Director Robert Logevall has left Kessler Irish Films to join Steve Chase and Curtis Wehrfritz on the Jolly Roger roster.

The reportedly amiable migration was effective last Tuesday and will see Logevall reunited with executive producer Peter Davis who produced much of his early work at The Directors Film Company.

Word is Partners’ Film Company president Don McLean has blessed the move despite actively encouraging the Partners’ group of companies not to raid each other.

Logevall, a veteran director with a cinematic touch and a reputation for wielding beautiful image-driven spots, has just come off :30 for Canada Savings Bonds through Vickers & Benson and Calais Mineral Water via Harrod & Mirlin.

Based out of New York, Logevall is apartment hunting in Toronto and will be spliting time between the two cities. He’s represented by The Artists Company in the u.s.

Crew seek more money

As per written messages on crew sheets this month, certain members of the commercial crewing pool are asking for more money.

Some shops’ reaction is, ‘If you don’t like our rates, don’t take the call,’ saying the technicians’ hourly rate element of the budget is already heavy enough since the margin crunch has resulted in two-day shoots being typically done in a day, and triple time already hurts, ‘every day is from 12 to 24 hours.’

More sympathetic elements regard the requests as reasonable, but due to the unlikelihood of getting production houses across the board to agree to new rates, are unable to comply.

Says Michael Wray, pm of Derek Van Lint and Associates and Damast Gordon and Associates: ‘Their rate is fair, but until all production houses agree, no one can up their rates.’

In addition to the need to compete on a level field, Wray says they won’t pay over scale to any one element, because ‘we can’t play a game where one key is making more than another.’

While the most active lobbying is coming from grips and electrics – because they are typically larger departments – Wray says the pay dissatisfaction is a general feeling across the board. ‘The crew are complaining, and rightly so; they haven’t seen a wage increase in years, and are actually making less than eight years ago.’

dvla director Chris Sanderson ascribes the situation to the fact that competition – ‘the climate is still fairly cutthroat’ – has forced unhealthy practices upon the industry, referring to the 20-hour-day syndrome, which leaves crew members incapable of working the next day.

‘The length of days has gotten out of hand,’ says Sanderson. While he adds, ‘I think technicians have borne their share of the recession,’ and is sympathetic to the request for recompense for ‘mental and bodily damage,’ he says this latest situation would be best worked out with the parties sitting down, rather than through messages on time sheets announcing that as of a certain day this month, rates will increase.

Of the number of people on the floor who are usually paid hourly, as opposed to a flat fee, the numbers vary from house to house, ranging from a tad over a quarter to two-thirds. The grip and gaffer area, and assistant camera, are among the group of hourly paid crew members, and their rates still go loosely under some of the various union rate structures.

dvla gm Humphrey Carter observes that as long as there are good people available, the ones who have stuck their necks out, unfortunately will probably have a dry period. Carter, noting that the rule-of-thumb operating mo remains, ‘You offer what you can pay, and if people are interested they take the job,’ adds that ‘the variation is much more in the working conditions as much as the pay rate.’

Re rumblings about a movement afoot among cameramen to return to their hourly roots (currently they’re on a flat day fee) and charge overtime after the 12- to 14-hour mark, Humphrey surmises it’s part and parcel of people reacting to the tendency for houses to try and get two days out of the price of one.

‘Everyone’s pushing the envelope as to what they can get in a day – a day has become 24 hours.’ Which, besides straining tempers and testing endurance, throws a monkey wrench into taking the next day’s call.

Wayne Fenske of L.T.B. Productions, who regularly skeds and quotes 14-hour days, is interested in seeing if now is the time to take a look at shortening those days by changing the hour-long breaks (currently the standard is an hour break for every six worked) to half-hours.

Fenske thinks producers might be ‘amenable to paying a buck or two’ more on a hourly basis ‘if we could pick up an hour a day.’ He says this would help avoid the third day of a shoot ending at 3 a.m., which would benefit crew as well as producers. His reasoning is that if crew members got home at a reasonable hour, they would be able to take a call the next day.

‘There hasn’t been an increase of keys for a few years,’ says Fenske, ‘maybe it’s time to take a look’

A festing they will go. Not.

Who says commercial work won’t bring fame and glory? Vancouver’s a.k.a. Cartoon (the people whose fax cover page asks, ‘What size boot does your face wear?’) have been getting festival invites. Too Much Coffee Man in Strange Brew, a 15-second u.s. tv spot for Converse sneaks, is in competition at Cinanima 95, Portugal’s international animated film festival. And the Northwest Film and Video Festival in Portland, Ore., has skedded ‘Bing Goes To Hell,’ episode one of season two of mtv’s The Brothers Grunt, for its opening night lineup.

In a terse release headlined, ‘a.k.a. Projects Sure To Ruin Festival Attendance,’ it’s revealed that director Danny Antonucci and producer Dennis Heaton will not attend either fest, due to ‘recent penal implants.’

The duo is not doing any spot work at the moment (perhaps embittered over a recent project that will never see the light of air as the agency lost the account halfway through the job), but they are getting ready to do the series pilot for Lupo The Butcher. According to Heaton, right now they’re at that crucial stage ‘waiting for lawyers to sit down, have lunch and yell at each other.’

Agents Provocateur

Derek Vanlint will be heading out West with dop Michael Buckley to start shooting a movie in Vancouver mid-December. Provocateur, a Dai-Ichi production, is also slated to go on location in Korea.

The film should wrap at the end of January, when dvla gm Humphrey Carter will be glad to see two of his star players return.

Vanlint got the directing gig through connections with the film’s l.a.-based executive producer, Ken Nakamura, who’s an old friend of Carter’s.

Stripes under new management

Stripes, the guerrilla spot arm of Partners’, is under new management as per a decision made earlier this month. Dan Ford and Tom McLean are the new management team. The name of the handed-over entity is under constructionthis, and many more brow-wrinkling management decisions, will be made by the end of the month.

Ross McLean, Stripes founder and former topper, is expected to announce his new plans shortly.

In the meantime, McLean reports that a recent Stripes outing did not yield any awards, however, their commercial efforts haven’t been dissed, as it wasn’t a spot contest, it was the Markham Fair Demolition Derby, wherein McLean and fellow Stripester Sam Pecoraro were behind the wheels. Since the cars weren’t wrecked, they were able to enter the ladies’ Powder Puff competition with two Partners’ staffers, Bridgett Brown and Bridget Faroo, behind the wheels.