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tourtelot

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I never see anything in this part of the forum.  Is work in the motion picture biz still slow?  Or is no one taking any work because rates and conditions are so bad?

 

Been out for a number of years so I'm not up to speed on what's going on, especially post-strikes.

 

D.

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Well, it’s not exactly super busy in general right now. The strikes last year were mainly regarding the writers and the actors, and currently negotiations are underway for many locals, including sound, camera and pretty much all basic crafts and crew, teamsters etc.  So, it feels like a lot is on hold at the moment. Hopefully everything will be resolved soon and things will get moving again. (Yeah - I’m one of those optimistic types hah!).

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It's slow where I am.  The strikes didn't help, but I think the real reason is the streaming market has crashed and cable is dying.  Netflix et al have been spending beyond their means to try and gain market share since at least 2015, and that all stopped with the strike.  Much of it hasn't come back.

Just before the strikes started, CW cancelled about a dozen series that shot here, many of which were quite high profile (Riverdale, Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman, etc.).  Only CW knows for sure why they were canned, but my guess is they couldn't afford the production costs of so many big shows.

It's always been a boom and bust industry ... and we just had a boom from 2015-2020.

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It's definitely slow, myself included.  Hopefully the IATSE contract gets worked out as I think that will make productions start up again since we'll have a few years till the next rounds of negotiations.  One thing I've noticed is that despite raising my rates these last few years as inflation / COL etc has been nutty, the productions that are approaching me do have proper budgets and aren't trying to nickel and dime me.  I worried that with things being slow, productions would do that whole "There's lots of people not working, let's see who will work for less!" but thankfully I haven't seen that happen.

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Union jobs are paying great, no negotiations required *and* paying promptly. I am running into more EPs that are exhausted of hearing chatter from their crew about the current climate/strike. Frankly, I am, too. "Thanks for the opp, here's your sound".

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Sloooooooooooooooow, but not nothing.  Jan/Feb, great.  March/April/May, bad.  June is looking great though assuming the work I have lined up comes through.

 

IMO the biggest factor right now is interest rates.  Money is expensive right now, and film runs on debt.  The 0% interest rate days seem to be behind us, for now anyway, just have to adapt.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I operate in that niche vertical to tools development and SFX - it feels a lot of stuff is expected for free (as usual) but it's even worse now with the genAI hype that also led to a lot of tech industry layoffs

 

a big cycle ...

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