New report shows shockingly low numbers of women at the top of the film industry. What are your views and experiences?

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

A new report by writer and producer Stephen Follows has been doing the rounds in the press and on social media today.

Follows analysed data on the film crews attached to the 100 best-grossing movies in each year from 1994 to 2013 (so around 2000 films in all) and found that:

across all the data, female crew members made up just 22.6%;
women were best represented in areas such as costume/wardrobe, casting and make-up (69%, 67% and 57% respectively); at the other end of the scale, they made up just 5% of camera operators;
in key creative roles such as producers (19.7%), editors (13.7%) and writers (10.9%) they were very under-represented; and
just 5% of directors, 2% of composers and 1% of cinematographers are women.

Anecdotal evidence chats in the office suggest that lots of women leave senior jobs in related industries - particularly the TV industry - after having children. So we thought we'd throw it open to you.

Have you worked in the film or TV industries? What's your impression of them as places for women to work, before or after having children? Did you leave a job or a promising career because you felt it was impossible to get ahead - or was your experience different?

And do you think it matters that women are under-represented in key creative roles in films? What do you think the explanation is for women being better represented in departments like costume and casting?

As ever, we'd love to know what you think.

I'm intrigued. I work in childcare, and I've wondered for a long time how people who work in the film industry cope with it (more specifically the jobs that need them to go out on location).

Does anyone know if there is room for something like an on location creche or something?

TBH the women I've known working in the industry are all childless, and still find it a horrific boys club. From being told "nah love, you can't apply for a camera operator's job, we need someone who can carry the kit" (she could probably have bench pressed the hiring mgr), to being patronized & hassled as DOP.

This is all anecdotal as I don't work in that industry myself, but having heard it from a number of sources it sounds like the issue isn't totally about fitting kids into a difficult schedule, but about not being able to do that as an already marginalized minority?

I work in film and TV, in one of the female dominated areas, casting. We don't work on set so can keep more or less office hours, however, there are always evening commitments in terms of theatre visits or international phone calls, so it's not exclusively 9-5 (or 10 -6).

The admin roles who work in the production office keeping the production going tend to be dominated by women. They work long hours (10-11 hour days) and if there are night shoots they also do night shifts. Costume and make-up are indeed female dominated, with the art department being about 50/50.

I've worked with about 50/50 female/male producers, but solely male directors.

I couldn't do an 'on set job', the hours are just too long and irregular.

There is no way that I would have been able to continue working as a freelancer in my grade in the film industry after I had children. I was 'on call' 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - you can't even have a day off if you are ill let alone if you have a sick child/teachers strike etc. I know people who have carried on working with all kinds of horrible illnesses as there are just too many people relying on your being there and the industry is so horribly competitive that if you appear 'unreliable' you just won't get asked to work again.

Also, unless you have a willing parent living very nearby who will drop everything at a moment's notice, childcare is a nightmare as you need it round the clock, you'll never get home when you say you will and you can't necessarily afford it all year round!

I would love to know if there are any mothers out there who work in film (on set) and how the hell they manage it?

I studied film production at university, graduated just under 3 years ago and haven't worked in the industry since. Not because I'm a woman, but because my university sold me up the river, telling me the fact my disability doesn't allow me to drive, wouldn't hinder me working in the industry.

They weren't truthful, it basically closed that door for me and now I'm re-training. They actually then spent 3 years telling all of us to get driving licences ASAP as we couldn't work without one.

However, a lot of the girls I studied with are now in researcher, floor manager and production assistant roles, and are doing very well, although the intake was very small, about 8 of us in a course of 40 or so.

My DP works in this industry, as do some of my friends from art school. I did some art department stuff too pre-kids.

Art department was and is very hierarchical and essentially based on an army mentality - hard work, mobilising large groups of people, and of course camaraderie . Pre-production will be based in a studio and the culture is definitely that of 'presenteeism'. If you're lower down the ranks you are hanging around all the time - and friends in this situation have not even been able to have time for medical reasons - one friend had a minor operation and returned to work in the afternoon because she felt unable to be away. There are no days off or holidays during a production.

