IAWF demands proper pay

Wildlife filmmakers have hit out at programme making on the cheap.

Experienced freelance filmmakers are without work as cost-cutting broadcasters increasingly abandon labour intensive wild life films for compilations and low-budget productions.

A leading wildlife filmmaker from the BECTU affiliated International Association of Wildlife Filmmakers (IAWF) said "Cheapskate programming could kill off high quality production. There is a dangerous shift to presenter-led genres which undervalue the time and commitment needed to make enduring programmes of high quality."

Wildlife filmmakers face a double jeopardy. Without a nationally agreed scale of minimum pay rates incomes vary wildly.

A convention that equipment charges are included in the rate for the job penalises wild life specialists because replacement and insurance costs are extremely high and equipment is highly specialised and cannot usually be hired but must be tailor-made.

Insult is added to injury when filmmakers discover off-the-shelf programmes made from their out-takes.

IAWF member Alistair McEwan said "There are real issues of intellectual property rights at stake here. Quality wild life filmmaking is capital intensive, labour intensive, demanding and time consuming. In the field IAWF members work with great initiative and flexibility - essentially as directors as well as technicians, unscripted and on their own.

"If budgets cannot pay fairly for essential equipment and personnel then the only just way forward is to compensate with a share in whatever income is created by the programmes and the footage acquired for them"