When they say “jump”, we say “how low?” — Paul Evans’ industry blog

Are some crafts better at projecting their value than others? 

When I watch films, it seems that I pay more attention to the soundscape than most people do. For me, films that my friends describe as mediocre are a hit if they have sound good (and vice versa).

The contribution of the sound department may be less immediately obvious, and when I talk to professional sound recordists about this, I detect a sense among them that it isn’t valued by ‘viewers’ (or should that be listeners?) as much as it should be.

But there’s more to it than the perceptions of punters. There’s also the very different question of how people are valued within the industry. Does every skill get paid fairly, or are there some crafts that have a reputation for soft bargaining?

I think there are. There are lots of craft-cohorts, built patiently over years, reminding each other of the value they add, but there are others where the freelancers concerned feel that their craft has no collective consciousness.

This may serve the short-term interests of the employers involved. It means that they can buy skills for less than they’re worth. But in the long run, it’s more complicated.

Craft skills are available to the industry because the crews concerned have made a big personal investment. Unless that investment is repaid, people will stop making it – and those crews will disappear. Often, this investment is in the form of training, or the pricey tools bought to learn the trade on. It could be the time invested in honing a craft or even building the relationships needed to survive in a freelance world.

Supportive craft-cultures model the assertive behaviour of their most prominent players. These people will share war-stories of how they defended their professional reputations – how they responded when asked to work over-long days, or for unsustainably low rates, or they are not given the time a good professional needs to plan their work.

When you care about the reputation of your trade, you know that a wage-race to the bottom will lead to good people finding other careers. If these investments aren’t sustainable, only the wealthy will make them — and that alone discredits any craft.

When entry-level career success is determined by a combination of ‘passion’, a need to rely on connections and ‘the bank of mum and dad’, then productions know that they’re probably speaking to someone who will work for a fraction of the value that they provide. They also know that the people they hire will probably concede to penny-pinching demands which cut corners on quality or safety.

And if someone who knows and values their craft stands their ground in dealing with someone who doesn’t, then the price-of-everything-value-of-nothing engager only needs to make one more phone call. Again, short term gains that hurt everyone in the long run.

Far from hurting the craft, a strong sense of collective efficacy is essential to save the industry from its own worst instincts. Freelancers are often hired by people who don’t know enough to know what they don’t know about the craft that they’re hiring (as I outlined in this post about ‘the market for lemons’ a few weeks ago).

This drives wages down, and pushes good people out of an industry that needs them.

So who’s going to fix it? The truth is, this is everyone’s responsibility. If we care about a craft, about this industry, or even about fairness and equality within it, we have a duty to see that everyone is mentoring each other to promote a shared common sense of their own value.

It’s my job to help cultivate this among directors, and help to build a stronger sense of collective efficacy among any group of directors that would like to have one.

But I have a personal weakness here. I don’t have a good sense of co-ordination and storytelling —these are skills that I’ll need. So I sometimes ask myself “If only there were a professional group of people anywhere who have those particular skills….” I think you know what I’m getting at. 

But whoever does it, it’s time for everyone who cares about their craft to stop conditioning each other to ask “how low?” when employers ask them to jump.

Paul Evans is Head of Industry Relations at Directors UK. In this regular blog Paul shares his thoughts on the industry, as he meets and collaborates with directors across the UK. Read Paul’s previous blog: “The culture of fear that surrounds freelance employment is our industry’s dirty secret”.