If you are in an art department in production you will be 'first in last out' so setting up at 6am before filming, and striking the set and readying tomorrow's location after filming wraps.

In a senior position as DP is in now you can be on a plane to Mongolia for six months 'tomorrow'. DP has turned down a lot of jobs like this because he doesn't like to be away like that- some of them amazing opportunities. He knows a lot of men in his position that jump at that chance. I won't lie that the situation is most definitely 'what happens on location stays on location', and a lot of marriages fall by the wayside. It's also true to say many women get a raw deal here too because a lot of them fail to find reliable and stable relationships before the clock of fertility starts ticking. This means a lot of late thirties women desperately trying to find someone to have a baby with while juggling stupid hours or trips to Romania to film. It's also sadly true to say that relationships where both partners are in film are really really difficult. I can see how film stars find it so difficult to stay in relationship knowing what I do.

I am not in film. 6am - 8pm 6 day weeks aren't for the faint hearted.

It's a very a seductive thing to be involved in though. I hope one day it changes to allow equality.

I hardly know where to start. I am a women with DC and a writer. I have several awards under my belt in relation to different types of scripts ranging from a short to features. It is difficult to the point of impossible to break into the industry. I actually asked Emma Thompson about the challenges women face in the film industry when she came on here to do a webchat and she agreed that it was extremely hard for women to succeed. She said her friend had actually been told that when she walked into a room the smell of dried eggs was overwhelming, a reference of course to the menopause

If you write anything with a female lead it is considered as 'niche' and a 'hard sell.'

I have some experience of organisations such as Birds Eye View who are supposed to be doing things to redress the gross distortion of male/female writers, directors, producers. Unfortunately I haven't been hugely impressed by them. They appear to spend their time scouring the globe for women filmmakers in the most exotic locations possible rather than turning their attention to the lack of UK females in the industry. Like many London folk, they forget that there is a world beyond the confines of the M25. They are trying to do something though, I suppose.

I also have some experience in TV and I would say that the situation there is slightly better although they still look less favourably at older women (younger women seem to fare a little better). TV execs are possibly even more worried about female leads than film execs.

Thanks for the interest in this problem and I look forward to seeing what, if anything could come from it.

And of course sexism is positively rife in my industry, the lead females are nearly always young, very slim and very pretty, and are valued for being such. Often playing opposite less conventionally attractive men.

Wasn't Lily Allen's mum a film producer?

I think she went to boarding school. I suppose that's a solution to the childcare problem once they're 7+.

I wanted to go into this field when I was a teenager but I also knew I wanted a family. I didn't want a career break but I could still see that there was no way you could juggle the long hours of filming with DCs. The exceptions I can think of are women whose mums became their nannies, available 24/7.

No wonder what gets produced is so sexist when the industry's like this!

One of the problems is that in many parts of the film industry most work is now undertaken by free lancers (there used to be many steady jobs with the BBC but this has all changed). You have to be available at short notice, and able to work very long hours. On feature films your working week is usually 6 days a week, very long days (12 hour days, possibly travel time on top). In the camera department there are girls at the lower levels (trainee, clapper loader, focus puller), but the facts are the work is very very heavy. Cameras are very heavy, you are lifting heavy cameras on tripods, huge lenses, huge boxes, etc. It is physically demanding. If you become a camera operator you will be required to do handheld work as well. It is not realistic to even think that you could get a more equal ratio between men and women. By the time you are experienced enough to become operator (having gone through the ranks), you may not be as fit and strong as you were in your twenties.

Also, the irregular nature of the work and the long working hours are impossible to fit in with young children. If you are out of the industry for too long it is hard to get back in due to technology changing quite quickly (especially in the camera department).

Also, you really don't need to study film to get into film. Most people I know got in by becoming a trainee in their chosen department, building up a network of contacts and then moving on to assistant jobs etc.

One other thing .... women don't help each other much.

