Funding policies ‘devastating’ for docmakers

I want to add my personal two-cents’ worth to Lesley Ann Patten’s letter (May 9). I don’t know Ms. Patten, but I don’t just feel her pain, I share it.

The impact of current funding policies for the entire documentary business in this country is devastating, for everyone below the level of broadcaster, and the burden is being pushed onto those who are most defenseless and at the same time most crucial to documentary’s health – the small producer and the filmmaking team.

I am a writer and picture editor, living in that tight space between rubber and the road it meets. Let me tell you how it is in the trenches these days.

Let’s take a hypothetical case study: a one-hour, one-off documentary intended for primetime television. Used to be no one questioned that with digital technology, it would take at least 10 weeks to cut such a film, probably 12.

This tended to be a demanding schedule, especially when cheap videotape pushed shooting ratios into the stratosphere. (After all, it takes an hour to watch an hour of videotape, no matter how bad or pointless, never mind log it and input it into the computer.) But we could do it. And editing rates varied between $1,500 and $2,000 a week, depending on budget and the degree of experience required.

For writing narration, Writers Guild of Canada scale was considered entry-level and scale plus 50% was normal.

All that’s in the past now. Producers who have never been in the habit of exploiting their crews are now demanding sweatshop output for sweatshop wages. Broadcaster licence fees fall and CTF funding falls with them, taking budgets to rock-bottom.

Producers, some eagerly, but most reluctantly, use this state of affairs to grind down wages and cut costs just to give themselves some level of return for their time and risk. And they pass that risk on to their crews in the process.

Here’s how that same documentary looks to me today: I am likely to be asked to cut it in six weeks (or even three) though nothing has changed to make that more possible than it ever was. Moreover, I’m likely to be asked to do it at rates toward the bottom end of the scale and to guarantee delivery in the shorter time. That means when it takes 10 weeks, it’s my problem alone and my six weeks’ pay becomes less than $1,000 a week, spread over 10 or 12 weeks. That’s obviously a disastrous wage drop for many of us, especially when added to the cost of equipment for which we’re lucky to get any return at all.

As for writing, forget over scale. In fact, if it hadn’t been for major concessions by the WGC, forget guild rates at all.

And this state of affairs prevails with directors and production crew, too.

The long-term results of this on the quality of people in the industry is obvious, and the impact on audiences is already being seen in the rapidly spreading plague of TV fare shot in the simplest (shortest) way possible by inexperienced directors and camera people willing to work for experience. These are put together by similarly inexperienced people, with the resulting gimmicky cutting and soporific writing that we see every day. No wonder specialty channels can’t hold an audience.

All this is quite apart from the laughable-if-it-weren’t-so-serious ‘standards’ CTF puts on Canadian content.

What indeed do the policymakers think they’re protecting? Certainly not the level of filmmaking that used to make Canadian documentary a synonym for excellence.

Bob Lower,

Writer/picture editor,

Winnipeg, MB.

TVO ‘committed’ to indie filmmakers

In her letter to the editor (Letters, May 9) Lesley Ann Patten states that documentaries ‘…such as The Corporation, would never have been funded by broadcasters, due to their controversial subject matter and their length.’

In fact, TVO commissioned The Corporation for its signature documentary series, The View From Here, and it has proven a top draw both with our general viewing audience and within the educational community.

As a publicly funded educational broadcaster, TVO is committed to supporting the works of Canadian independent filmmakers, whose diverse points of view reflect the social and cultural reality of their society.

Rudy Buttignol,

Creative head,

Network programming,

TVO.