The Boring Side of the media Industry (Contracts and Pay)

Introduction

In the Following Article I am going to be diving in deep into the wonderfully interesting and totally not a big pile of boredom I swear. I am going to be discussing everything from contracts to different types of pay and different roles in the technical side of the media industry as well as a little bit more of the creative side to sprinkle a little bit of joy in here. So lets not waste anymore time trying to prolong the inevitable so I guess... lets reluctantly start.

Types of Jobs

Ok so in the first section of this article I  am going to be talking about the types of jobs in the media industry. I am going to in-depth into each of the different job roles that I am going to be listing. These job types are as follows: Technical, Creative, Editorial, Managerial, Sales and Marketing and Financial. I will be talking about each in more detail individually.

Technical 

to begin with I am going to be talking about jobs in the technical side of the industry. Technical jobs in the industry are the jobs that require the person/worker to work with and utilise various equipment and technology to complete their job and help to towards creating a product. When taking up a technical role within the media industry you will need to be able to listen to, understand and carry out instructions correctly and have good time management as well as be able to work with strict deadlines as often the case is that projects will have strict deadlines with not leeway. I will now go and list some of the jobs that are included within the technical side of the media industry, these are:
Web developer, Technical producer, Technical director, Camera operator, Lighting director, Gaffer, Sound recordist and Boom operator. Each of these jobs are a key part to the completion of the final product and all contribute to the quality of the product.





Creative

Next I will be talking about the creative side of the industry which is as I have made quite clear that this is the side of the media industry that I myself want to break into. Right jobs in the creative side of the media industry require the person/worker to take original ideas and concepts and expand those ideas and working to help turn this ideas into a fully completed product. Jobs in the creative side of the industry require a great and vast imagination, also people in the creative side of the media industry also need to be able to work well and efficiently in a team and have good enough communication skills that allow them to communicate their ideas to the other people in the production. Some of the jobs that are included in the creative industry are as follows: web designer, Script writer, Set designer and cinematographer. Each of these jobs are all important as they are needed in order to complete the project.

Editorial Jobs

Following on I am going to be discussing editorial jobs within the media industry. Editorial jobs can range from video editing to print editing. The majority of editorial jobs are found in the print industry, this consisting of magazines and newspapers. Editorial jobs require that the person/worker to check through other peoples work and make sure that it is up to scratch, print editors also have the power to alter the product as they see fit. They can also refuse and stop the piece from being published if they feel like it is not suitable for publishing. Someone who works an editorial job is required to have good communication skills and good English grammar especially in the print industry where grammar is very important and good writing skills are crucial. Editorial jobs are in  most if not all of the sectors of the media industry and these include: Newspaper and magazine editor  as well as video editor, now you will find video editors all over the industry both in the online side and the film and tv side. Video editors will work on everything from blockbuster films all the way to viral marketing video on Facebook that your nan likes.  

Managerial Jobs

Moving on I am going to be talking about managerial jobs. Now managerial jobs make up the backbone of the business side of the media industry, People who have managerial jobs in the media industry are required to be able to oversee the work of others and make sure that the work is up to scratch and the meets the quota. A managerial job also requires the person who has that managerial position to be able to manage and organize time efficiently and effectively to maximize productivity and keep the day productive. Managerial roles also require great communication skills as well as the ability to work well with other people and as part of a group. Managerial jobs also require good leadership skills and good problem solving ability. Jobs within the media industry that are managerial are roles like Station Manager, Floor Manager, Production Manager and Location Manager. Each job comes with the responsibility to oversee and "manage" get it, a team of people in order to complete the work successfully.

Sales And Marketing Jobs

Continuing from this I am going to be talking about jobs in both sales and marketing sides of the media industry. Firstly Jobs in both sales and marketing require the employee to communicate effectively and efficiently with other business that are need of a marketing campaign or something similar and they will then try to sell and or promote products to them or promote their products to other people and business. Job roles in the in the marketing industry require good interpersonal and communication skills and need to know how to market or sell products effectively. jobs within the marketing industry are highly competitive so people who want to enter into the marketing industry they need to be able to offer something that other people cant. Jobs that are included within the marketing industry are the following: Public relations officer, Film promoter, Publicist, Publicity Manager, Marketing Assistant and Marketing Executive. Now these jobs all have the similarity of focusing around marketing something, like for example a public relations officer is responsible for a business' public image, whereas a film promoter is responsible for promoting a marketing a film. Both aim to get people to like the product that they are marketing and make as many people as possible aware of the products existence.

