CineMontage

Q1 2021

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12 C I N E M O N T A G E G E T T I N G O R G A N I Z E D to look like a cottage industry — con- sisting of colleagues each sequestered in their individual homes, hither and yon, invisible, or even completely unknown to one another — can organizing new shops even be possible? I am pleased to report that, yes, orga- nizing can happen and has, in fact, been happening — even while remote work has kept post employees physically separate from each other. A lot of that organizing has taken place in conjunction with production crews working in more-or-less tradition- al (albeit socially distanced) settings. Unscripted shows — titles such as "Bake Squad" and "Ellen's Next Great Design- er" — have been flipped in recent months, largely on the strength of in-person production crews demanding union pro- tections on those shows. Such campaigns look much like the IATSE's pre-pandemic organizing of individual shows, in which production crew members on set co- ordinate with post employees working off-set to present their employer with an ultimatum: sign a union contract or your show doesn't get made. But we also have a couple of recent examples of organizing wins driven entirely by post-production personnel working remotely. One such was the Jan- uary strike of the "Unfiltered" crew. "Unfiltered," a new game show for Nickelodeon, is an instance of the in- dustry innovating new forms of content intended to be pandemic-proof: there is no set, no production crew, and hence no risk of viral exposure. The show's on-screen talent shoot themselves in their own homes using green screens and camera and lighting kits sent to them by a vendor for the production. A crew of assistant editors, graphics artists, and editors (all working from their respective homes) then cobbles together the remotely-filmed footage with a barrage of motion graphics. The effect is a televised approximation of the app-mediated means by which members of an extremely online generation relate to one another. The show is, essentially, all post. The show may be pandemic-proof, but it wasn't organizing-proof. Guild organizers spoke to members of the show's post crew towards the end of the show's first season last fall. We gathered, virtually, to discuss organizing over the course of multiple Zoom sessions. The clear consensus among the crew was that the show, which was proving itself a suc- cess for the network, relied heavily upon their skills and efforts. Notwithstanding t h e i r i n s t r u m e n ta l i t y i n t h e s h ow 's success, the post personnel were work- Nickelodeon's "Unfiltered." P H O T O S : M A R T I N C O H E N

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