Filmmakers Prefer Romania

COOL read indeed. I am reading the book "Behind the Seen", which details the efforts of filming Cold Mountain in Romania. THAT book is also great for Walter Murch's insights into NLE editing.

So, where's the next hot spot?

-Andrew
 
scum said:
"a few dozen carpenters eager to work for $20 a day"

"Romanian crews usually don't collect extra pay until they've topped 72 hours in a week."

"Paying someone $1.50 an hour is "not against the law here."

"He estimated that the country's affordable labor trimmed more than $20 million from the film's budget, which he said would have exceeded $100 million had the movie been shot entirely in the United States."
Click to expand...

Sounds like there's some Nike Sweatshop action going on over there. I mean...$1.50 might be more than they are making now, but when you're on the outside looking it....it looks very unscrupulous. Hollywood SCUM!! :angry:

~reservoir~
 
I know a DP friend that shoots in Bulgaria all the time and told we should shoot 2 million dollar feature there, that it would only cost around 500,000 there. I told him I didn't think that would work because it's supposed to be set in the rural south. He told the rural south towns have already built there for other films and showed a bunch of stuff on a web site which was quite impressive.

What's more impressive is that they have qualified crew on hand that work for a fractions of the going rate.

I also know some big shot producers that tell me they don't even consider going overseas unless the budget exceeds 5 million, then it becomes worth it aside from all the additional costs incured.

Personally, I'd rather work here in the U.S. even on low budget stuff and just get qualified crews to work non-union rates or deffered.
 
reservoir said:
Sounds like there's some Nike Sweatshop action going on over there. I mean...$1.50 might be more than they are making now, but when you're on the outside looking it....it looks very unscrupulous. Hollywood SCUM!! :angry:

~reservoir~
Click to expand...

I never got the impression of "unscrupulous" or "sweatshop" while reading the piece. Those words imply greed and exploitation, lousy working conditions, lousy pay (by their standards) and probably coercion. I suspect those Romanian workers were thrilled with working in movies and getting better pay than their countrymen.

Budgets determine whether movies go ahead or get canned. Cold Mountain might have been too expensive in the USA... and if Cold Mountain was never made, everyone would have been poorer for it, especially the Romanian workers.

I hope to do a feature... with workers paid in pizza dinners. They're gonna be kept in line with Thugs paid also in pizza dinners.

Only kidding.
 
$1.50 an hour. On my first feature my crew and actors worked for Subway sandwhiches and Pizza. I remember it fondly considering I was part of the crew so I was paid in pizza and S.Way sandwhiches too.

-Nate
 
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