A Timely Reminder About SIWA

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We had our first Check-In Tuesdays this past Tuesday and a number of editors were in the Zoom room.

One of the topics that came up was the mandatory clauses in the Screen Industry Workers Act. It seems that many producers are still in breach of the Act, which requires a written contract to be presented to a worker BEFORE they start their contract, with sufficient time for them to consider the terms being discussed, and to negotiate if the worker wishes to do so.

DEGANZ considers one week to be an absolute minimum for a worker to be presented with a contract for consideration. Two weeks should be the standard.

The Screen Industry Workers Act has been in place since the end of December 2022. That’s more than a year and a half ago. For producers to be continuing to break the law by not abiding by the requirements of the Act is no longer acceptable.

Here is what is required under the Act in regard to your individual contract:

Good Faith
All parties negotiating an individual contract, or undergoing collective bargaining, or who are in a work relationship, must act in good faith. This means not misleading or deceiving one another, or doing anything that could mislead or deceive one another.

Contracts In Writing
Engagers (producers/production companies) must ensure your individual contract is in writing.

Before entering a new individual contract, engagers must:

  • give you a copy;
  • give you reasonable time to seek independent advice and tell you that you can seek this advice; and consider any issues you raise in good faith.
  • Once your contract is agreed, engagers must provide you a written copy “as soon as practicable”.

(these same rules apply if they wish to “vary” your contract)

Bullying, Discrimination, or Harassment
Your contract, agreement, or other arrangement, must not prohibit you (or any person acting on your behalf) from raising complaints.

Dispute Resolution
Plus, your contract must contain a clear process for raising and resolving complaints about bullying, discrimination, or harassment.

Health and Safety and Anti-Discrimination
All individual contracts must contain a term saying that both parties will comply with the Health and Safety at Work Act and the Human Rights Act.

Dispute Resolution
Your individual contract must include a clear process for raising and resolving disputes about your contract or workplace relationship. SIWA introduces a default dispute resolution system for resolving such disputes. Your contract must either use this default system, or another system agreed in your contract. If you can’t agree, the default system applies.

Termination Notice Periods and Compensation
Your individual contract must state what these are (if any).

Retaliatory Termination Prohibited
Retaliatory contract termination is prohibited. This means you cannot be terminated for exercising any right or power in your contract, SIWA, or any other Act, and engagers face penalties if they do so.

That includes but is not limited to your rights to:

  • negotiate your contract in good faith; or
  • raise a dispute about your contract or your workplace relationship; or
  • raise a complaint about bullying (or instruct someone to do this on your behalf); or
  • give information or evidence in relation to a complaint made by someone else (We hope this will help to eliminate ‘bystander culture’, improve support for complainants, and encourage everyone to regard harmful behaviours seriously) ; or
  • insist that any other of your rights or powers (conferred by your contract, or any other Act) be adhered to.

For your added support, SIWA gives you the right to ask your worker organisation to act on your behalf for the purposes of resolving a dispute about your individual contract. If you are a DEGANZ member, you can call on us for this support.

If your rights are being breached under the Screen Industry Workers Act, we want to know about it. So please reach out and tell us.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Postcard from MIFF

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I’m writing this in my hotel room. I arrived today at lunchtime and got thrown into the fray with the three NZ directors attending the MIFF Accelerator Lab, Awanui Simich-Pene, Vea Mafile’o and Te Waiarangi Ratana, and about 40 Australian directors.

Vea and Te Waiarangi’s shorts ran in the first short programme that screened today. They held their own.

The Australians are also good short filmmakers and they addressed a diverse range of topics and themes, across a variety of genres. I’m looking forward to the second short programme tomorrow,

The wonderful thing about shorts is that they allow true creative expression, one of the things I will mention tomorrow in the panel I’m participating in titled ‘Thinking Long and Hard About Shorts’.

On the walk from the hotel to the cinema where we watched Justin Kerzel’s documentary Ellis Park—a beautifully made, at times very sad, but ultimately uplifting biopic about legendary Australian musician Warren Ellis—I was a little shocked to hear from one of the Australian directors that they don’t receive government support for the production of shorts.

