Turning up the Volume – celebrating and building upon our success in 2023 and 2024!
Our “Turning up the Volume” campaign, funded by Ministry of Culture and Heritage, is a set of initiatives designed to support and foster current and future screen music and sound professionals by: championing improved conditions, career sustainability and wellbeing; and increasing industry awareness of the immense value music and sound has in screen storytelling.
1.Financial Stability
- Contract templates for basic employment protections are now available in the members resources section of our website, as well as a set of rate cards as aspirational guidelines. These will be used to advocate in the Screen Industry Workers bill agreements.
- Upskilling members in business acumen: In April, our free of charge 3 Creative Business programmes for sole trading members were successfully delivered in partnership with The Big Idea/Toipoto and covered the following topics: Managing Me (Presenter Dina Jezdic) Marketing and Social Media (Presenter Kirsten Matthew) and Intensive Business Skills (Presenter Antony Deaker)
- Our executive director, Melissa Conway, has been working on funding and grant applications for SMSG to continue on with running projects in line with Turning Up the Volume, to keep the momentum going and move to the next stage of developing all the foundations we have been laying in the last 12 months.
2. Resource Development
- We have developed a set of best practice manuals, resources and held events that are dedicated to the craft of screen sound and music composition to keep our members connected and upskilled.
- We’re working hard to help everyone connected and build kinship through our monthly online lunches for kai, kōrero and connection – we’ve had a series of inspiring speakers and plenty more to come! (1) We had some great korero in our February and March online lunches with Claire Wackrow from NZSO and composer Claire Cowan in conversation about working together on various projects; (2) A session with Blair Cassin from Hnry to hear about their accounting services for sole traders. Hnry offers a discount to members so if you’d like to know more on the deal drop Audee an email: admin@smsg.org.nz. (3) In May we had another great session on Ben Sinclair’s Handover to Mix resource (4) In August we will have John McKay taking us through the On Set to Screen resource. These sessions are free for members so come along and join us whenever you can make it (usually the 3rd Thursday of each month).
- In Wellington, we hosted a talk to hear with acclaimed music producer/engineer Mark Willsher talk about his extensive career – our biggest turnout yet, with around 70 people attending. Result!
- In Auckland, The Sound Room hosted the ‘Games, Music and Beyond’ event, another great thought provoking, interesting and informative evening.
- There’s more to come!
The Workforce Development Council Toi Mai have been working alongside industry representatives to develop a set of credentials for training up new talent in to the screen sector. Our representative for the RoVE Toi Mai STAR group is sound engineer and Massey University lecturer Neil Aldridge who has replaced Lawrence Arps as both a committee member and a contact for the Toi Mai mahi, if needed. Currently there are no post production sound or music composing credentials but we are kept in the email loop so we are across any developments and will likely be involved in meetings again when/if they move to doing post production credentials in sound and music. If you would like to know more about the work Toi Mai is undertaking you can find out more here: Toi Mai Workforce Development Council
3. PR Campaign for Advocacy and Awareness
We’re promoting the mantra for government investment to be geared towards creating local jobs and opportunities wherever possible. Blackland PR have done a fantastic job, Mark Blackham, Fiann Blackham and Emily Mingins have been very generous with their time helping us with these key messages and events. Our campaign launch was in November last year at the Miramar Creative Centre which was live streamed and really got the TUV ball rolling.
- Also in November 2023, extensive research and surveys on local and international practitioners were carried out by Research Advisor Matthew Donaldson. There are 2 summary reports that are now available:
SMSG Screen Composer survey report
SMSG Audio Workers survey report
- Matthew then wrote a whitepaper to recommend strategies designed to stimulate work opportunities and revenue streams for our parts of the screen sector. Marshall Smith, Janet Roddick, Polly McKinnon and Melissa Conway also contributed to the paper “Enhancing Work Opportunities for Sound Production Workers, Sound Post Production Workers and Screen Composers in Aotearoa/New Zealand” which has been presented to Government in late July and shared with screen funding agencies, marketing bodies, guilds and associations. The whitepaper will is available now! Read it HERE – Screen Music and Sound Guild Whitepaper
- Promotional Trailer: The production of this has been prioritized as an important tool for SMSG so we will be working to produce a high calibre video that will have a long shelf life and can be edited into different lengths, with a range of key messages for our broad target audiences. You can see the blueprint for the video here, which was edited using YouTube footage and the aim is for SMSG to recreate something similar using New Zealand talent.
- National Roadshow tour: Melissa carried out visits to Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland, as well as attending the Big Screen Symposium, which enabled us to share the PR messages wider as well as connect, build and strengthen relationships with businesses, current and future guild members and tertiary institutions.
4. Health & Wellbeing Resources
- We are continuing to work on developing resources to address sector specific concerns, to be included in the collective bargaining portfolio with the aim of becoming legally binding standards in the long term:
- A Health & Safety document to address known industry concerns around mental health and well-being.
- A set of requirements for flexible working spaces
5. Building Diversity & Inclusion
Championing the next generation to open up and demystify the industry, as well as building cultural competency within our membership.
- Bev Cassidy-McKenzie from Diversity Consultants has provided us with a set of ‘Getting Started in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ resources and delivered a presentation on this to our committee and members in June.
- Our Te Tiriti o Waitangi workshops in November/December 2023 strengthened our understandings as well as enabled us to rewrite and update our website statement, to better reflect our commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitiangi.
- Consultant Rongo Ngata also facilitated our cultural competence Te Reo workshops in June.
- Education seminars: we would like to get out in to schools and tertiaries later in the year to share our craft and encourage diversity in our workforce.
- We have created a free rangatahi guild membership level to encourage young people to join up. We’re also about to offer free membership to students for the same reasons!
We have had a very busy period of mahi and have provided some excellent resources, events and professional development opportunities for you all to make the most of. Thanks to the awesome SMSG committee who have all helped in various and valuable ways to Turn Up the Volume.
We look forward to starting our next programme of activity Powering up Post- Production in partnership with the VFX Guild. We are finalising the details of this and will share the exciting plans in the next few weeks.
And that’s a wrap!
Ngā mihi,
Melissa Conway
Executive Director