Financial Jobs

Next, I am going to be talking about jobs within the financial section of the media industry. The financial side of the media industry is responsible for generating revenue for each section of the media industry as well as the industry itself as a whole, people who are entering the financial side of the media industry are expected to make sure that that the budget of the project is properly managed and handled carefully. Employees are all also expected to keep the project from going over budget and exceeding the set budget that the project was given. People who work in the financial side of the media are also expected to channel money into new projects and account and control the budget at all times throughout the duration of the project's production. Jobs that are included as part of the financial side of the media industry are as follows: Producer, Financial Controller and Production Accountant. The Financial side of the industry is responsible as I am sure that you guessed for the handling of the money that comes in and goes out of the industry.
       

Contracts and Pay

 Moving on to the meat of this article I am going to be discussing the different types of contracts that will be offered to you when working in the media industry, I will also be bringing up the pros and cons of each of these types of contracts, anyway lets jump into the main event, the creme de le crem if you will. The media industry is quite the unique industry as it is flexible and constantly changing, this means that the contracts that are presented are far more flexible than traditional jobs in other industries. The different types of contracts in the film industry are as follows:

Full Time, Permanent

On a full time contract you will work on a full time basis, this being 39 hours a week, the benefit of this is that you are a regular member of staff, this means that they are entitled to company benefits including pensions, sick pay, Maternity and or paternity leave as well as holiday pay. Examples of jobs in the film and media industry that are full time permanent jobs are those that are managerial, editorial, financial, creative and occasionally sales and marketing. This is a good contract for people who are looking for a reliable job that will provide consistent pay and provide work benefits that will ensure that the worker is well looked after. The biggest pro that draws people to this kind of job is that you will be compensated for your work and that you will be able to live a comfortable that allows for you especially if you have a family to support them and with a job like this you will be consistently paid and in turn you will be able to provide them a better life from a financial side as well as give yourself a safer financial life. However the biggest con to this is that you will have a lot less free time then some of the other contracts on this list and this can be a turn off for some people as they will always be suck having to work their schedule around a full time job that without doubt will  demand their schedule. However another reason that people get turned off by about a full time contract is that you like most jobs are under someone else's employment meaning that while the job provides a steady income it also means that that income could be cut off and taken away at any moment. To conclude this section full time permanent contracts are the most common contract signed when working in the media industry.  
 
Part Time, Permanent

Moving on, a part time permanent contract is another contract that you could be offered when working in the media industry. A part time permanent contract is very similar to a full time permanent contract. Both contracts provide full work benefits as well as a steady income but the difference between the two being that you have a lot more free time. When on a part time contract you will be working a fraction of the hours you would be working when you are on a full time contract. Similar to a full time contact you will have a set amount of hours a week that you will work. However comparing both full time and part time you will most likely be earning less money as part of a part time contract then you would if you were on a full time contract however this isn't always true. Jobs that will most likely have you working on a part time contract are jobs in the financial side or the marketing side of the media industry. The biggest pro to a part time contract is that it is you are able to have a lot more free time to yourself and you are able to dictate your own schedule, rather than work being the dominant factor in your schedule. However a big downside that comes with a part time contract is that you are likely to be earning less money then someone who works full time and this can be a major turn off for people who are offered a part time contract because it means that you wont be able to make as much money as you could be earning and this could mean that if you have a family that might be harder to support them and be more financially stable to maintain your lifestyle.


