The Pay Gap

The pay gap between men and women in the workplace is acknowledged and beyond debate. In many western countries, men are paid an average of 20% more than their female colleagues. Globally the figure grows to around 30%. However, you can negotiate pay going freelance. The article gives stories about this. http://www.theknowledgeonline.com/the-knowledge-bulletin/post/2015/10/07/tackling-the-film-industrys-gender-pay-gap

According to US labour department data, women in the arts, entertainment, sports and media industries earned 85% of male counterparts’ pay last year. For women working full time in all sectors, the figure was 82.5%. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/29/hollywood-equal-pay-women-change-yet-to-come

In 2015, female full-time, year-round workers made only 80 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 20 percent. According to our research, if change continues at the same slow pace as it has done for the past fifty years, it will take 44 years—or until 2059—for women to finally reach pay parity. https://iwpr.org/issue/employment-education-economic-change/pay-equity-discrimination/

Industry Professionals/Primary Research

I have contacted 4 people in total to conduct an interview with, who I have found on the ICFC website. I have went with UK based cinematographers as that is where I am based and how they got into the industry here.

Catherine Goldschmidt. Also co-founder of illuminatrix (another female cinematographer collective)

Suzie Lavelle (I really want her to reply as she has been cinematographer for Sherlock and The Living and the Dead!) 

Nicola Daley and Neus Olle.

I have had Catherine Goldschmidt reply and interviewed already! I have another reply from Nicola Daley who I need to email back in two weeks as she is on a job at the minute. I will update this post if I get any other replies.

Useful Secondary Sources

This blog post is a collection of secondary sources (websites and books) for my report, which I will update when I find them. I wasn't very successful on the book or journal front, but hopefully the newspaper articles will make up for it.


12 Essential Women Cinematographers from Fandor on Vimeo.

LINCOLN, K. 'The Female Cinematographers of Neon Demon, Creed, and Dope Discuss Their Experiences in a Male-Dominated Field', Vulture, 27 June 2016, p10 - they talk about raising a family??? Whyyyy?

SILVERSTEIN, M. 'Statistics on the State of Women and Hollywood' http://www.indiewire.com/2014/02/statistics-240754/ (02.03.2017) - Backup source for facts and figures (probably won't use it if the internet sources is still 10%, I will have to ask)

https://www.digitalbolex.com/grant/grant-statistics/ (02.03.2017) - Great stats, definitely use! [As of 2014, 14 of 374 members of the ASC are women, just 3.7%. The first studio film with a female director of photography was FATSO (1980).]

COCHRANE, K. 'Why are there so few female filmmakers?', The Guardian, 31 January 2010, p52 - Pretty scary experiences of sexism and felony. They still talk about motherhood and raising a family!

LEVITIN, J. (2012) Women Filmmakers: Refocusing Routledge. New York and London - p436 is useful

ROBSON, C. (2016) Silent Women: Pioneers of Cinema Supernova Books. Twickenham. - interesting info on the first female cinematographer

GOLDSCHMIDT, C. 'Women Working Behind the Camera: Our Story En Masse' http://cinemajam.com/mag/interviews/women-behind-the-camera (02.03.2017) - very long article which I have partially read through and picked out some interesting info

LANG, B. 'Women compromise 7% of Directors on Top 250 Films (Study)' http://variety.com/2015/film/news/women-hollywood-inequality-directors-behind-the-camera-1201626691/ (05.03.2017) - [Evidence suggests that women in positions of power are more likely to employ other women. On films with female directors, women comprised 52% of writers, 35% of editors and 26% of cinematographers. When men directed, the number of female writers shrank to 8%, editors fell to 15% and cinematographers dropped to 5%.]

Report Ideas

Brainstorming a few ideas for next years Professional Studies report and I have a few ideas (and a few sources for each!) I could explore.

http://jezebel.com/be-inspired-by-these-little-girls-being-inspired-at-the-1783440995

Clearly female cast films are inspirational, so why aren't there many? And even then, why are they reboots?

The 'Sheboot'

This relates to my first Professional Studies report of remakes, but in more detail to a specific type (and fairly new and upcoming!) kind. With the new Ghostbusters out now, the female lead reboot is more popular than ever, with talks of remaking Oceans Eleven with an all female cast. However, are 'sheboots' the way to equality? Surely original female lead screenplays would be the right way to go? 

• Sources; Little White Lies Washington Post Telegraph Ms Blog Washington Post Buzzfeed

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Reading the module handbook for next year, however, I have just realised, says this;

"...a 2500-word report on a negotiated aspect of professional practice, eg. work experience or a specific career pathway" 

So the above idea might be ruled out. 

I have a backup idea if that is true, focusing more on a job role.

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Female Cinematographers

Fun fact, a female has never been nominated for the Academy Award "Best Cinematography". My report would cover why female cinematographers seem to be non-existent and why they aren't getting as much attention as male cinematographers. This is something I'm personally interested in as I have recently wanted to look into cinematography.

• Sources; Indiewire ICFC No Film School Deadline Vulture

UPDATE 24.01.2017: Looking closer at the brief, I will look at Female Cinematographers because it needs to link to a job role.

Study Skills - Report Writing

Me and Beth went to the study skills on Report Writing but we didn't learn much new, and Su kept repeating herself, so we called it quits halfway through.

I did make a few notes which I will post below;

• facts not prose
• short descriptive paras and sentences. Facts in bullet points if you want.
• figures= charts, graphs, images
• summary (about?), intro (detail, aims), main body (facts), conclusion (viewpoint), recommendations (optional).
• Quotes
• Logical flow.
• Figure listing @ front, biblio @ back.
• Purpose, facts, structure, objective- why, what, how, what achieve?
• Title, purpose and overall aim, facts, structure, outcome, target audience
• Research: primary- questionnaires, surveys. Secondary- books, websites...
• Specific questions to answer
• Title, acknowledgements, figure listing, contents, summary, intro, main body, conclusion, recommendations, appendices, biblio.
• Ttitle page: title, programme, module assignment title, semester (2014-15), name, level, Put as header too. 
• Page nos and headers
• Summary completed last. Main points, conc and recc.
• Research findings- how many responded and scale.
• "the aim of this report..."
• Intro: context of report and objectives, background, info, outline approach to fact finding and structure of report.
• Main body: findings, short sections with sub headers, figures, analysis of data, issues and problems. Research methods. Who is questionnaire aimed at? How many questionnaires distributed and how many back? Results.
• conclusion: final verdict. Answer questions posed.
• Recommendations: order of priority. Bullet point. How to distribute guidelines.
• Appendices: evidence of questionnaires. Copies.
• Objective view, both sides.
• Line spacing 1.5, arial or times, 12pt, page nos, A4.

These notes probably only make sense to me (sorry my note taking is weird).

Professional Studies #4

Today we looked at Writing a Report. Sue and Liam also do a Study Skill session on report writing on the 27th January which might be helpful to go to, but what I learnt today with Mike seemed pretty straight forward. I'm pretty sure I've even written part of a report before. (it all came back to me)

Reports are not essays. They are based purely on facts with no opinions (you could recommend something though). The VLE has most of the report layout and what to include. I'm going to write some of it here anyway.

• Title page 
• Acknowledgements 
• Contents 
• Abstract or summary 
• Introduction 
• Methodology 
• Results or findings - include different primary data; pie charts, questionnaires, tables, etc.
• Discussion 
• Conclusion and recommendations 
• References 
• Appendices - do not count as word count! Information related to the report but not essential. 

I have started brainstorming what topic I would want to do my report on, which I will include in another post.