Most female clapper loaders and focus pullers I know, know they don't have much chance if the production manager is a woman. No point applying unless the director of photography and/or operator really INSIST on them and otherwise no chance. If there is a male production manager you stand a better chance (not always, but more often), if you have a good CV and a lot of experience.

who on earth are they shocking to?

maybe people coming out of decades long comas who thought they were going to wake up to a whole new world.

Shocking asa euphemism for shit, maybe?

My DH and I met while both working in TV. By the time we got married we were earning similar wages. I was working at nominally a higher level than him though in a far lower prestige area. Hence similar wages.

I was made redundant on ML, though the MD, who was very fond of me,, found a way to sneak me some cash in compensation to shut me up, I suspect.

Guess what, 9 years later I still have 't gone back. The industry as I left it had loads of women in it, and those who were working in sales (largely office based with some conference attendance) and marketing and commissioning and scheduling are often still there. The ones working in production are out. Especially if, like me, they are married to men who are also I this unreliable business.

My DH has hardly worked in the city we live in and goes away on jobs for extended periods; he lives hand to mouth. He is either "about to be unemployed" panic stations, or buggering off to whichever city he has a job in on Monday.

We moved out of London so that we could not both have to work all the time. In practice that means that I never work - and indeed have retrained into a totally different field that doesn't make nearly enough money - and he works relentlessly all the bloody time.

There are women in senior management roles in channels and running their own indies but they tend to have made enormous sacrifices -either by not having kids or never seeing them.

Specialmagiclady - completely recognise everything you say and def agree with the last statement.

I used to work in TV Production. My Partner also worked in TV in a more technical capacity. I left TV when I got pregnant - a freelance contract came to an end so no ML or anything like that. I haven't worked since.

I know some incredibly successful female TV/Film people. Several don't have children and the ones that do, have husbands who have basically been SAHDs. Something has to give.

I remember consoling a female Director who was sobbing after having yet again failed to make it home for bedtime stories and who'd said goodnight to her screaming children on the phone. I was in my early 20s and thought it was not an ideal situation. Fast forward to now and she is AMAZINGLY successful and her children are at University having had the best education that money could buy and look very well-adjusted. I think her marriage survived too.

Enormous sacrifices have to be made. I don't think many women (and some men) want to make them. Working in TV and Film is almost akin to joining the armed forces (without the killing bit obviously) and in the "ranks" there's still the usual sexist banter no matter how many female Execs there are.

My partner still works in TV but doesn't do the crazy hours that he did out of choice because he wants to have a good work/life balance too.

Does anyone have experience of composers working in film and television? My son's about to enter this field.

My ex works in post production all around the world and I agree totally with the poster who said what goes on on location stays on location. He used to be treated to strip clubs nightly, given drugs and get so drunk he'd not remember where he was staying. He used to tell me things his boss got up to and it made me realise he was on the same path. The arrogance, alcohol and competitive nature of the job mean they are surrounded by arseholes (IMO) and it would not be easy to get by in the industry as a woman unless you kept quiet about indiscretions and pretended to be a man! My ex wouldn't even tell his boss I was pg (he'd probably been cheating on me for starters) but he hated the idea of being overlooked for promotion because he had a baby-apparently that was common and a sign of weakness.

I worked as a software engineer pre DC (quit in 2008), and as a self-employed photographer on and off post DC. I've just had DC4 and we're done now, so in a few years I'm looking to go back to work and I would absolutely love to work, have always wanted to in fact, in special effects - most likely as a compositor based on what I know of my professional strengths and weaknesses.

I've managed to find suitable training courses and so on I could do to get myself to an employable state in the industry, but I have to say this thread is making me reconsider. Obviously I don't mind working in a mostly male environment (see: being a software engineer!) but the hours are obviously going to be an issue from a childcare point of view. DH's job can be a bit flexible but it's not flexible enough for what we'd need with four DC especially. Whatever job I get would need to have at least a little flexibility - working 16 hour days six days a week is just not possible.

