Canadian film and television composers may soon benefit from the collective bargaining power gained by the Guild of Canadian Film Composers in May 2003.

Over the next two months, the GCFC plans to hold a retreat to discuss major issues going forward. One key issue will be to determine with which organizations it will begin collective agreement negotiations. With the guild pointing to a 40% decline in work volume among composers over the last two years, collective bargaining has become a priority.

‘We’re not a labor union, but in terms of representing composers, we have a lot of expertise and experience among our members, which we can use to create master agreements with various production entities,’ says GCFC president Christopher Dedrick. ‘Our approach is to create, in clear language, standards and definitions that will assist composers and producers in negotiating fair and workable deals.’

According to Dedrick, composers are facing cuts to front-end commissioning fees, as well as pressure to give up copyrights, which generate back-end payments that account for approximately half what composers traditionally earn.

‘Pressure to give up copyright is a new reality,’ explains Dedrick, who recently scored the music for Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World. ‘In a situation where a composer is being given $100,000 or $300,000 to give up certain rights, that’s fine, but when you’re being given $3,000 to give up those rights, it’s not such a good model.’

David Krain, GCFC member and founder of Toronto-based Eclipse Music, says more and more producers are asking for publishing rights.

‘As composers that’s our livelihood, because, with the amount of money we have to spend on players and equipment, we rely on those rights to keep us going during down times,’ says Krain, who is working on the music for Sex Files and Sexual Secrets, two half-hour docs for CTV.

Without collective agreements addressing front-end fees and intellectual ownership, composers negotiate individually with producers who, facing pressure from distributors and reduced budgets, are forced to cut where they can.

‘Composers are one of the only groups that doesn’t have collective agreements, meaning there are no minimum spends. We are the natural group whose fee has been cut, because it can,’ says GCFC chairman Paul Hoffert.

After bringing industry stakeholders together at GCFC seminars throughout the country, Hoffert and Dedrick say producers and lawyers responded positively to the idea of collective agreements, because it would cut down on the time-consuming process of negotiating with each composer individually.

The guild, which has grown from 58 members to 296 over the last five years, also hopes to help composers combat shrinking work volumes by focusing on education and training.

‘One of the solutions to any challenging time is just pure excellence,’ says Dedrick.

In fall 2003, the guild released And now…The Music Score, its first interactive DVD and CD-ROM teaching tool, with a second currently in production.

-www.gcfc.ca