The Time Project
Lou worked and traveled for years as a freelance PD, until two children came along – which kind of limited her commute to within the M25!
For the first three years after her first child was born, Lou worked as a multi-camera Director on Big Brother. She job-shared this position for 5 series and realised that this kind of working arrangement was the perfect way to maintain a career whilst also raising a young family. It soon became obvious though, that opportunities to job-share were very few and far between.
In 2015, Lou launched Share My Telly Job to address what she felt (and still feels) is a huge issue within the industry. For a lot of people, full-time, full-on freelance TV jobs are almost impossible to maintain well when lives outside of work become more complicated. The result is that hundreds of freelancers (mostly women) feel forced to walk away from a career they really love every year.
Since 2017 Lou has worked in job-shared edit producer and gallery directing roles on a variety of shows including entertainment, reality, fact-ent and a commercial documentary film. She’s tested the concept of job-sharing out on both new and established formats and with a number of different job-share partners.
Lou is a Mancunian living in London with her two young children and a very patient husband.
This is our interview with her…
Lou Patel with her Maker and Shaker of the year award
Can you tell us who you are and what you do?
I’m a freelancer Edit Producer/Gallery Director and the founder of SMTJ. In recent months I’m more focused on SMTJ and fit in Edit Producing and Gallery /directing around that and the running of two children!
For those who don't know what the Time project (TTP) is, can you tell us a little more about it?
IT’S ABOUT TIME
The Time Project is a web-based app that has been built to allow Film & TV freelancers to track the hours that they work. Users are able to compare their hours to their peers across the industry and through the data gathered, we are able to report on working conditions across the industry dissecting the data to see where the burden of overwork happens. The Time Project is a project of accumulation. It will tell you how many hours you have worked, it will tell you your hourly rate, it will tell you how many hours over your contracted obligation you have worked, and it will tell you how many hours you have given to the broadcaster you are working for - for free.
What compelled you to start this research and what are the changes you would like to see in 5 years’ time?
Our work with SMTJ is all based around time and how we manage it in a way that allows people working in films and TV access o a better work-life balance. We know, throughout work, that so many people leave the industry as they are unable to manage the pressure of long hours when they need some flexibility in their lives. The Looking Glass report in 2020 from FTVC reported that the industry was in the grips of a mental health crisis which has been exacerbated because of the pressure of long working hours, amongst other factors. We wanted to dig a little deeper into the root cause of the crisis and create a data set that allowed us to analyse what working hours in Film & TV really looked like, how much of our time was given for free and provide the evidence for anecdotal problems. We also wanted to empower freelancers so they could see how they work compared to others across the film industry and build an app that gathers real-time information about working hours and rates so we could build a sustainable case for change.
Our vision for the app is that it becomes an integral part of a freelancers working week, the information recorded about working hours can be directly fed back to employers who can get a handle on how their teams are working. We want the app to be used for employers looking to make positive cultural changes within their organisations and for it to be a tool that gathers ongoing and valuable data which allows broadcasters to see where the pressure points of productions are happening.
The long-term goal is to use the data to negotiate a long-term change in freelancer contracts, moving away from the traditional buy-out deal and introducing contracts that allow freelancers to have an agreement of the hours they work. To do this, freelancers must be able to record and submit their hours to their employers and we see TTP as the tool that creates the connections between broadcasted, employers and freelancers.
Why should freelancers start using TTP? And what are the benefits?
By using TTP, freelancers are contributing to a data set that allows for real and sustainable change. They are able to keep track of the way they work, and how many hours they work and they can see valuable comparative data from others working across the industry. Tracking your hours and understanding the time you give to your work helps you negotiate better rates for future work.
Our industry characterised by ridiculously long hours and overworking; as a result, most parents are forced to leave the industry. A common response to the long hours is 'that's just how the industry is'. Why is it important to challenge this narrative?
The industry loses thousands of talented freelancers each year because there is a reluctance to think more flexibly about the way it employs its freelance talent. It can’t be ‘just the way it is’. For the first time, more people are leaving the industry than are joining so special attention must be paid to the retention and progression of its freelance talent. As we get older and our caring commitments increase, and as life gets busier, employers need to be able to adapt to this change in needs and pressures on their workers, without it, Film & TV will not be truly representative. The lack of time doesn’t allow for fair working practice to be implemented and parents especially, find the balance of high pressured programming schedule impossible to manage. We need to take responsibility for the welfare of our freelancer talent in the same way an organisation takes care of its staff.
You have already done such valuable work for industry parents through Share My Telly Job, how can TTP better support those with caring responsibilities?
The Time Project is showing us that is a real issue with working hours, pay and gender pay gap disparity. What we felt and thought was true is now confirmed through TTP data. Having the data strengthens our case for change. We need to retain female freelancers, we need to help more women progress into senior roles and we need to standardise pay and contracts across the board if we are to make any headway into creating a fair and equal industry which remains an attractive proposition for new talent.
What lessons have you learned since setting up the TTP?
We’ve learned to practice what we preach! We have learned to manage work/life balance much better.. We worked so hard throughout the pandemic to maximise the enforced downtime and opportunity to speak and listen about the real problems workers faced in the industry. We worked for free, for thousands of hours but now, if we want to create a long-term and sustainable tool which informs and improves our industry, we have to do it in a way that is sustainable and seek support and investment before committing to more work! It was a hard lesson but we all reached a tipping point where work and personal lives became really quite unbalanced. We’ve slowed down and become much more strategic and we’re all feeling better for it.
Culture change is hard within our industry but it feels like outdated attitudes are slowly shifting. How can TTP be a catalyst for change?
As we’ve said above, TTP is providing the evidence and proof for the problems we all know exist anecdotally. We’ve been able to scrutinise real rates of pay, see where the inequalities lie and break down the data to see where the pressure point are in all phases of production. When we introduce TTP into production companies, it can act as a monitoring tool that will show employers and broadcasters how and why they rely upon unpaid work to unworkable contracts to deliver underfunded projects. If commissioners, employers and broadcasters want to commit to positive culture change across the industry, TTP can provide irrefutable data to use as a starting point for building better working practices within their organisations.
Could you share one of your proudest moments since launch?
Launching TTP was a huge moment for us but a real moment was when we hit 1000 users. Our work with TTP was recently recognised when we won Maker & Shaker of the year. It’s been a long slog to get to this point but when awards are received, that really is a proud moment.
If you’d like to hear more about The Time Project, head to their website or get in touch through their social channels:
Website: www.thetimeproject.co.uk
Instagram: @thetimeproject_tv