Two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler wrote and directed the Sundance documentary    

                                                                                Who Needs Sleep?

        Most film production professionals have stories about working extreme hours. I personally tell tales of a rainy all-nighter in Texas where the crew went into 13 meal penalties. That night, the gaffer ordered two electricians to link arms with me to hold   me up because I was falling asleep on my feet between calling out “Rolling” and “Cut.” To this day, I bless Reggie Boatright for saving me the embarrassment of falling face-first into a sea of mud while Burt Reynolds was emoting. Fortunately, I was on a distant location, so a Teamster-driven van took me back to the hotel in the morning. I was lucky I didn't have to face the danger of driving home.

        A majority of deal memos are based on a 12-hour minimum day. Sixteen-hour days are common. Being on the clock 20 or more hours is not unusual. Intensity and dedication are part of the attraction of filmmaking culture, so long hours come with the territory. Extreme hours are worked day after day, and minimal rest periods are further shortened by longer commute times due to increasing urban traffic. Exhausted film workers are in constant danger of falling asleep at the wheel on the way home from work. This hazardous situation has already claimed at least two lives — those of camera assistants Brent Hershman and Michael Stone.

        I first wrote about the extreme hours in Hollywood for Millimeter in September 1998 (see digitalcontentproducer.com/mil/features/video_eight_hours_hollywood), after Hershman's death. Since that time, film professionals have spoken out, collected signatures on petitions, written letters to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), presented resolutions to the Industry-wide Labor-Management Safety Committee, started non-profits, and produced the powerful documentary Who Needs Sleep? In eight years, not much has changed.

        The medical research that two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler presents in his Sundance documentary Who Needs Sleep? proves that sleep deprivation affects the body and mind in the same way as alcohol intoxication, which means high-voltage electricity, pyrotechnics, cranes, Condors, car stunts, and firearms are all in the hands of workers whose judgment may be seriously impaired. On the way home, drowsy drivers are the same as drunk drivers, and while bar owners are liable for accidents caused by drivers who become impaired in their bars, producers have avoided liability for accidents involving sleep-deprived workers who become impaired on their set.

        John A. Lawrence, a business litigation attorney with Dongell, Lawrence, Finney, and Claypool in Los Angeles, represented Hershman's family in a civil litigation. Hershman drove home after working four 16-hour days and one 19-hour day. He was not offered a room or a ride home. “Our position was that they had to make some kind of accommodation for the crew,” Lawrence says. “I wasn't arguing that there should be a law against multiple overtime hours per se, but when they knew they were going to do that, they had an obligation to make appropriate accommodation for people who, because of that, might be impaired in terms of fatigue.”

        After three appeals over a year and a half, the court eventually ruled that because Hershman had left the job site, his death was his own fault, though the decision was unpublished and can't be cited as precedential. “If you are going to say that if somebody left the jobsite and injured himself — or anyone else — so it was his own fault, then he had to have a choice,” Lawrence says. “In Brent's case, he didn't have a choice. It was a location shoot somewhere in north Long Beach, which is not the greatest area in town. His choice, as I saw it, was sleep in his car and take his chances, or try to drive home.”

        California state law does contain language limiting the number of hours television and motion picture employees can work in one day. The Department of Industrial Relations Wage Orders 11 and 12 mandate a maximum of 16 hours including meal periods, and 10 hours between the end of one day's employment and the beginning of the next. However, the penalty for violating these rules in not stated, and there is a loophole in section J: The law does not apply to employees covered by valid collective bargaining agreements. In other words, in exchange for the considerable benefits provided by union membership, workers have given up protection against extreme working hours provided by state law.

        California Division of Occupational Safety and Health Cal/OSHA Workplace Injury and Illness Prevention Document dated 3/21/2001, page 23 of 24, Injury Prevention Rule #7 states, “No one shall knowingly be permitted or required to work while the employee's ability or alertness is so impaired by fatigue, illness, or other causes that it might unnecessarily expose the employee or others to injury.”

