And how does a filmmaker create ethically in such an unethical industry?

Well, you start by absolutely freezing, holding stagnant in your career while looking around desperately trying to find any way into the industry that doesn’t hurt something, someone, somewhere. At least that’s what I did. Because stepping out of the student filmmaking bubble and into the Hollywood filmmaking world (or at least adjacent, kind of looking at Hollywood?), I couldn’t help but feel a sense of anxiety – and it wasn’t my own.

At its best, Hollywood – the film industry – is exploitative. At its worst, it’s deadly. Now, I feel as though these words may be marking me, a filmmaker who hates the very institution under which she works, nevertheless, this is the truth as I see it on a broad scale. Broad, meaning there are plenty of film sets that do in fact care about all of the to-be-listed issues, but they are in the tiny minority and they most certainly are not the $100 million blockbuster films continually being green-lit.

There are complexities to every aspect, but for me, the areas of concern when considering ethics in filmmaking are: crew treatment and pay, cast treatment, pay, and accurate/proper representation, consumption, and waste.

When discussing cast and crew treatment and pay I feel as though… we all know what ethical means here and I won’t get into the obvious (an essay for another time). Oftentimes one of the biggest issues here is the absurd difference in the budget allocations between the above the line cast and crew and below the line crew. Seeing an eight figure number for a few individuals compared to most others with four or five figures… I truly cannot wrap my head around the idea of anybody making that much money on a film, when some of the cast and crew are making a bare minimum living wage. I absolutely think there should be a decently large pay gap, a fair ratio. When somebody is a writer/director/producer and has the name recognition that landed the funding or an actor who will bring in revenue, sure, but that film would not be getting made without every single one of those crew members, and that holds value too. The issue is that people are seen as disposable or replaceable, and this is also why crew members are put into dangerous or harmful situations. There is a pretty questionable dynamic between this above the line personnel and the people who are quite literally making their film happen. I do feel this aspect is not a hot take, but the overall idea that the “big name” actors and directors should make less money might be. They have “earned” their way to the top (an essay for another time…), they’ve proven their worth, and they are going to bring in the revenue – I’m not arguing that. However, the pay gap is absurd and I stand by that. Anybody who thinks it’s right that an actor or director should be making in an hour (or even a day) what a rigging grip or PA makes for an entire film… Gross. And it doesn’t have to be this way, but it will continue if we keep acting like it’s normal.

Casting accurate and proper representation is another area that seems to cause Hollywood some ethical dilemmas. There is a lack of diversity in Hollywood and there always has been – we can trace that back to slavery if you want, every institution in this country has a racist foundation. Therefore, the majority of movies and tv shows have showcased white people, at one point in the early days of filmmaking we even had white people in black face. And when roles for minority groups of any kind were available, white people were still cast – as recently as just a few weeks ago with Odessa A’zion being cast as Zoe Gutierrez in Sean Durkin’s “Deep Cuts”. Other minority groups that seem to confuse people fall in the LGBTQ+ community, with the most common comment being “people are paid to act, let them act like a gay/trans/lesbian person”. And to that I say, are you dense? Are you purposefully missing the issue? Because the same comment has been said about white people being cast in Latino roles or other ethnicities, and I’m really not sure how obvious it has to be… These groups of people, for decades, were not represented in film and tv at all, and now that they are, they deserve to be the ones to fill the roles. There are extremely limited roles in Hollywood for many of these groups, so when one of those roles is filled by a white girl like Odessa A’zion, that’s one less opportunity for the many talented Latina actresses. When a straight cisgender man plays a transgender man, that’s one less role for a transgender actor. And while we see it going one way (white people filling minority roles), we do not see it going the other way (minorities filling white roles). LGBTQ+ actors are sometimes cast in straight roles, but typically are type cast and also have limited roles. These issues also continue into the story telling process (an entire essay on its own), when people without the lived experience write and direct these stories, we end up with watered down inaccurate representation – we end up with the representation that is palatable to the straight white audience, rather than the audience it’s representing. It’s another way Hollywood perpetrates systemic oppression. (And I do not want to hear one person talking about a Black person playing a goddamn fish. She was a fish. Those are mythical creatures. Skin color and ethnicity was irrelevant.)

The last area that I struggle with ethically in the filmmaking industry trickles down to even the smallest of sets, but grows like wildfire the larger the budget gets; consumption and waste. When you’re making a film, you’re building a world – sometimes you’re literally building a town, a house, a plane, who knows. To do this requires lots of things and stuff, and much of those things and that stuff is single use. Much can be reused, I know sets I have been on have saved things, and much can be rented, props houses are plentiful. But there is waste, and a lot of it. We also have the costume department; things are often made and worn once, bought and worn once, bought and never worn. Sure things are donated or sold, and maybe reused. But there is waste, and a lot of it. And in a world that is already drowning in textile waste, it feels more than selfish to add to the problem for the sake of art when we don’t have to. Then we have production which I know must kill 50 trees a day with the amount of scripts, call sheets, schedules, etc. that are all printed to just be tossed at the end of each day. And the number of plastic water bottles… I think the film industry is single handedly keeping the water bottle industry in business. Not to mention the monumental food waste. Now I know this entire area is not as obvious or easy an answer of what to do to keep making films but not completely disrupt the (completely functional) system in place. But the idea is to eliminate the exorbitant amounts of waste, and I think it really needs to be about little implementations. Buying thrifted and used as much as possible, and local when not possible. Keeping things digital as much as possible. Switching to reusable water bottles and refill stations. Researching reclaimed building materials. But I think what’s most important here, and really overall, is first just being aware of it all. The magnitude of it all. Once you see it, I mean really see it and think about the scale of the issue, making the changes will seem smaller for the impact it’ll create.

I am constantly told “that’s just how it’s done”, in reference to the film industry, but also always, everywhere, all the time while growing up. We are all constantly just doing things because somebody else told us “that’s just how it’s done” and then pretty soon we’re telling the next person “that’s just how it’s done”. We are complacent, and it’s why everything is the way that it is. We have been socialized to be complacent. But that doesn’t mean we have to be. Just because this is how the film industry has always worked, doesn’t mean this is how it has to keep working.