Fixed Term and freelance 

Next I will be moving on to fixed term and freelance, now both fixed term and freelance mean that you will be working on one job at a time and that that job will only last for a certain amount of time. However a fixed term contract you are likely to still be entitled to work benefits as you are part of a company but you are only entitled to the benefits if they are specified in your contract. A big pro to a fixed term contract is that you are able to work in a similar way to a freelancer with the exception that you aren't self employed and that you cant name your own prices, but you are provided full work benefits (if specified of course). You will also be given jobs by your employers which adds a level of financial stability to the job as rather than you having to handle every aspect of the job you are employed by a company which means that you are given your jobs by the company which is significantly easier than having to find all of your own work. However the biggest con to a fixed term contract is that you are not in control of your job, so similarly like someone who works as a full time or part time employee, you could lose your job at any moment although it is easier to bounce back from losing a fixed term job then it is to bounce back from a permanent job. Also with a fixed term contract you are essentially a freelancer except without the control over your work schedule. Moving on from this I am going to go on to talking about freelancing in the media industry, a freelancer worker is responsible for their own arrangements in terms of a pension, holiday and sick pay as well as other allowances. A freelancer is self employed and in turn is responsible for finishing their own work and while after a while if you are good at what you do then you will potentially be offered jobs. The biggest pro to being a freelance worker in the media industry is that you have complete control over your employment, this means that while the previous employments that we talked about your job could be taken away from you at any second, a benefit to freelancing is that this wont happen to you. Another pro to freelancing is that you name your price when being brought on to a project and when selling and offering your services to a production or producer. However the biggest con to freelancing is that you aren't guaranteed that you will be financially stable and this is a major turnoff to a lot of people who are thinking of going freelance because it means that while you make your own decisions when it comes to work it also means that while one month you could be all booked up and making a bunch of money and you could spent the next 5 plus months without work before you will get some more work. This can be worrying for a lot of people as you could be worrying whether you will earn enough to be able to sustain yourself enough to last long enough while you wait for some more work to come up. Anyway Job roles that are most likely to either be freelance or fixed term are primarily in the technical, creative and marketing side of the media industry.
     

Shift Work

So, continuing on I will be discussing Shift work. Now Shift work essentially means that your work hours are set to a certain time of the day like for example 8:30 till 4:30 or 12 till 9. Shift work can also involve late hours and night work. Night shifts are most commonly used in places and facilities that are open 24 hours a day. Examples of types of places that are open and in use 24 hours a day. and these mostly consist of broadcasting locations and centres, like tv centres and radio broadcast centres. A big pro of shift work is that it allows you to work hours that are more likely to lean to your strengths and what I mean by this is that if you work better in early mornings and in the day then when you work shift hours then you are more likely to be give day shifts as you are able to work better during this time of the day, the same applies to people who work better during the night time and then when they get work shift hours they are more likely going to be given night shifts and night hours because they will work better and more efficiently during the night. However on the downside the biggest con to shift work which is that you will be stuck with working a lot of weird hours as your shift are more likely to be sparaticly spread across each week which can be very strange to adjust to and in turn quite difficult to work around when trying to plan your free time.    


Office hours 

Moving on, I am going into the traditional working hours and these are known as office hours and traditionally are Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm. This contract is incredibly common for people who work in administration and office based jobs and both these kinds of jobs are very common in the film industry as they are in most industries. Jobs that utilise office hour jobs very commonly within the media industry are Financial jobs, Jobs in both marketing and sales as well as a selection oi assistant jobs like for example a research assistant which is an example of a job in the film industry that works on office hours. The biggest benefit of office style hours is that it is quite easy to work around as it is made very clear what times you get off work which makes office hours really easy to work around. On the other hand a downside to working office hours is that it can become very mundane and very boring very quickly leading to your job feeling very uneventful and unfulfilling. This can be a turn off for people as a lot of people who enter the film industry want to work in a job that they enjoy and a job that they can feel like they belong in. 