The quality of the Australian shorts I saw was certainly good, so these short filmmakers here have found a way to get their films made. Melbourne City featured in a number of the credits. Good to see a city getting behind their filmmakers.

I shared a cab into the city with Jackie van Beek who while living in Australia made at least five self-funded shorts before she returned home to NZ and got her first NZFC support for a short, then went on to make her debut feature, Inland Road.

It can sometimes seem that we in New Zealand lean too hard on NZFC for support when there are other ways of going about it. The Low-budget filmmaking workshop we ran with directors Michael Duignan, Tom Levesque and Tom Sainsbury showcased how they got their feature films shot on their own bat. I know Michael at least however was able to get post-production support to finish his film from NZFC—the finishing grant NZFC offers is something the Guild would very much like to see continue.

In the brief time I’ve been here it does seem things are tightening up for domestic Australian production, but it is certainly still more buoyant than at home. They have commissioned shows from the streamers and their own networks, while international production is for the moment keeping crew busy, at least here in Melbourne, according to one of the Australian directors I talked to.

I’m sorry to be missing NZIFF but I’m at least getting to see a good number of films while I’m here at MIFF. Next is Australian director Charles Williams’ Inside.

Hope you are all catching some great NZ films at the festival.

 

Tui Ruwhiu

Executive Director

 

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Where’s Feature Doco At?

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It’s encouraging to see NZ feature documentary alive and well, with five docos screening at the New Zealand International Film Festival.

You wouldn’t think so if you went to TVNZ+, though. Not a single NZ documentary feature sits in the ‘Kiwi Films’ strand, and under ‘All Documentary’ I only found one. Yes, there were plenty of NZ single TV docos and factual series. But only one documentary feature? Of course, licence periods could have run out…

It’s not so encouraging when you look at the box office for NZ documentary films in the theatres, either. I went back over the last seven months of the weekly box office records, and the NZ feature docs I did find didn’t do well. But then, comparatively, a good number of NZ narrative films don’t do well at the box office either.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for NZ feature documentary and that it can’t find an audience. It’s the same for NZ narrative feature.

Our myopic fixation on NZ theatrical box office, though, constricts our ability to adapt to the changed environment for documentary (and narrative) globally. And it has changed incredibly dramatically, particularly since COVID. Funders AND documentary makers need to accept this.

As Videomaker Dot Com pointed out in their article on the state of documentary—In a nutshell:

  • The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally altered the documentary film industry, with the transition to virtual film festivals and streaming platforms becoming more prominent.
  • The pandemic has led to a redefinition of documentary filmmaking, with changes in production methods, storytelling focus and ethical considerations, emphasizing the resilience and creativity of filmmakers.
  • Despite the increased availability of platforms for documentary viewing, the financial and market constraints, particularly for independent filmmakers, remain significant, highlighting the industry’s ongoing challenges and the necessity of adaptability.

Read the full article here.

The recent success of both a New Zealand documentary director and a New Zealand documentary producer I know tells me that this vital art form is alive and well in New Zealand, both for projects and for careers. I’m also excited by those NZ docos I’m aware of that are in production right now.

It’s a necessity for documentary stories to be told in this world of misinformation, disinformation and corporate spin-doctoring like we’ve never seen before. And while the box office is still being used as a measure of success here, please get out and watch those NZ docos in the theatres. They need your support.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

 

 

 

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Where’s The Work?

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While everyone angsts about what the New Zealand Film Commission is or isn’t up to—and frankly I still don’t know either—I thought I’d take a look at the work situation for directors and editors with television/platform content.

Now I’ve been hearing anecdotally that there are a lot of directors and editors out of work, so I looked to what NZ On Air and Te Māngāi Paho have funded this year so far.

