Production Sound & Video

Winter 2024

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Winter 2024 – LOCAL695.COM 3 I was driving my son to school pretty much every day … but you do reach a point where you are the person that's saying yes to these things, but you're also saying no to the things that you used to say yes to—can I get this thing, do we have money so I can go here with my friends, can I go do this? …There are times when they say, 'When is this going to end, when is this going to end?' And it's frustrating because you don't have an end date, because you can't budget, because you can't say, yeah it's fine, you can go do this thing because we have this amount of money that I know that we can put here. But without that end date in sight, you don't have any way of knowing how to partition that stuff out, you know, you don't know what resources you can put where. Monday is my wife's 50th birthday and it went from last year talking about a party to us maybe going out for dinner. It's like what it's come down to. You have to be responsible, but you also, I don't know. Member 3: When we first started, it was the summer. We had the time and a little bit of savings, or me personally, a little bit of savings. You're using that because now you're at home, you got the time with your kids, you're using it. We're letting them have their summer experience. Then back to school is a whole other expense. And now I've used most of our resources thinking … that it wouldn't be this long or this serious. I'm not going to make them suffer. I'm still going to let them enjoy their summer and enjoy the back to school. But that was tough because what do we [do to] replace the money? Member 1: And that's the thing I think that's gonna snap a lot of people is that not knowing, not being able to plan, especially going into Christmas and suddenly, it went from maybe we'll get a couple of episodes before the year's out, and we won't lose healthcare, we won't lose this, we'll be able to pay for Christmas, to, oh, it's gonna be January. Okay, I have to find a way of managing everything to get to January now. And the longer it goes on for us, it's not just like a couple of days, it becomes months, it becomes nine to twelve weeks of leading before you can get onto a film set. So, every day that it goes on, we're thinking, "Well, they're not going to start now because it's going to be Christmas, and then it'll be New Year's, and then we're going to start. So, what are we doing? Are we going to wait until March? Are we going to go until April? And there's some people who haven't worked for a year." Member 5: I don't have kids but … I'm driving, helping my dad with his [limo] business. Just trying to stay afloat, staying positive though… But that's slowed down too, because he used to have a lot of people in Hollywood that he would take as executives. So, it's slowed down a lot. The whole city's been pretty shut down because of this. And people don't realize that it impacts a lot of small businesses too. Yeah, so right now he's like looking into people coming from out of town, like doing Bar Mitzvahs. He's doing a lot of football games now. And he's doing a lot more like picking people up from the airport, dropping them off to their homes. How has this affected the vendors we work with daily? Member 3: This is obviously not my line of business, but I would say in talking to most of the vendors and manufacturers, they've definitely been impacted. I know in speaking with one, the owner of Let's talk about the aftermath. On September 27 and November 9, 2023, the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild ended their one hundred- plus day strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. These dates will live in our generational DNA as moments of great relief. The truth is that these strikes have been devastating and I am keenly aware of the pain and suffering they have caused. As of November 1, 2023, the Motion Picture Industry & Pension Health Plans have lost a total of over 40 million hours or two billion dollars in labor wages. I am appalled by the lack of press regarding the impact on below-the- line talent, such as all members in our Local. We need to start talking about the long-term financial impact of these strikes on our families, our pocketbooks, but also our mental health. So to that end, I decided to host a virtual discussion with seven Local 695 members in late October. Some were well seasoned with years of experience in our business while others are just starting their career journey. We discussed the strikes and how they had been affected over the last seven months. These seven members were extremely candid in their responses to the topics below. Here are some of the topics and responses this group talked about: How have you all been getting on since the start of the WGA strike? Member 6: I am plowing through savings, like, I mean, just slash and burn. And, you know, the boom operator that's been working with me for ten years basically had to leave LA. He's hanging out in another state now because it's cheaper to hang out there while the strike's going on. That's terrible, right? Member 2: So, I finished a movie the second week of, or maybe the first week of April. And I had another movie lined up for the summer, so I didn't necessarily fill that time with a ton of work. It wasn't until maybe a couple weeks after the writers announced that they were on strike that I got an email saying that they're going to decide to table the movie because it was just too hard. They wanted to make changes to the script, they couldn't, and so it didn't make sense to go ahead with prep. That whole movie got shelved. So that was my whole summer … just completely gone. And so I have done, I think, eight union days since the end of that feature that I did at the beginning of April. How is your family dealing with the effects of the strike? Member 1: I mean, it was good because I was here [with my kids] and I'm not always able to be here. I'm able to be present and take them to school. But then at the same time, the further we go into this, I'm here, but I'm not resourceful. You know what I mean? I'm here, but I'm dealing with the mental, emotional things of being at home every day and trying to figure out what's next or what to do or what not to do. So, what I go through directly affects them because I can't make the same decisions I can make if I'm working. Member 3: Well, my kids are actually happy I'm home, but then you don't have money to do a lot of things. So you're home, but you're home and you're broke. At first, it was good. Now, we got to refill the resources, but from where? Member 1: Yeah, just to jump on what [was said], it went from I was a taxi service for the kids and happy to spend time with them. FROM THE PRESIDENT

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