Irregular and anti social hours pay

Irregular and anti social hours are quite like overtime in the sense that you are being paid more then you are standardly payed, Anti social work hours are when someone works shifts during "unsociable hours" what this means is that people who work hours that are generally considered social hours examples of these are weekends and night hours as well as holiday's. People who work anti social and irregular hours are paid more than the normal wage to compensate for the workers working hours that not a lot of people will work due to the hours and their placement. People who will work over unsociable hours are able to get paid extra which makes this hours popular with people who don't have other people to support. Irregular and anti social hours are very common in sectors of the media industry like production work in the film and tv industry, these hours are very common when a production is filming on location, a lot of hours when filming a project on location can range anyway from very early in the morning all the way into the dead of night. The extra pay for irregular and anti social is an incentive for people who are looking for better paying work. The incentive also gives workers a reason to go above the call of duty of their normal contracted duties and work anti social and irregular hours. The biggest benefit of irregular and anti social hours is obviously the pay which allows workers who agree to work these hours as it allows them to earn substantially more money for just working nights every couple of days. On the other hand however a downside to irregular and anti social hours are that it means that you will sacrifice some of your social life in exchange for more money which fairly understandable from both sides of the coin both people who would rather take extra money then lose free time that limits their social life ands vice versa.

Salaried

Continuing on, I am going to be talking about salaried pay. Salary pay is were you are paid a set annual wage that is split into monthly payments. A salary job will be advertised as paying x amount of money a year, but once you divide that by 12 it comes out as the amount of money you will be paid monthly. Job roles that are very likely to be salaried are jobs in the managerial side of the industry as well as jobs within the technical side of the industry. The biggest benefit with salary employment is that no matter how much you work you do or even how little work you do or if the day is cut short then your pay is not affected at all, no matter what happens your pay is unaffected. However in the same token if you have to work over time to get the work done or if you end up working double your hours, your pay is unchanged. The idea of salary pay being unchanging makes salary both great and terrible at the same time, but that's what you get when your wage is set in stone.
Another Benefit to salary pay is that you receive full work compensation e.g. pension, health insurance, dental insurance etc. Salary pay also allows you to mange your own finances and in turn have a better control over your finances. However one con of salary pay is that you could end up being paid less then the people who are working full time, this can happen if you work double the time that you are paid for then you are paid for those hours less than the wage of the full time employees who are usually lower down on the hierarchy then the person or people who are on salary pay. Another downside to salary pay is that you will be paid once to twice a month at most, the longer distance between pay checks means that you have to have control over your finances as the money needs to keep you going and sustain your lifestyle until the next pay check.              


On Completion  

Finally, I am going to be discussing on completion contracts. On completion contracts are quite common within the media industry and its many sectors, especially for people who are commissioned to work. An on completion contract basically entails that when you are commissioned to work you are given a task and a deadline and you are then told that you will be paid once the job is completed. Now this might seem like a good option at first glance but it isn't as great as it may seem. During the production of the 2012 visual effects company Rhythm and Hues studios was commissioned to bring to life the now famous Richard parker, the tiger that is on the boat alongside pi throughout the film. Now when Rhythm and Hues where commissioned to provide the visual effects for the titular character they were brought on through an on completion contract, and so they went and did their thing except that the production itself went overbudget and it ended up taking significantly longer for not only the tiger to come together but also the film took longer than planned to come together. This lead to Rhythm and Hues studios having to file bankruptcy upon finishing the tiger and intern the payment the studio was given was nothing near enough to save the company but the studio di not receive any financial compensation for their extra work, but rather given a bunch of rewards even though they had lost their company and everything they built. Anyway the point of the story is that on completion contracts are not a contract you should say yes too unless you read through the contract and even then it isn't the best contract that you could get but it just depends on what the you are being commissioned to work on depends on whether the on completion contract is worth it or not. The biggest upside of an on completion contract is that if the job is quick and easy then you are guaranteed to make some easy money but on the downside if you go overtime or if you work on a budgeted project and the project goes over budget or even if you finish your work but the project itself isn't finished the you don't get paid until the project is completed fully and you wont receive any extra compensation besides the money in the contract. Job roles that have on completion contracts are both the creative industry and sometimes the technical industry. 


Conclusion 

In Conclusion most of the contracts are offered to people in most of the industries within the grander media industry. The more office based jobs work a lot like most other industries where as the more flexible and unique contracts are in the more creative and more known sides of media. The media industry is so vast and so various that there are so many different ways of making money as well being able to choose depending on which path in the media industry you decide to do down depends on what form or method of producing work is it a more traditional way of working or is a more creative and practical based abstract way of working and which an industry as wide as the media industry even the little niches a lot of people look over are full of people who have a passion for that niche and work their hardest just to make it the best niche in the industry.