According to their websites, in 2024:

NZ On Air funded:

22 Scripted Projects to a total of$26,982,203
10 Factual projects to a total of6$6,186,872
22 Non-Fiction projects to a total of$8,542,922
9 Returning projects to a total of

NB: Genre wasn’t defined but look all Factual

$10,673,286
6 Aotearoa New Zealand Pacific Regional Media Fund projects to a total of$1,859,996

NZ on Air (60%)/TMP (40%) funded:

5 projects to a total of$10,020,333

TMP funded:

8 projects (no info. on genre) to a total of$7,237, 871

 

All up, that’s 82 projects to a total of $71,503,483

 

Even though it’s nigh on impossible for a director or editor to make a living in feature film (shorts—foget about it), I thought I should also include what the NZFC has according to its website greenlit for production equity investment so far in 2024:

2 narrative features to a total of$3,687,602

But back to TV/platforms.

So for the half year we have 82 projects across all genres with budgets totalling $71, 503,483.

If we guesstimate that on average at least three directors and three editors will work on each project, that’s 246 jobs for directors and 246 jobs for editors coming out of those projects receiving NZ On Air or TMP funding this year to July 2024.

Let’s imagine that the same number of projects will get funded in the second half of the year so that’s all together 492 jobs for directors and 492 jobs for editors across 2024 with funding from NZ On Air and TMP.

Now we know that a director or editor generally needs to work on at least 2 – 3 projects a year to have any kind of sustainable income.

We also know that not every project happens at the same time, so a director or editor working on one project in 2024 could also be working on one or more projects in the same year. And we know that there’s a contraction in the domestic market going on.

What I’m getting at here is that while it might seem like there’s enough work to go around, there’s also anecdotally a good number of people out of work. The simple deduction from this is that there isn’t enough work for the number of directors and editors out there.

So what’s the answer here? Less directors and editors? Or more work?

Of course, all of us will advocate for the latter. The conundrum is: Where is the money going to come from to fund the work?

NZ On Air thankfully survived the government slashing of budgets with its baseline funding remaining unchanged.

TMP also went into this financial year with an unchanged budget from 2023.

However, Whakaata Māori has announced a decrease of $9.5 million in funding available over the next two years.

The freeing up of the New Zealand Screen Production Rebate (NZSPR) to allow funding from our funding bodies for all genres of content to be combined with the NZSPR is meant to be one solution to creating more work and delivering more production by combining domestic and international financing. The verdict on this is still out.

International productions coming in offer very few work opportunities for our domestic directors and editors.

So what to do? Find more money, right?

I’ve looked at the strategic documents from NZ On Air, TMP, and the NZFC. There’s lots of corporate language about vision, mission, objectives, values, etc. And lots of statements about responsibly managing the money they are given. But nothing about getting more money to disperse.

Nobody is talking about finding more money. Even SPADA’s mutterings about a Love Local campaign around which to build momentum for a streamer levy seems to have been jilted.

More money for domestic production means more work for directors and editors.

It’s pretty clear we need to find new sources of funding to make this happen. And fast. Or we’ll all be looking for below-the-line jobs on international productions, which seems to be happening more commonly now.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Editor Francis Glenday: How I Got Started in the Industry

My earliest, real childhood memory is being about 3 years old. I’m sitting in front of an electric heater, one of the old fireplace-mounted ones. It has two bright orange electric resistors. In my left hand, I have a toy; a silver metal cowboy gun with white plastic handgrips. And I can remember thinking very clearly “What if I put the barrel of my gun between those two glowing bars?” As I am thinking this I am slowly inching the end of the gun barrel forward, forward toward the point of contact….. 

When I was older my mother told me that the heater basically exploded and I was thrown back across the room. What the hell was I thinking? Well, maybe it wasn’t formulated this clearly, but it was something pivotal to my creative process: What happens if I put THIS between THOSE? And to me, that’s editing; creating a story by putting things together and watching sparks fly.

As a kid, I was forever making forays into the world of narrative. I spent weekends watching countless old movies with my grandmother, I’d while away endless hours drawing and was obsessed with making comic books. In the mid 80’s my father bought an old computer and taught himself how to program in machine code. He showed me how we could reprogram letters on the keyboard into custom art, and then write programs to animate them. I was making my comic book characters move. 

By the mid 90’s I was enrolled in a painting course and painfully coming to the realisation that I just wasn’t good enough to make it as an artist. But I did really enjoy the film elective I’d taken out of curiosity. The comic book stuff, the endless old movies, the knowledge of how to use a computer as a creative tool, and the sense of timing and rhythm I got from playing music in my teens all kind of clicked together in my head.

