the camera angles match. This is not "agile". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHHMLyjrn4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHHMLyjrn4g

fsk 11y ago

The article missed one big point. All those temp workers are unionized. The union does not guarantee them a job, but it does guarantee them a certain salary and benefits when they do find a job. It's a closed shop, so if they do hire a non-union member for a job, they become a union member.

jonas21 11y ago
The author mentions this in the middle of the article: "It helps that, despite the work’s fleeting nature, Hollywood is strongly unionized, which keeps wages high. According to the rate card of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 728, which represents union film-lighting crews in Los Angeles, even entry-level electricians on a major film set make more than $35 an hour — i.e., more than 40 percent higher than the national average for electricians — and make that wage over 12-hour days."
- fsk 11y ago
  I see now that it does mention unions, but it's buried in the middle. It really should be the one of the highlighted points of the article, rather than buried on one paragraph.
salmonellaeater 11y ago
The article does mention the union. It helps that, despite the work’s fleeting nature, Hollywood is strongly unionized, which keeps wages high. I wonder how the unions interact with the automation also mentioned in the article, such as robotic cameras. I'd expect some push-back from the grips' union against automation, at least while they still have some leverage with the studios.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  There's not much concern about automation - it's been a fact of life in the industry forever, because every producer wants every movie to have stuff that nobody has seen before. They're more concerned about the safety implications. I've never heard of anyone being told not to use a particular technology because it would reduce labor requirements, although I've heard plenty of stories about general work rules designed to inflate labor requirements from unions or professional guilds.

anigbrowl 11y ago

Why was this process so smooth? The team had never worked together before, and the scenes they were shooting that day required many different complex tasks to happen in harmony: lighting, makeup, hair, costumes, sets, props, acting. And yet there was no transition time; everybody worked together seamlessly, instantly. Because it was planned in pre-production. When you decide to shoot a film, the first thing that happens is the script gets 'broken down' into a database with every single production element involved in every scene. I mean everything - if a character has a handbag over her shoulder and later pulls a tube of lipstick out of it, the lipstick and the handbag get their own pages in the breakdown, they're linked with each other, someone is assigned the responsibility to procure, pay, maintain custody of it, and so on...and on and on and on. Your typical feature film has maybe 100 scenes, and even a no-budget film will probably generate an average of 10 things per scene. On a big-budget film as described in the article, it could be 10x that. This process takes 1-2 weeks minimum, and forms the basis of the budget and the schedule. Then you add in constraints for this and that (Famous Actress is only available for one week, so all her scenes will have be shot between these two dates; we'll have X hours and minutes of daylight available on any given date; union rules mean that if we shoot longer than 16 hours in a single day we start paying everyone their full day rate for each additional hour (yes that's really true, but it hardly ever happens). So at the end of this you have a realistic estimate of time and cost for the production itself. You end up with a document called the 'Day Out of Days' which itemizes every single scene and possibly every single camera setup in the film, and what particular things/people will be required for them. Then you set about raising the money, and when you have all that in place you go into pre-rpoduction, securing locations, building props, getting signatures on contracts and so on. Things falling through at this stage can cause big delays (on reason that I'm reading HN today rather than shooting) but most contracts go into effect on the first day of principal photography so the financial costs are limited. During production, everyone on the cast and crew gets a copy of the schedule for the following day the evening before, telling them where they'll be working, what they'll be doing, what stuff has to be there etc. etc. This usually undergoes substantial revisions at the end of every shooting day depending on whether production is ahead of or behind schedule, what random things have changed and so on. You work for 12+ hours a day, and everything you do is scheduled down to 15 minute increments. Then you drink a beer and either go home or sit in a production meeting for 1-2 hours and work out the potential problems for the following day. Think of it as a cross between military logistics of setting up a forward operating base (minus the risk of being shot at) and planning a wedding. It's great, it's really rewarding, but like these events it is a ton of hard work and you probably go to bed mentally and physically exhausted every night. On your days off you probably hang out with the same people you are already working with and eat more food, watch a couple of movies, hold more production meetings, and then get up and start working again.