Am I wasting my time even considering it? I was perhaps naively thinking that with VFX the hours would be similar to office hours with the odd bit of overtime, maybe even with the chance for compressed hours/4 day week if I was really lucky. I guess not..

Sorry but, for what you're looking at doing, I don't think it's right for you. 20 years ago it was fun, but now the industry is glutted with a million recently graduated students, all running everything off their laptops. Compositing is particularly hard to make work as that's the sort of thing that doesn't require much of an investment to do the work. It's all software. When everything cost half a million pounds people got paid properly because they had rarefied skills that were hard to come by. You needed access to the expensive equipment in order to learn it and no one was letting the first year graduates do that. They were all too busy anyway making coffee, as first year additions to the industry should. Now they can just download a trial license and learn a system in their spare time for free. Even worse, the programs are getting easier and easier to master as the manufacturers make it more and more idiotproof.

I'm out of the industry now but I still have a few friends killing themselves as production managers and they tell me that compositors are now a very disposable asset. Your project is green lit so you start a company to run the project. You then rent some powerfully PCs for less than it cost to rent a car for a week, attach some compositors to them, and then crack the whip. Send all the Roto work to India and it will return within the week which is good for the money men as rotoscoping is what eats up most of a compositor's time. When the project wraps you pack up shop, close the company, and bid the compositors whose names you actually remember a fond fairwell.

Then you just Cntl+C and Cntl+V on the next job.

It's like medicine - lots of GPs out there, but it's the specialists with rarefied knowledge who make the money. And Photoshop has created a generation who already know how to composite.

Photography/Cinematography remains a dark art though, and cameras still cost a half decent amount last I checked. I don't think that you'll be looking at 9 to 5 though for any job in film though, maybe at the BBC but that's about it.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I never post on here but I thought that I had better seeing as you're making such a big decision. I think Lioninthesun may have embellished a bit there too. That may have been the case in the 80s but it's a hungry industry today and really, really, hard work. If her ex is really living that kind of life he must be either a very senior producer/money man, or a specialist with expert knowledge like a cinematographer or a sound mixer. If it's the first one then I hope she had an excellent divorce lawyer. If its the second then I don't know how he had the time. I know a few like that and they usually spend most of their time with their heads in books trying to stay up to date with the technology.

I take offense to the 'children are seen as a weakness' comment though. I've never come across that attitude and most of the most valuable people that I know in the industry have more than one child. Many even with the same partner . Inconvenient certainly, but not a weakness.

In short, I recommend medicine. The learning curve is easier and the money's better.

Sorry

Yes he is a senior specialist as well as sales and development based. At the time he has three companies trying to poach him-just as we found out I was pg. I honestly don't know if thw industry thinks as he soes that if he had told them he was expecting they would have thought he'd be up all night with noise and therefore less productive or willing to travel but that is certainly what he thought. He is a geek as well and spent a fair amount of time reading up but was at the leading end of what he did so keeping abreast of other companies technology was all he had to check. He always joked he should have been a doctor too, so maybe there is something in that.

Just wanted to say thank you for the detailed reply! I've been away the last fortnight camping in remote parts of Wales with no signal so I've only just got the Internet back - I didn't know I had a reply

I think you're probably right. It's a nice dream to have, but I am probably about 20 years too late. Having seen so much software engineering work outsourced to India for a tenth the price or less, and as a photographer seen similar adverts for mass Photoshopping for peanuts too, I guess it's no surprise it happens in the film industry as well. How could I compete with that?

Perhaps I should look into cinematography. It's lack of self-confidence as usual that discouraged me from it, thinking I could never be good enough at my age (late 30s) to start from close to scratch and break into something with so few jobs comparatively speaking. But it would definitely use the talent I have at photography.. I do have a pretty good eye.

As usual it's the whole childcare thing that brings complications. I guess so long as DH's work hours are covered it's less of an issue as he'll be home, but still.

Heh at medicine.. I often find myself telling doctors stuff they didn't know about whatever medical ailment I have, I find the subject fascinating and I'm very good at research. But I decided long ago that when I screw up at work, nobody must die