        When asked about this rule, Len Welsh, acting chief of Cal/OSHA, says, “We have no requirement like that, and I don't know of any OSHA agency that has a requirement like that.”

        However, Welsh adds, “I understand the concern about the issue. It is not something we would be unwilling to address.” Welsh explains that if an employee made a formal complaint to Cal/OSHA about a specific work situation, the organization would go out and do an investigation. “If they found a hazardous situation based on a sleep issue, they would have two alternatives,” he says. “One option would be to issue a citation for violating the Injury and Illness Prevention Program Requirement Section 3203, which requires that employers have an effective program which corrects hazards, identifies hazards, and trains employees to deal with hazards. The other possibility would be to issue a ‘special order,’ which is kind of a mini-regulation tailored to a particular place of employment.” Welsh cautions that sleep deprivation is not an easy issue to regulate because it is a behavioral and managerial issue rather than a physical hazard, and is, therefore, not within the normal purview of what OSHA regulates.

        When asked about what actions the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) has taken to address its concern about worker fatigue from extreme hours, President Nick Counter responds with this statement: “While we have made great strides — especially over the past decade — to educate, inform, and help maintain a safe production environment for all those working in and around production, safety continues to be an industry-wide priority, with studios, guilds, and unions working tirelessly and collaboratively.”

        According to Counter, one of those great strides was AMPTP's establishment of the Industry-wide Labor Management Safety Committee with representatives and experts from all of the studios, guilds, and unions. The committee formulated the DGA Guidelines Regarding Extended Work Days, which regulate safety after the work day, among other safety measures.

        When asked about the Guidelines Regarding Extended Work Days, representatives of DGA couldn't find any such document in its safety bulletins. After searching computer archives, the organization found the document, which was issued by AMPTP and filed away.

        According to Who Needs Sleep?, IATSE local 600 misplaced petitions with 10,000 signatures supporting “Brent's Rule,” a petition to limit work days to 14 hours. Wexler reports that IATSE International President Tom Short told him to “cool it” and “not get ahead of the union.”

        On the other hand, unions have been working to ease the burden of extreme hours. In July 2004, the crew on the first season of the Fox TV series House became concerned about safety after working 15- and 16-hour days without being offered rooms or transportation home. Second camera assistant Julie Helton, an International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) local 600 member, says after monitoring the situation by phone for three days, Tim Wade, western region business representative of IATSE's local 600 International Cinematographers Guild and reps from the other locals showed up on the set and called a meeting of all IA members.

        “Each IATSE representative questioned us about what was going on,” recalls Helton. Two hours later, after a meeting of union reps with production, the crew was wrapped for the weekend.

        “It could have saved the life of somebody driving home that night. It really proved they have a genuine concern about safety and the overall work environment,” Helton says. “The fact that [Wade] came out to check on the situation so quickly just made me realize that we have really great people working for our union, people who really care.”

The Costs

        There is no question that the cost of labor hours is weighed against other costs,” says John Lindley, the cinematographer on Pleasantville who originally wrote “Brent's Rule.” “A friend of mine quoted the line producer of a movie he worked on as saying the labor costs are a smaller and smaller percentage of movies when you weigh them against equipment costs, location costs, housing, and per diem when you are on location. The producer said it was cheaper to work 18-hour days than it was to work an extra week on a location. That's anecdotal, and I don't know if the guy actually ran those numbers, and I don't necessarily believe that's true, but the fact that he even says it gives you a good idea about how this math is done.

        But people who do the math consistently prove that reasonable hours are far more cost-effective than extended days. In Millimeter's September 1998 issue, I reported when the late veteran line producer Robert Schneider compared the budget for a $40 million below-the-line studio feature based on the usual 12-hour shooting day with a budget based on an eight-hour day, the eight-hour budget came in $1 million cheaper. “I wanted to dispel the notion that working shorter, more humane hours meant increased costs,” Schneider said. “I've suspected for a long time that on many films, it's cheaper and more efficient to shoot basically straight-time days than to shoot extended hours that are inefficient and paid for at premium rates.”

