The Ledger: Anonymous, Post-Production, Los Angeles

As told to Abby Sun

The Ledger is The Holdout’s irregular column on the often-hidden financial realities of independent film workers, as told to our editors. This edition’s subject spent a decade earning up to six figures in radio before moving into post-production for independent films. They describe a particular quandary: being caught between a collaborative, creatively-inspiring work community and the economic materiality of working on films that play major festivals (such as Venice, NYFF, and Berlinale) while their budgets often don’t cover living wages. They asked to be anonymous. This account has been edited and condensed from a questionnaire and an interview.

🗂Profession: Post-production

🕰Years in the industry: Five, with ten in an adjacent field

📍Based in: Los Angeles

“This Ship Looks Like It’s Sinking”

There was a lot of creativity in my childhood, and a lot of confidence-building around it, but my parents never really talked about money. We had a house with a mortgage, my siblings and I were all in school, and I was in after-school and summer programs. Money was spent, for sure—but how to manage it, or saving or investing, was not talked about. My dad was always right at his spending limit. Early in the month he’d take us out to dinner, and by the end of the month we’d be eating not-as-nice things. It was faith-based, ridiculously so: everything will work out in the end. 

Both my parents were involved in the arts but had stable jobs as teachers and came from upper-middle-class families, so they didn’t have a point of reference. I think that’s an issue for our generation, who were raised by boomers during a period of more financial stability—that stability meant nobody passed financial information down. 

I didn’t start talking with anyone about negotiating rates until my late twenties or early thirties. I got into radio production, and for a number of years it was a viable profession. I was making six figures, and it was fun. Then the market started dipping, and around 2021 it was clear the bubble was about to burst. The company I worked for needed to downsize, and I got let go with a nice big severance package. I had low overhead and a rent-stabilized apartment. I had enough set up that it was okay for me to take the leap into post-production for independent film.

Through a residency and conferences, I met indie filmmakers who, because they came out of the arts, anthropology, or social sciences, had really interesting questions. I figured the film industry had experimentation and variety, and also maybe more money associated with it than radio. I have since found out that the money is associated with a different part of the industry than the part I’m in.

When I left radio, I told my old colleagues: “This ship looks like it’s sinking, I should probably leave.” Most of them didn’t, because they had nowhere to go. I had the advantage of already knowing something about the film world. Now there are award-winning people from my former field, people with Pulitzers and Peabodys, who can’t get work. Six months in, they might get a three-month job. That market has fallen out, and most of the work left isn’t satisfying, so I feel like I made the right decision even if it’s financially perilous.

“Security Nets”

Setting up cost a lot. I had to buy lots of new equipment and programs to scale up. I had to take the time to learn all of it, and that’s a cost too, because when I’m studying, there’s no income, and I still have to pay rent. I’d guess $15,000 or $20,000 went into just setting up. 

I started reaching out directly to filmmakers I thought were good, and maybe on their ascent—people who would probably have money coming in for their projects in the years ahead, and who didn’t already have a dedicated person doing this part of post. Primarily, I wanted to know they were good people with ideas I could really advocate for. I did voluntary and low-paying work, and built from there. All the time I've spent on these films that don’t pay a livable wage is another $30,000 that I’ve put in. If you work on somebody’s film for four or five months nearly full-time and paid a couple thousand dollars, it doesn’t even out. I worked that way for three years. I’m subsidizing the work of these filmmakers, but it’s mutual. They’re piecing it together with grants, teaching jobs, commercial campaigns, whatever. We are all subsidizing each other, and in that way I think it’s super punk rock.

The first time I remember hearing about credit card debt was American Movie [1999, dir. Chris Smith], the documentary about a guy in a small town who can’t get his movie made. He’s saying he needs to do the shoot, but he’s maxed out on all his credit cards. I wasn’t even in this industry yet. I wouldn’t be for another twenty years. And I thought, fuck that, that’s never happening to me. 

