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It should come as no surprise to you that the face of motion picture production has changed. An industry once dominated by a few major studios producing multiple “tentpole” movies now has decentralized and diversified to the point that anybody (and I do mean anybody) can make a movie. There are still the mega-buck pictures to be sure, but budgets are now all over the scale, from the multi-hundred million, to legitimate hits that were made on a credit card.
With those changes have come changes to the workforce that we comprise of and to our union. Those of us who had worked consistently on major studio features found that we had new jobs on low budget independent films, and those who had learned their craft on those low budget films became members of this union. Also those who were writing, producing and directing these new independent feature films brought fresh, different stories to us for us to tell. This mix has benefited both the young and the experienced among us.
I have worked on projects of all budgets, but without a doubt one of the most satisfying films I’ve done had a budget of just 4 million dollars. It was a little film called Donnie Darko, and that one little project changed my career, and my life. The passion that the young writer/director Richard Kelly brought to that show caught on with the entire crew, and we became as passionate about the story as its creator was. On the day that I first met Kelly, I knew that I wanted to be a part of that project. I knew that I wanted to help teach that 23 year old how to make a movie. What I didn’t expect was that I would go on to learn as much from him as he did from me.
So independent feature films have become a training ground for all of us, and that’s what you will read about in this issue of ICG. While it might seem obvious that those films are a training ground for new, young camera personnel—an opportunity for us to mentor and nurture new talent—it is perhaps a little less obvious that they are also a training ground for those of us who have been around a while.
Likewise the union itself, Local 600 and the IATSE have learned to grow and adapt to a changing workplace. As the independent feature film became a staple of the movie-going public, the IATSE found ways to adapt our contract to reflect the budgetary concerns of that work, and bring work that had previously been done non-union into the fold.
You see, individually, as creative storytellers in a visual medium, and as an organization, we must constantly remind ourselves that we can never stop learning and growing. And for that lesson we can thank many of the creative young storytellers that you will see in this issue.
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In Solidarity,
Steven Poster, ASC
Local 600 President |
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