Coming up on three months of struggling to work during the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (AFTRA) strike against the advertising industry, commercial production execs are voicing a growing frustration and concern over the lack of negotiations (scheduled for mediation this week in another bid to bring the two sides back to the bargaining table) and the impact the strike is having on the U.S. production infrastructure.
The level of domestic shooting is down since the strike began May 1, production executives say, but they note the second quarter is traditionally their weakest, and that they are getting more boards now for spots that will be produced domestically and overseas. They don’t anticipate a quick end to the strike, and they believe it may have a negative impact in the long term by creating animosities and showing more agencies and advertisers the benefits of working outside the country.
On July 10, the Joint Policy Committee of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) issued a statement asserting that, "On an annualized basis, the industry is producing ads at approximately the same pace as in past non-strike years," citing 862 spots that were shot between May 15 to June 15. "The disruption experienced by production people on outside location shoots, mainly in Los Angeles and to a small degree in New York, has not impeded total commercial shoots nationwide," the statement continued. "As a result, work that has left Los Angeles has picked up elsewhere, with overall production in and outside the country remaining stable."
"The banner of ‘business as usual’ is out there and being waved, certainly by one side," says Howard Woffinden, partner/executive producer at Milk & Honey Films, which is based in Los Angeles, and has outposts in international locales such as Prague, Montreal, Toronto and Moscow. "But the reality is it’s not business as usual. Volume has fallen off tremendously."
Business at bicoastal Headquarters was down significantly in June, says partner/executive producer Alex Blum, who’s also chairman of the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP). "We’re seeing quite a lot of work now, although we’re doing very little in L.A."
The strike is driving "a tremendous amount of work" out of L.A. and out of the country, Blum continues. "You can produce here, and there are jobs being produced here, but it’s difficult," he explains, referring to Los Angeles. "Certain jobs are easier to produce in the middle of a strike than others. And you have certain jobs where the obvious answer is to leave the country to do them, because it’s just too difficult to do them here."
There are some clients who are holding back and not producing spots they don’t have to do, says Blum. "But there’s a certain point where time runs out with that," he explains. "Clients have to have commercials and get on with it."
Steve Dickstein, president of bicoastal/international Partizan, says his directing team Traktor has been busy throughout the strike, but that he hears from suppliers and equipment houses that business has been off any where from 40 to 50 percent. "We’ve been really lucky," he says. "The scripts are now coming in as they would normally starting the third quarter. Second quarter is traditionally the softest quarter unless your business is focused on automotive. People don’t make new advertising for summer reruns. With the downturn in the economy, the strike and the second quarter, it’s been particularly soft for a lot of companies."
"We’re just as busy as we’ve ever been," says Steve Wax, president of bicoastal/international Chelsea Pictures. "We normally work a lot overseas. That’s one of the reasons we haven’t been impacted so much. We represent a lot of English directors who shoot in England a lot."
Shooting outside of the U.S. is a hot topic for advertisers these days, Wax says. "Everybody wants to know about it. They figure, what do they need the hassle for, when they can get better exchange rates in South Africa or Australia, and in England they get great technicians and postproduction."
Biff Johnson, president/COO of bicoastal production services shop Johnson/Burnett Productions, which also maintains an office in Toronto, says he saw a flurry of activity just before the May 1 strike deadline followed by a lull. "Now, the first wave of post-strike work has been made and presented to clients, and it’s quite good," he says. "The actors are doing what they have to do, and we as contractors are doing what we have to do to stay in business. Life is moving on."
Woffinden says business is coming in spurts. "One week we’ll see a slew of boards that will suddenly hit the town, and everybody will be running around frantically. Then it seems to close down again," he explains. "When federal mediators tried to bring the [JPC] and [SAG and AFTRA] together [in June], it seemed on that same day there was a release of boards. It was as if people said, ‘Oh look, they’re meeting, everything’s going to get resolved, let’s get back to work.’ Then of course it didn’t happen and things dried up again."
