R. has worked as a set photographer for various Romanian film production companies and movie studios. Dissatisfied with the work conditions, he agreed to give this interview in order to speak about the power ratios that define the work relations in such environments.<\/i><\/p>\n
What\u2019s the most recent project you worked on?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
A commercial filmed by some foreigners in Buftea, at MediaPro Pictures. A more ambitious project, with a big team, on which I worked for a week. I\u2019d start in the morning at six o\u2019clock and work for twelve hours, but the schedule wasn\u2019t always observed. There were days when I worked from six in the morning till two a.m.. Overtime wasn\u2019t paid for.<\/p>\n
Did you sign any contract with them?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
I did sign something, but I never got any copies back. It\u2019s as if I hadn\u2019t signed anything.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s different when you work with a foreign film crew?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Generally speaking, the relation with film crews is more or less the same, whether you\u2019re working with foreigners or Romanians, but there are certain complexes at play when it comes to westerners, which we haven\u2019t gotten over yet. I thought this only happened in the nineties, the way we regard each other, I mean. I\u2019ll give you an example. There were two tables of food on set. The foreigners, the ad agency representatives and the department heads had espressos, fruit, natural juices, and all sorts of other things on their table. At the other table, where the rest of us ate, there was a bowl of chips, very bad coffee, and Coke. The way the tables were set up is relevant, because it indicates what the class difference is. And you could feel this in other situations, too. And, anyway, since we\u2019re talking about foreigners, most of them come here because the labor is cheaper and they don\u2019t have to pay extra for the overtime. They couldn\u2019t afford to do this abroad, where they have unions. At a certain point, I overheard this conversation between a second unit director and the agency, in which the director was asking the agency to pay the electricians as soon as possible, because they have their own union and they\u2019re going to start getting vocal about it.<\/p>\n
While you, as a photographer or an actor, can have the payment postponed because you are in no way represented by any unions.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Exactly. And since you mentioned actors, in one of the commercials I worked on, the director decided to change one of the scenes and film one of the actors only from behind, instead of filming his face, as had been initially agreed. So they only paid him half the money. As if he\u2019d only brought half his body to the shoot.<\/p>\n
An interview by Ionu\u021b Sociu, summary translated by Ioana Pelehat\u0103i<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
R. has worked as a set photographer for various Romanian film production companies and movie studios. Dissatisfied with the work conditions, he agreed to give this interview in order to speak about the power ratios that define the work relations in such environments. What\u2019s the most recent project you worked on? A commercial filmed by some foreigners in Buftea, at MediaPro Pictures. A more ambitious project, with a big team, on which I worked for a week. I\u2019d start in the morning at six o\u2019clock and work for twelve hours, but the schedule wasn\u2019t always observed. There were days when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[92],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3128"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3464,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3128\/revisions\/3464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}