        Today, other production managers champion Schneider's cause. Robert Warner, a Directors Guild of America (DGA) member UPM, recently served as production manager on the TV series Beyond the Break. The show was shot on location in Hawaii under an IATSE low-budget agreement. It came in precisely on budget by limiting shooting to 10 hours a day.

        “In 60 shooting days, we had a grand total of one day that went two minutes over 12 hours and about three days that went over 11 hours,” Warner says. “The other days were between nine and 10 1/2 hours. In the final audit, we were just about 2 percent under budget in the production period and about 2 percent or 3 percent over budget in post. One offset the other, and the show came in precisely on the money.”

        Warner's strategies for finishing each day's work in 10 hours included choosing primary locations in close geographical proximity so company moves would not require moving base camp. The creative staff also collaborated in creating efficient shooting days. “During the preproduction period, we actually brought the writers to Hawaii and took them to locations we had already selected so they could see the physical relationships between locations and try to write episodes that involved a full shooting day in each location to eliminate moves in the middle of day,” Warner says.

        Clint Eastwood, John Sayles, the Coen brothers, and Sidney Pollack are often offered as examples of directors who work reasonable hours by design. As one of the second assistant directors on Bird, I witnessed Eastwood at work. As I recall, most days were around 12 hours, but when Eastwood was on a roll, he'd go for shooting two days of scheduled work in one day and extend that day. On the other hand, there was a day when he finished all the work on the schedule in three hours — and wrapped. Principal photography on Bird was completed in 10 days less than originally scheduled. The crew was paid for 10 minimum days in addition to the days worked. The film came in under budget.

The Solutions

    Wexler calls the entertainment industry's habit of shooting extreme hours “a failed system in terms of health, safety, and economics.”

Non-profit organization 12 On/12 Off, which was founded by Cinematographer

Roderick E. Stevens, seeks to solve that problem with three rules presented in a non-confrontational way:

1.    No more than 12 hours of work.

2.    No less than 12 hours of turnaround.

3.    No more than six hours between meals.

T-shirts emblazoned with these rules are available at www.12on12off.org

“[I would like to see] actual shooting time on the clock limited to 12 hours a day. …” Warner says. “I understand that there are certain circumstances that would require you to shoot more than that, but I think that should be limited to one day every calendar week.”

        Business litigation attorney John A. Lawrence thinks regulations should focus on obligating employers to provide rooms and/or transportation rather than restricting hours through a new law. “My suggestion, in order to make it palatable to the industry, is that the bill not restrict hours per se, but indicate that if you are going to work hours beyond given limits that you have to monitor the people and take appropriate steps to ensure that they have a viable choice,” he explains.

        Cinematographer John Lindley doesn't think that's the answer. “If you go up to a drunk at a party and say, ‘Look, I don't think you're sober enough to drive home,’ they will insist that they are. Their judgment is impaired,” he says. “That's true of people who are fatigued. Their judgment is impaired. You don't find many people who say, ‘I'm too tired to drive, I better do something else,’ especially on a Friday night with the weekend coming up — and that's when the hours tend to be the worst. As I've often said, if Brent had been offered a room that night, he wouldn't have taken it.”

        One point all parties involved agreed on is that the problem can't be solved by any of them alone. Cooperation between unions, guilds, production, workers, management, creative, and technical people is the key to change, they say. Wexler advises working the issue from all angles.

        In reference to creating reasonable working hours on the set, Beyond the Break cinematographer Bob Hayes observes, “It only really works if the first AD, the DP, and the director are on board, focused, and dedicated to making things run smoothly and efficiently.”

        “One thing I am really not interested in is finger-pointing and blame,” Lindley says. “I think that closes people's minds about the whole thing, and my effort is to keep people's minds open. There are sensible employers out there who not only care about what it costs, but who care about people's health and safety, and I happen to be working for some people like that right now. The only ‘us’ and ‘them’ is people who care about safety versus people who don't care about safety, but that doesn't necessarily cleave along the lines of employer/employee.”

© 2006 Prism Business Media Inc.

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