Implementing the Federal Government’s new industrial relations package will cost almost half a billion dollars. Included in that amount is a budgeted $44.3 million for the WorkChoices advertising campaign. The Age article ‘IR changes carry $500m price tag’
outlines details on the financial impact statement which was included in the WorkChoices Bill introduced to parliament today.
Howard’s brave new world of work
Blog sites, news sites, opinion pages of newspapers, talk back radio and polls highlight the overwhelming public opposition to Howard’s Industrial Relations Laws. His ‘work choices’ advertising campaign has been vehemently criticised for using millions of dollars of tax payers money for propaganda. What’s more, the producers of the advertising campaign have been accused of misleading the people who appeared in the advertisements. The Age article ‘Hairdresser was misled on IR advert’ is the story of one young woman who appeared in the advertisements without realising they were to promote Howard’s new changes.
Another Age article, ‘IR changes are despicable attack’, reports that Bob Hawke has attacked the planned changes, describing them as wrong, unfair, un-Australian and immoral. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) have organised a counter campaign ‘your rights at work’ and as part of this. We’ll be filming the national day of action (November 15, 2005), in Melbourne for a documentary I’m producing about the current Industrial Relations climate.
Not only do the proposed changes threaten the working conditions of employees but the very foundation of unions. Political, cultural and global shifts are changing the nature of work. Occurring simultaneously, is a trend of decreasing membership and participation in unions, particularly amongst young people. Most of my Australian friends who are young, educated, upwardly mobile are not engaged with the debate or members of unions. Perhaps this is because the issues are, to a large extent, outside our realm of experience. We haven’t had the fight that previous generations have had for fair working conditions. Consequently, some young people don’t know what a union is and others simply don’t care.
There has also been a significant shift from community to individual values and a culture where individual wealth and interest has become more important than that of the community. This has been reflected in government policy of privatising essential services such as health, education and telecommunications.
Given the current climate I believe that the survival of unions hinges on their ability to adapt to a work culture that is complex and global. This is critical if they are to become relevant to young Australians. Even the name ‘trade union’ no longer has relevance. Trade unions represent a diverse workforce. We no longer live in a culture where people are either blue collar or white collar and we haven’t for a long time. The days of militant trade unions are long gone.
I recently completed a module in After Effects, which is the motion graphics and visual effects software developed by Adobe. It’s commonly used in post-production of television commercials but I also learnt about its application in films, DVD’s and the web. There are extensive third-party plug-ins including automatic duck, which we used to seamlessly import our projects from Final Cut Pro into After fx. Automatic duck is a fantastic tool and would be essential if you were working in post-production and constantly importing from Final Cut Pro to After fx. Unfortunately when I looked it up, I found that it is expensive to buy.
The module was useful to gain an overview of the possible applications of After fx, particularly for my short film and documentary projects. I don’t expect to become an expert in motion graphics and visual effects but I think it’s important to have an understanding of their creative possibilities and how they can be used to enhance elements of your work. Perhaps one of the key applications it will have for my projects is in animating text and the creative development of credit sequences. Tools we covered that I thought might also have useful applications for my projects include:
Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation by Digidesign for music production and digital audio editing. It’s widely used to create audio for film, television, and music and is considered to be the industry standard.
I recently did a post-production module in sound, which involved taking a short clip and creating a soundtrack for it using Pro Tools. We covered the components that comprise of a soundtrack including:
My short film will be shot on location and the scenes set at the beach will be vulnerable to interference from atmospheric sounds such as wind. I plan to have two sound recordists on set one who concentrates on capturing the dialogue for the scenes and the other focusing on capturing the atmospheric sounds such as wind, waves crashing, bird noises, the tide rushing through pebbles or over rocks. Both tracks can then be mixed into the sound track using Pro Tools.
I will follow the same process for the scenes set at the house, however, many of the sounds will be captured in the studio by the foley artist such as the sound of a teapot breaking or a dial-up modem connecting to the Internet. Spot fx will be used to layer additional sounds into the final mix.
Developing a score for the music will be the most difficult part of the soundtrack because I’ve had no experience in music production. I’m planning to consult with a person who has experience in music composition as well as working with sound recordists and an editor who can mix using Pro Tools.
I recently attended a film producing module with Elisa Argenzio who has had a range of producing roles on films including that of a Line Producer. She provided us with a folder that contained examples of documents essential to producing a film. She covered the material and process for managing it comprehensively. I found the sessions very informative and they also provided me with an insight into producing larger scale productions.
Over the course of my Masters studies it’s been interesting for me to learn about the hierarchy of different producing roles in film production and how the responsibilities of these roles can change from production to production. Depending on the scale of the production there are a range of producing roles including:
I’m producing and directing both my projects and I have found this to be a significant challenge. My short film and documentary combined with the numerous projects I have been doing for work have spread me thin. I enjoy working on multiple projects but because I’m the person who is driving each one it’s been difficult to maintain the momentum on each. I’ve found that as one or two pick up momentum the others are left on the back burner. I’ve had to constantly shift my focus, which is stimulating but I know my projects would benefit from a more sustained approach rather than bursts of intensity before a deadline. Managing this many projects has also posed difficulty in scheduling and working out timeframes. It’s been stressful when deadlines have coincided or when I’ve received material from a client late, knocking out my schedule like a domino effect.
The other challenge in taking on both the role of producer and director in my film projects is a creative one. I think there are a lot of advantages that stem from a strong working relationship between the producer and the director. In this relationship there is a tension between creative vision and the bottom line, which is always cost and time. I think this tension creates a dynamic that can be very beneficial. You always have someone to be accountable to.
One projects that I wrote and directed earlier this year was an education kit ‘what’s the deal?” for Victoria Legal Aid and Youthlaw. The project manager had to meet a very tight time frame, or risk losing the funding for the project. On the other hand I needed to meet my vision for the project or risk compromising my professional standards. We were both committed to our individual priorities so it required that we make compromises and reassessments throughout the duration of the project. This dynamic was integral to achieving the goals of the publication. One could argue that as a producer and a director on the same project there is a conflict of interest, it’s incredibly difficult to wear both hats at the same time. There has been debate about this within industry, but more in relation to writer/producers and creative producers.
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