iiiggglll 11y ago

The point about unionization keeping wages up is important, and probably deserves a lot more coverage than it's getting. And on that front, us programmers are fucked, well and truly fucked. We won't unionize ever, because everyone thinks they are the one unique special super-smart snowflake who can do better without the union (here's a hint: we can't all be, and in fact by definition nearly all of us aren't). Since programmers' egos simply will not allow them to let go of the delusion, we'll be stomped into the ground while the owners laugh at us. In fact, it's already happening (see the recent wage-fixing "scandal"). Enjoy the ride, fellow egomaniacs!

task_queue 11y ago
"Ask Hollywood producers, and they’ll confirm that there are only a limited number of proven, reliable craftspeople for any given task. Projects tend to come together quickly, with strict deadlines, so those important workers are in a relatively strong negotiating position. Wages among, say, makeup and hair professionals on shoots are much higher than among their counterparts at high-end salons. Similarly, set builders make more than carpenters and electricians working on more traditional construction sites. It helps that, despite the work’s fleeting nature, Hollywood is strongly unionized, which keeps wages high. According to the rate card of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 728, which represents union film-lighting crews in Los Angeles, even entry-level electricians on a major film set make more than $35 an hour — i.e., more than 40 percent higher than the national average for electricians — and make that wage over 12-hour days." This is essential. The only reason the worker sees any of the massive amounts of money that are thrown at these projects is because of collective bargaining. It's an important lesson we should learn given the massive profits our industry sees. If you're a 10x engineer why don't you demand 10x pay?
jpollock 11y ago
I've only ever had violent and threatening interactions with unions. Why would I ever want to join one? I've had friends beaten, others threatened. They've consistently threatened other friends with forced membership. No thanks.
- 11y ago

kijin 11y ago

> we have reached the end of a hundred-year fluke, an odd moment in economic history A lifetime of full-time employment is indeed a very recent invention in the history of humanity, and as the article says, it's going out of fashion already. But we must not forget that this "fluke" helped bring prosperity and stability to an unprecedented number of people in the developed world over the last 100 years, and especially in the middle of the 20th century. The middle class would not have existed without it. Even the freedom and equality that a lot of us take for granted today might not have existed without it, since a strong middle class is often said to be a critical prerequisite for democracy (at least until they grow older and get addicted to Fox News). Short-term, project-based employment is good when there are always enough projects to choose from. Both IT and Hollywood are having good times now, so a lot of people can afford to live project-to-project. But what happens when the projects dry up? Full-time employees of large corporations and government agencies can get through economic downturns with relatively little impact on their paycheck as long as they manage to stay employed. Even if they are laid off, they can often rely on unemployment benefits for a while. But if you're a freelancer and the projects suddenly stop coming, what do you do? Not many countries have the equivalent of unemployment insurance for freelancers, and no amount of unionization will help you survive for long in a world without projects. Unfortunately, there is no turning back. The world has steadily been moving away from the lifetime full-time employment model for the last 20-30 years, leading to a catastrophic increase in the number of young people with zero economic stability. The fluke is coming to an end, and we're headed back to the time when farmers feasted in the fall and starved in the spring -- only this time we have much more overall wealth and better technology. In the brave new world of temporary jobs, should every man fend for himself by setting aside a rainy day fund, the financial equivalent of a Tesla home battery to smooth out intermittent income? Will something like basic income save us?

k-mcgrady 11y ago
>> "Full-time employees of large corporations and government agencies can get through economic downturns with relatively little impact on their paycheck as long as they manage to stay employed. Even if they are laid off, they can often rely on unemployment benefits for a while. But if you're a freelancer and the projects suddenly stop coming, what do you do? Not many countries have the equivalent of unemployment insurance for freelancers, and no amount of unionization will help you survive for long in a world without projects." Not sure what country you're speaking about here but in the UK at least you can get unemployment benefits for as long as necessary providing you can show you are actively seeking and able to work (i.e. applying for jobs, attending interviews). Your past work history doesn't factor into it.