Let me start this by saying that this is my personal experience with taking a piece of advice from an unlikely source and growing from it. It’s not meant to be the end-all solution to inclusivity on sets, but rather, just a glimpse into my story.
The Golden Globes have always been a hit or miss awards show for me. Sometimes I forget they’re even on. So as the awards show played in the background this past January, I was actually very excited to see Regina King win best supporting actress for If Beale Street Could Talk. But it was something she said in her acceptance speech that caught my attention:
“I just want to say that I’m going to use my platform right now to say in the next two years everything that I produce I am making a vow – and it’s going to be tough – to make sure that everything that I produce – that is 50 percent women. And I just challenge anyone out there – anyone out there who is in a position of power, not just in our industry, in all industries, I challenge you to challenge yourselves and stand with us in solidarity and do the same.”
Regina King during her acceptance speech at the 2019 Golden Globes
My immediate reaction was ‘yes absolutely – those people doing the hiring should be trying to get to that 50 percent women mark.’ But then it occurred to me that in plenty of cases, I was the one doing the hiring. I think in the commercial industry, we sometimes forget that even if our crews are smaller, we’re still hiring people. Potentially hundreds of people over the course of a year. And this made me think – was I hiring inclusively on my film sets?
As it turned out, I mostly wasn’t.
I dwelled on Mrs. King’s words for a long while, resulting in calling up my friend Jessica Wasserlauf, a freelance producer and frequent collaborator based here in Pittsburgh with me. I needed a reality check. I asked her if she thought I hired a lot of female crew members – to which she replied, after a long pause – sometimes. But mostly no. I can always trust Jess for blunt feedback.
Jess and I on set in November of 2018
Let me clarify that it wasn’t as though I had no female crew members on my sets. But when I did produce, I could be doing better. I’m not attempting to make excuses, but I think a big reason I wasn’t hiring more women was because I wasn’t hiring outside my typical filmmaking bubble. Let’s be real here – I, as a white man, was hiring other white men (the majority of the time) to work on my sets. While larger jobs take us outside our base city, the majority of film jobs are made up of those ten person crews who you’ve collaborated with dozens of times. And even though I have a diverse group of friends, I didn’t have that in my working relationships behind the camera.
In front of the camera was actually a different story. I had a film professor who urged everyone to always cast color blind, and I’ve been lucky enough to work with a wide range of talent, and brands, that have embraced diversity.
From a Tongal film job for Credito, a Mexican credit card company. In front of the camera I had diversity, but rarely behind it.
Statistically speaking, if you’re reading this blog post, you’re a white man working in the film industry. And a lot of other people you know in the film industry are also white men. And in most non-NYC, Chicago, or LA cities, there are even fewer female filmmakers. Take the union-listed Pittsburgh grip department, where out of 87 grips there are only two women (this is not factoring in freelancers, FYI). So what do you, and I, do about this to hire outside your typical bubble of filmmaking friends and get more inclusivity on your sets? I roped Jess into the conversation to share her insights.
Jess: So first off, all of my thoughts, here and in the workplace, come from my perspective. A cis, non-disabled white woman, from a financial background that allowed me to pursue a higher education and to freelance immediately afterwards.
People need to first ask themselves why they aren’t hiring outside of their own comfort zone (i.e., people you know or with direct referrals). Because the risk of having a job go poorly is the risk of unemployment? That replacing usual hires with new people will burn bridges? The network you’ve created is great – but it’s probably lacking. The first step is that you should be trying to hire a percentage of new people, ideally on every shoot.
Let’s now take this a step further. When was the last time you worked with someone who was in a wheelchair? Or had any type of physically visible illness? A pregnant woman? (The last question is something I’ve thought of often; would my hireability change if I was pregnant?) It’s important for you to be posing these questions: if your life drastically changed, would your career and passion need to be forgotten because of our current industry hiring biases.
So what does more diverse hiring look like then? It’s more than hiring people who ‘meet the status quo.’ It’s being comfortable with bringing in people from different backgrounds who may challenge your perspective, and ideally hiring enough people where someone won’t feel tokenized for being there, and every perspective can be heard. You should bother to go outside of your comfort zone.
There is a hierarchy and a specific language and rhythm towards working in film, the latter being one of my favorites. How do we connect while still maintaining the work flow? I think freelancers have to be strong networkers; it’s the only way to survive. By constantly expanding your base with this in mind, you’ll find people with different backgrounds.
A good next tangible step is to utilize social media – specifically Facebook groups. There are a lot of great connections that touch on this. Nearly every major region has filmmaker groups targeted towards women. For example, here’s the NYC Women Filmmakers group, and Inclusive Film Crews is pretty good too.
Learning how to work with new people prevents you from becoming complacent. Having all different walks of life in a work space that is ever changing allows you to be readily able to adapt. It’s like being Kodak and not wanting to go digital. Having a homogenous work environment doesn’t create any innovative ideas, especially when you’re marketing to specific demographics. Overall, it’s important to grow, and being a creative means constantly enriching your surroundings with different perspectives, personalities, and lived experiences. And a major way this is achieved is by using inclusive hiring.
Andy again here. This conversation can and should go much deeper than a simple blog post, and I’m not even touching on all the work being done on inclusivity in front of the camera. Smart steps like the Just Add Five initiative, adopting the Rooney Rule, or even having Inclusion Riders as part of productions are just the tip of the iceberg. But with commercials, we’re working with much smaller crews, so closing the gender gap per Regina King’s request should be doable. I think the main takeaway here is to change your way of thinking, and therefore expand your filmmaking base – while keeping inclusive hiring at the forefront of that thinking.
Also as a lasting note, since hearing Regina King’s words, I did manage to hit that 50% mark once. So, am I hitting the goal we all should be reaching for? Not every time, no. But I’m certainly trying, and so should you.
Jessica Wasserlauf is a Pittsburgh based producer, AD, and script supervisor who has worked for Uber, Duolingo, Pedialyte, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and lululemon. Andy Kelemen is a commercial director who has worked for Disney, American Express, California Almonds, and Jack Link’s. Both are based in Pittsburgh, working nationally.
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Note From Tongal: “Why It Pays to be Inclusive" is part of a series of Tongal Community-written blog posts that were originally sourced in the Tongal Blog Open Call Project. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Tongal. Read more Tongal Community-written posts here and then Pitch us a topic you'd like to write about for the Tongal Blog!
