Tag Archive for: advocacy

DEGANZ Welcomes New Life Members

Pictured above from left to right: Ben Powdrell, Celia Jaspers, Grant Campbell, Howard Taylor, Sam Kelly, Robyn Paterson, Tui Ruwhiu, and Bryce Campbell.

Earlier this year, the DEGANZ board put forward a motion to give life memberships to dedicated past board members, editor Annie Collins and directors Grant Campbell and Howard Taylor, for their significant contributions to DEGANZ and the Aotearoa screen industry. The votes were unanimous in passing the motion at the Extraordinary General Meeting in August.

Now, DEGANZ celebrates these long-time board and guild members and awards them their life membership certificates. To commemorate the occasion, DEGANZ hosted a lunch. Unfortunately, Annie was unable to attend due to Covid.

Read more about the new life members below:

Annie Collins

Annie has been editing film since 1975, beginning on celluloid through to digital and across multiple formats. Since joining the DEGANZ Board, she has prioritised skills training and workflow knowledge not only for editors and assistants but across the spectrum for all involved in the film industry. She continues both editing and training while putting energy into the government reform of tertiary education for the film industry.

Annie served on the board from 2016 till she stepped down in 2023.

 

 

 

I am humbled to be recognised in this way by DEGANZ. The work of all the Guilds and industry Associations is extremely important for the well being of each person who works in the industry, and therefore affects the well being of the film industry itself. To have had the opportunity to be part of Guild work has been fantastic, and life membership means having an ongoing part in that developing vision. Thank you DEGANZ.

– Annie Collins

 

Grant Campbell

Grant Campbell is a producer, writer and director who has worked across documentary, comedy and drama in Los Angeles, Australia, the Pacific Islands and New Zealand. Notably, he produced the classic Kiwi documentary Cinema of Unease.

Grant was a founding board member of DEGANZ, and remained on the board until stepping down in 2017. He is a past DEGANZ representative on the Australian Screen Directors Authorship Society (ASDACS).

Howard Taylor

Howard Taylor is a Wellington-based writer, director and producer. After training as a film editor with the NZ Broadcasting Corporation in the early 1970s, he produced Country Calendar and was a field director on the arts and magazine series Kaleidoscope, 10AM, and Sunday. He went freelance in 1995, working as a director and documentary maker for production houses including Ninox Films, Greenstone Pictures, Natural History New Zealand, and his own company, Howard Taylor Productions. He also stepped into the staged performance space, producing professional theatre for a stint in the 2010s. In recent years, Howard returned to his roots to direct Country Calander.

Howard was pivotal to DEGANZ’s origins as a founding board member of the guild, serving for 26 years. He was Board President for his final five years before stepping down.

Working for the Guild and, by extension, the welfare of its members has been hugely satisfying. The thing I am probably proudest of is giving the Guild a bit more muscle by working with Tui to get it registered as a union with the CTU. Copyright has been an ongoing issue. Back in 2006 ED at the time Anna Cahill and I appeared before the government’s select committee to argue for directors copyright. We were green and very disappointed when the great reception we received didn’t produce a change of the law. We were better prepared and more sophisticated planning the campaign in the latest (still on-going) Copyright Review. I wish the current board the best in the on-going fight.

– Howard Taylor

 

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DEGNZ Response to SWAG Recommendations Around Sexual Harassment in the NZ Screen Industry

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DEGNZ

The Directors & Editors Guild of NZ recently received from the Screen Women’s Action Group (SWAG) proposed recommendations for ‘Creating Culture Change Around Sexual Harassment In The Screen Industry’. You can view the document below.

The board of the Directors & Editors Guild of NZ supports the Screen Women Action Guild in their efforts to:

  • Create a culture that eradicates sexual harassment in the screen industry,
  • address power imbalances that allow inappropriate behaviour to occur, and go unreported, and
  • develop processes for issues and complaints that are accessible, safe and effective.

We commend the work done by SWAG to date in this regard and believe that education is the most effective tool in achieving the desired outcomes.

The board of DEGNZ are in overall agreement with the recommendations document SWAG has provided. We wish though to highlight areas of concern to us, and in some cases suggest alternative options, which we have detailed below for our membership to review.

We welcome any input from you on this for board consideration, which you can direct to admin@deganz.co.nz.

 

Point 1

DEGNZ has under discussion with other screen industry bodies a Code of Ethics, which would address sexual harassment with a simple statement in line with this code’s purpose to be big picture rather than detailed. Should a cross sector Code of Conduct be instituted, the board agrees that the Policy for Sexual Harassment could be included here.

DEGNZ questions the need for certification in regard to sexual harassment. We aren’t required to be certified for other aspects of occupational health and safety even though, for example, directors on shoots without a dedicated safety officer are required to give health and safety briefings to the crew. And in fact, we question whether or not sexual harassment should be part of occupational Health & Safety, or should be separate. We believe this is an issue for ongoing discussion.

