Unpaid work - Is it ever worth it? (Tuesday Discussion 01/11/17 @ 5pm)

Yesterday I attended the Skype session at 5pm where we spoke about lots of interesting things including professional profiles, inquiry questions, drafts, interview questions, perfectionism, crediting/referencing people when using their idea and unpaid work. 

As I have been thinking about the notion of unpaid work in the entertainment industry for the past couple of weeks I would like to expand a bit on this subject. I will be sharing my thoughts and experiences as an actor, but from what I understood from the discussion yesterday dancers and musicians should also be able to relate to most of them. 

What is unpaid work? 

Work where you only receive a credit, potentially showreel footage (if it's recorded media) and/or a profit share. 

Why would we work for free?

*Below are a few reasons I have identified, not all of them are reasons why I would do it, but also reasons other actors have given me in our discussions.*

• The project is interesting.
• We need the credit. Either because we do not have any recent credits, because we do not have enough credits all together or because the credit has some prestige (e.g. the company is well-known). 
• We feel we need a credit in this genre from this year and don't have one yet.
• Keeping up with the craft if we haven't done a job for a while. 
• It's for a good cause and all profits go to charity. 
• We need showreel footage (which otherwise we'd have to pay for unless we get a paid job in film or TV).
• No one is getting paid, it's an artistic collaboration and everyone will profit equally. 
• If we don't do it, someone else will...

Sometimes it can also be a combination of the above. 

Why would we not work for free?

*Below are a few reasons I have identified, not all of them are reasons why I wouldn't do it, but also reasons other actors have given me in our discussions.*

• It is our profession, we need to pay rent and frankly labelling unpaid work as an 'opportunity' is not a good enough reason for us to devalue our worth as artists. 
• We have paid a lot of money for our training and it is unfair that we should be asked to work for free when in any other industry this would be considered exploitation. 
• If we all stopped doing it, maybe all the companies that claim they can't pay would start to. 
• We need to draw the line somewhere - at the end of the day how much is a credit worth when it's with a company that is not even willing to pay its actors? 
• Unless it's for charity, no project worth anything is going to be unpaid. 

The feeling that no one should work for free is a strong one and one with which I agree. Equity has done wonders with its campaign 'Professionally made - professionally paid', but unfortunately we are still a long way to go. 

Personally, there are only two reasons why I would agree to unpaid work; one is if it is an artistic collaboration and everyone is profiting equally and the second is if it is for charity and no one is being paid. If a project is really interesting and I feel that it will benefit my artistic development and make me richer mentally I will also make the exception, but in this instance I will want to know that the budget is so low no one is being paid, because if the actors are the only ones not being paid something's not right... Unfortunately the problem with this is that a project might seem interesting when you agree to it and then it turns out it's not or even that the people working on it are not as pleasant as they seemed. It's one thing sucking it up when you're being paid, but when you're not it's a nightmare and one credit or some average showreel footage cannot be possibly worth it. 

What are your thoughts? xx