And then it happened. I took on credit card debt as a conscious sacrifice. You’re in the middle of a project that’s going to take four months, and you don’t have another job. The film needs more work. You can’t get another job in the middle of it, because there’s a deadline for a premiere or a submission. So you think, all right, I guess I’m putting this month’s rent on a credit card. And it escalates as more people’s low-budget projects come in.

I once heard an interview on Art21 with an established artist, who said, “My superpower is debt.” I thought it was crazy, shocking. In the moments when I’m most upset, I think, I understand what she’s saying, but this is not a superpower. It’s insanely embarrassing to even have it. I spent my life into my late thirties avoiding debt at all costs. I had close to a perfect credit score. I’d never sacrifice my artistry, but I’d sacrifice lots of other things to not have it. So to take it on at all means I really believe in this field. 

I hadn’t had anxiety attacks in over a decade, not since college. When things started getting tight, they came back, and then moved into actual heart pains—which is terrifying, to be physically imperiled because of money. Eventually, I moved the credit card debt into the first loan I’ve ever taken out. It was a smaller, manageable amount, and the heart pains went away. I’m open about this because I think it’s important, but I wanted to be anonymous so it doesn’t land on the filmmakers I work with. I don’t want them to stop making their work, or to stop reaching out to collaborators. I don’t want them burdened with guilt over our independent choices over what sacrifices we’re willing to make for this industry. It’s a difficult tightrope to walk.

There isn’t a clear conversation about how to navigate financial insecurity between independents who want to work with each other. Some people come in with security nets, and they don’t make the same assessment of the risk they’re taking as the risk they’re asking other people to take on their behalf. If I had a security net, I wouldn’t be the person assisting in filmmaking. I’d probably be making the films. And I’ve been on the other end of it. I used to ask talented people to work for almost nothing, a couple hundred dollars for a lot of work. Now I know what it’s like to be on the other side, and I don’t want to put anybody in that position. But I also don’t want filmmakers to be scared of asking to collaborate just because they don’t have the budget. That shouldn’t be the case.

On Survival Jobs

I don’t do any self-promotion at all. People recommend me to each other, and some of the projects have growing budgets or good press, which brings in people who’ve seen the movies or read about them. I once passed on a high-budget job for a luxury brand because I was out of town. I even gave them recommendations. I never heard from them again. It’s a fickle field; you’re always on, or you’re out.

I take for-hire commercial work when it comes through directors I’ve worked with. The for-hire work is about one out of every seven projects, but it’s getting better. 

I’m also raising my rates steadily, not in a way that makes me inaccessible, but enough to account for some degree of inflation. I’d only work for free now if a project had a lot of perks attached—if it was short-term, for somebody I really cared about, or tied to other projects down the road with full budgets. I don’t want to say no, but I have said no.

If I could maintain a weekly rate of $2,500, that would be fine. That’s still less than a standard studio, and it’s still so far from what many of these filmmakers are able to pay me.

As recently as two months ago, I was asking myself, do I need to not do this either? Then a succession of really nice projects came in, because my name had been passed around to enough people. Right now, thankfully, I don’t feel that way.

About a month ago, I started a part-time job at a friend’s company. In my previous work, I’d made a number of well-received things with him, and he kept hounding me. I realized that if I took it, there would still be enough time in the week to work on films without being overwhelmed by the financial burden of taking them on. Now I work two 11-hour days a week, then I work on films the rest of the weekdays.

This part-time job is more white-collar than anything I had previously. But, without question, it’s a survival job. I don’t want to go back to that field at all. I don’t even want it to lean on. If in six months to a year, the film work has progressed to where I can let it go, I will. I have debt, and it’s scary, but I have faith in myself and I’m confident I can pay it off. 

In this specific subset of the film industry, where the art world and independent film meet, people are building new language into film, and doing it collaboratively. Very few industries are cycling through that in such an exciting way. The visual art world generally isn’t collaborative, so you don’t get to do it with other people. I won’t give up being at the forefront of new territory with people who really want to work together. If another field in the arts were that collaborative, always evolving, and used the skills I have, I’d probably be open to it. But there aren’t many spaces like that.