After swapping my major to film and graduating, I moved to Auckland. I knew that being able to cut student films on Avid wasn’t the same thing as knowing how to edit, so I was going to have to start at the bottom somewhere and grind my way up. At that time TVNZ seemed like a good place to start, so I pestered the head of operations and after a few weeks of almost daily phone calls they gave me a job as a tape opp. After a year though I was restless so I handed in my notice. One of the older hands told me that a small production company was looking for an editor for a new kid’s TV show and asked if I was interested.

I did that job for 4 years, first cutting Tumeke and then the follow-up show Pūkana. Every week I made hundreds of individual edits, and all those cuts added up to a tremendous bank of knowledge. And there was a huge amount of freedom too; we made music videos, comedy skits, I introduced claymation into the mix, and one torturous night with a show a minute short of duration, 2D animation.

From ‘Social Distancing,” an animated web series Francis made during lockdown from his perspective of the COVID-19 pandemic / Photo: supplied

By the time I’d left that job, I’d really learned what being an editor actually is. I was fortunate – I got to edit comedy, music videos, history and science documentaries. I set up my own suite in Auckland in 2004 and having that facility meant I also got to make things that might not happen because of budget, happen. I got to go to Singapore and cut a big documentary there. I learned a lot about editing when working with the director on that project, about how to put disparate shots together on the basis of a similar element. Like cutting a tracking shot through an ancient stone arch in rural China to a matching tracking shot in a tunnel in the science museum in Shanghai can be a perfect edit.

Through this period I also worked on my own projects and wrote and directed a short film in the mid-2000s that screened at festivals all over the world, including Clermont Ferrand.

All those thousands, probably tens of thousands, of individual cuts add up, but a push is what’s needed to take you to the next level. Tearepa Kahi, who I’d first met during my days on Pūkana asked me in 2015 to have a go at finishing off his doco Poi E. I remember after our first screening him looking at me and saying “It’s better, but it’s still not good enough.” Together we hammered at that work, and the film became something really great. Since then I’ve worked on a bunch of exciting movies; drama and documentary, including the HBOMAX original  No I in Threesome. It was just a small film when we started, but the director and I really gave it everything we had and when it went to market, it blew up. Seeing something you’ve edited reviewed in every major publication in North America is a hell of a thing, and I’m intensely proud of it.

From ‘There is No I in Threesome’ edited by Francis

The next big push for me was working on the America’s Cup, a completely different challenge to the doco or drama I’m used to. I suddenly find myself in Barcelona with a very fun mountain to climb. When racing starts and there are helicopters and chase boats with cineflexes tearing around gathering mind-blowing shots every day, it’s hard not to feel excited. And privileged. I’ve made a lot of edits throughout my career, but I still find the work exciting, visceral and fun. After 25 years of this stuff, I feel like I’m really getting the hang of it.

The biggest thing I can say about editing is this: trust your gut rather than your brain and don’t overthink it. If you find yourself in front of a metaphoric wall heater with a cap gun in your hand wondering what will happen if you put the barrel in between those two glowing bars. Go ahead and do it. Something really exciting might happen.

About Francis Glenday

Film Editor with 25 years of experience cutting feature films for theatrical release and streaming (including an HBOMAX original), premiere documentary for international TV & loads of New Zealand and Australian documentary & factual TV, as well as a bit of drama. On top of that, tons of TVCs for some of NZ’s biggest companies (LOTTO, Vodafone, KFC, Samsung etc etc). He was lead editor for the 36th America’s Cup and is back again in 2024 for the 37 iteration of the iconic event. Francis is also experienced in animation and VFX. He created the award-winning animated web series Social Distancing during the COVID lockdown and has created VFX, animation and motion GFX for most of the feature films and a lot of the TV he’s cut.

How I Got Started in the Industry is a guest blog series from the Directors and Editors Guild of Aotearoa New Zealand (DEGANZ). Our members reflect on how they made their way into assistant editing, editing, and directing—with no two stories the same. They offer advice for those starting out. Get in touch with admin@deganz.co.nz if you’re a member and would like to share your story.

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