Point 2

We support the idea of an online course for all screen industry workers but do not support the requirement that it be annual and certificated. We believe that individual contracts stipulating that the contractor must sit the online course and will adhere to the Universal Screen Industry Harassment Policy is sufficient—the contracted requirement and daily Health & Safety Briefing on Sexual Harassment we feel will be effective in significantly raising awareness regularly.

A further reason we do not support an annual and certificated course is because we feel that both the sending and receiving of certificates to the Certified PCBU (further on this follows), which we also do not support, is overly administrative.

Point 3

Point 1
DEGNZ does not support the requirement for a PCBU Training Certificate that requires all PCBUs to do a course on what to do if a screen worker lays a sexual harassment complaint. And consequently we do not support the requirement for PCBU Sexual Harassment training at film schools.

Rather we feel that the online course for all screen workers has this content included in it and that the Sexual Harassment Crew Representative, the Producer/Production Company and the independent specialist are the multiple points of contact for complaints.

Further, we feel that the producer/production company and the Crew Sexual Harassment Representative should receive any specialist training. It will be important to identify crew who are willing to take on the role of Crew Sexual Harassment Representative and provide them with the training required.

Point 5

DEGNZ does not support the Safety Officer being responsible for drawing up a plan on how to deal with content of a sexual nature or nudity. A Safety Officer’s role we believe is limited to physical safety on set.

We feel that the Producer/Production Company, Director, Actor’s Agent and Actor should handle the plan because this is where the first and ongoing contact occurs. The plan can evolve and at a later date it can be talked through with the Independent Specialist and Crew Sexual Harassment Representative prior to filming.

Strict precautions in regard to sensitive footage is likely already dealt with in the confidentiality clauses of all contracts, but particular stipulations could be made in the contracts of those who deal directly with the material: directors, editors, data wrangler, etc.

The requirement for an Intimacy Coordinator is the most contentious for DEGNZ because of the potential for usurping of the director’s creative control. At the same time we understand the significant imbalance that can occur because of the actor’s training, the actor/director and actor/producer relationships and the pressures on set that can put undue demands on all involved.

While we are open to a continuing dialogue around the idea of intimacy coordinators, DEGNZ much prefers a requirement for specialist training for directors around nudity and sex scenes that could be provided by the Independent Specialist when such content is a part of a particular production. This could include Equity NZ’s current code of conduct for intimate scenes and auditions.

Our view with third party involvement in a scene whether a proposed intimacy coordinator or any other individual is that the person should work through the director and no one else.

Point 7

DEGNZ feels that the Rehabilitation of people with Harmful Sexual Behaviours is best handled by independent specialists and should not be put onto production companies.

Point 8

DEGNZ does not agree with the requirement for all workers to complete a Sexual Harassment Survey post every production. This is overly onerous, bureaucratic and unlikely to be successful.

Funding

The SWAG recommendations are sweeping and significant. DEGNZ feels that the costs associated with the implementation of any recommendations/requirements should be funded independent of the guilds, associations and productions companies, many of whom are already financially strained.

Related Documents:

SWAG Consultation – Proposed Recommendations

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The Big Picture

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View from the Top banner

There’s a lot of big picture stuff going on at the moment, so I thought I would take the time to discuss it a little further.

DEGNZ together with other guilds, screen industry bodies and representatives, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand have been meeting regularly to formulate recommendations to the Minister of Employment about how we can restore the right of workers in the industry to collectively bargain, without necessarily changing the status of those who wish to continue working as individual contractors. We are making good progress at this point and are expected to finalise recommendations by the end of June at the latest as required by the Minister.

The Guild has been very active in regard to the ongoing Copyright Act Review now underway. We expect the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to release an issues paper before the middle of the year in what is going to be a multi-year review process. We are working very hard to get Director’s Copyright onto that issues paper and have the support of the Australian Directors Guild, Directors UK and the Directors Guild of America in our efforts.

President Howard Taylor and board member Annie Collins have been toiling quietly away on the idea of a proposed Code of Ethics, instigated by us, and being discussed by all the guilds and other industry bodies. Some of you will have participated in the survey we put out to the screen industry. We have received very valuable feedback from the survey and are redrafting the proposed code now for a second round of consultation. We expect before the end of the year to be able to introduce and promote the Code of Ethics and hope that the industry and funding bodies take it up as an ethical guideline to all behaviour in the screen sector.

We are keeping a very close watch on developments around RNZ+, meeting key players to try and determine what the potential outcomes might be, and also working to determine the Guild’s position on public media broadcasting and the best way to ramp it up. We would be interested in hearing from members’ views on the following:

  1. If RNZ+ as a platform receives a specific funding increase from Government to deliver better public service media including audio visual content, should it as a platform also be able to seek funding from NZ On Air? Or, should the the funding streams and content be kept entirely separate, i.e. NZ On Air funding used only to create content for commerical broadcasters/platforms?
  2. Should RNZ+ commision audio-visual content from outside suppliers, or create it inhouse?

Could members address any thoughts you might have on this to admin@deganz.co.nz with RNZ+ Thoughts in the subject line. Thanks in advance and hope it’s all going well for you out there.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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