And miles of cable before I sleepand miles of footage before I sleep

Long days are not an unusual phenomenon on commercial shoots and many of those who toil thereon say the battle between the clock, the balance sheet, and the sanctity of the creative idea produces human as well as film casualties.

The economic realities that lead to marathon days are well known. Daily rate personnel are expensive and margins often aren’t what they used to be. The average director about town makes around $8,000 per day, in rare cases, up to $20,000, with dops in the $6,000 ballpark, which makes it necessary sometimes to pack a day of shooting like a bratwurst sausage to avoid the considerable expense of a second day.

‘The director, the cameraman, the producer and the ad; when you add up their day rates it’s always cheaper to do one day than coming back for another day and having to pay them, even with crew overtime,’ says Ross McLean, manager of operations at The Partners’ Film Company in Toronto.

McLean says the average day on a commercial shoot is 12 hours, with 14-hour days being commonplace and 18- to 23-hour adventures thrown in periodically. While monster days of 20 hours-plus are usually the result of developments on set, they are sometimes expected going in.

‘It all comes down to us getting less money for the jobs,’ says McLean. ‘People want things that are more sophisticated and complicated, so you’re trying to do more for less money.’

Many of those who work on commercial sets agree that after 16 hours, few can contribute the full range of their particular capabilities, and that reduced energy can mean the crystalline beauty of a creative idea suffers at the fatigued hands of expedience.

‘I don’t think there’s a doubt that at a certain level it starts to have an impact on the quality of the spot,’ says dop Sean Valentini. ‘Because of the nature of being a commercial dop, in that you’re working and concentrating every minute of the day, it’s pretty demanding and it means that after a certain amount of time it has an impact on your attention and how you’re focusing.’

Valentini recounts the words of a director on the subject: ‘You start out thinking you’re making Gone With the Wind and by late afternoon you realize you’re making The Dukes of Hazzard.’

‘How good is the decision-making process on any level and at what rate are people moving after a certain number of hours?’ asks Andy Crosbie, executive producer and owner of Toronto’s Sparks Productions.

Lesley Parrott, vp director of creative and broadcast services at MacLaren McCann, Toronto, says the increased number of long days is an unavoidable side effect of the pricing structure on the agency and client side. ‘The pressure to keep costs down is so huge that often there is no other choice but to shoot an 18-hour day rather than two nine-hour days,’ says Parrott.

But while productivity may wane in the wee small hours, most agency people report that professionalism prevails and the spot usually emerges intact.

‘I’ve never seen a situation where it’s damaged the end product,’ says Ammirati and Puris producer Pat White.

Long days elicit mixed feelings from hourly wage crew members. Technicians working on commercial shoots were previously covered under an iatse contract, defunct for the past six years.

Wayne Goodchild, president of IATSE Local 873 in Toronto, says among other factors, industry changes and the proliferation of smaller production companies, which were able to secure labor without entering into labor agreements, led to the overall demise of the union contract.

With keys now making about $32 per hour (Partners’ and its affiliates recently raised its hourly rates for keys to $32 and Sparks to $33), the overtime can be lucrative, but long days raise concerns among crew.

‘People can only concentrate for so long,’ says one freelance gaffer, a veteran of commercial shoots. ‘After that much time you start getting tired and saying, `Let’s just get this over with.’ ‘

Another major area of concern is safety. ‘That is the ultimate issue to me,’ says gaffer Bill Brown. ‘You don’t want to be working in unsafe conditions when everyone is exhausted. People have to be careful when they schedule things to last 20 hours.’

There seems to be a common understanding of the financial pressures on all concerned and the reality of lower margins across the board. Brown says overall he appreciates the financial benefits of long days and is sympathetic to the financial pressures facing production houses, but adds more open communication rather than confrontation between crew and production houses would benefit everyone.

Improved communication is called for at all levels of the commercial production process.

Derek Case, a director/dop and owner of Toronto commercial production house Magic Inc., says there is often a lack of communication between the agency and the director of a spot at the planning stage of a creative concept, which can exacerbate the time and money crunch.

‘Closer involvement of the production house or even the director could help guide clients into what’s feasible within the bounds of their money,’ says Case. ‘Often boards are created with elements that don’t add the biggest value to the creative; i