American Cinematographer - June 2015 - 12

If any good is to be derived from the death of Sarah Jones, part of it will have to include a
renewed sense of purpose toward guarding the well-being of crewmembers. While our
work is rarely conducted under overtly perilous or unsafe conditions, whenever occasions of
negligence do occur, each of us must be courageous enough to step forward and call them
out, regardless of the consequences. But even as it seems that a page has been turned,
every crewmember currently remains subject to an insidious form of abuse that's potentially
as deadly as any train thundering down a track: the practice of working excessive hours.
I have written about this topic several times in this space, and since nothing has
changed in the interim it's well worth bringing up again. Working excessive hours is an
industry-wide and industry-approved policy. Speaking from my own considerable experience, it's a miracle that the extreme exhaustion my fellow crewmembers and I have endured
on innumerable occasions hasn't led to disastrous consequences. I shudder to think of what
yet may come to pass, starting with the next job.
"As Directors of Photography, our responsibility is to the visual image as well as the
protection of our crew. The continuing and expanding practice of working extreme hours
seriously compromises both the quality of our work and the health and safety of others.
It is our obligation to oppose a situation that threatens the well-being of every member of
the crew."
When the late ASC legend Conrad Hall expressed those sentiments in 2002, he had
just survived an arduous - but not particularly uncommon - schedule on the feature Road To Perdition. He returned home with a
desire to alert the industry and incite reform of the practice that had taken an enormous toll on his health, and he put forth the
notion that excessive hours had become a form of officially sanctioned abuse.
We all know that feeling of walking around without having had proper rest; it's like living in a state of constant, impenetrable
jet lag. But beyond the requisite sluggishness, you might not be aware of the serious toll it takes. Reaction time is slowed, thinking
gets foggy and physical health declines. Personal relationships and quality of work suffer. And safety on set is compromised.
Everyone is aware of what happened to Sarah Jones, but they should also remember assistant cameraman Brent Hershman.
In 1997 he was killed while driving home from a shoot in a sleep-deprived state. Countless others have avoided a similar fate merely
by luck or the hand of God. It remains a black mark on the industry that no substantive action has been taken to rein in these punishing hours.
The reasons why we're putting in such regularly draconian amounts of time on the job are varied and generally uncalled for.
Certainly poor planning and incompetent scheduling are major factors. Unchecked greed is also a big part of it. But what's happening
to us is similar in many ways to the frog in the pot of water who's unaware until it's too late that the temperature has been incrementally turned up to the boiling point. Just compare the amount of work fit into the average day on any production a mere decade
ago and you'll see what I mean. We're now doing higher page counts in less time than ever before, so something has to give. That
something, of course, is the amount of time we devote to sleep.
Another ASC legend, Haskell Wexler, screened his documentary Who Needs Sleep? to great acclaim at the 2006 Sundance
Film Festival. Haskell and his co-director, Lisa Leeman, came to the same conclusions as Conrad Hall. You would think that in the
ensuing period some progress would have been made on the issue. It hasn't. And that's why it's more imperative than ever before
that we keep the subject in the forefront of people's minds.
When you strip away the emotional attachments and artistic pretensions surrounding what we do, this thing we spend so
much time on can only be seen for what it is: a job. Richard Jones, Sarah's father, perhaps put it best: "No TV show, no movie, no
job opportunity is worth the sacrifice of a human life."
Plainly, something needs to change. And it needs to change now.

Richard P. Crudo
ASC President
12

June 2015

American Cinematographer

Photo by Douglas Kirkland.

President's Desk

American Cinematographer - June 2015

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