Friday, April 3, 2009

Will SAG-Producer labor relations help kill film?


What do labor relations have to do with film versus digital? Due to the contract issues between SAG and the Producers, as much TV production as possible is being done under AFTRA electronic media contracts (SAG represents all primetime series shot on film). My understanding is that this season's pilots are almost all being shot digitally. This is a huge deal. Television has been a major consumer of film, week after week, to the point where certain filmstocks have only been available due to the demand for them from TV productions. Many of the most visually compelling programs of recent years have been shot in 35mm (and a surprising number of shows have been shot on Super 16mm). Can film, and its infrastructure, stay viable if only features are using it? Talk about the law of unintended consequences....

2 comments:

Quintessential Studios said...

Yes, I think the actors "killed" film. I reference an interview by 24 DP, Rodney Charters, here: http://www.fxguide.com/redcentre (#029)

Craig Mieritz said...

Hey, thanks for the link. Interesting discussion about the camera set-up for Slumdog in the show notes too.