I first drafted this article in 2016. For reasons that may become apparent in the coming weeks I thought it was finally time to dust it off, polish it up, and put it out there. The question is: is it right to ask people to work for free?

Before I offer my opinions, here’s why I have the right to do so. Over 22 years as a freelancer I’ve been on both ends of the deal. When I was a self-producing director I was responsible for several productions where no-one was paid, but I’ve also worked for free on many other people’s productions. This peaked in 2013 when I did over 50 unpaid days as a DP, and would happily have done more if they’d been offered to me. (Some of the fun productions I did that year included the period/action web series The First Musketeer, puppet-based music video Droplets and never-completed comedy feature The Deaths of John Smith.)

The last unpaid project I shot was Ren: The Girl with the Mark in autumn 2014. The production values of that show were so high that, once I had it on my showreel, I didn’t need to take unpaid work any more. I was getting enough paid drama work to scrape by on. I’ve written before about how giving up shooting corporate videos was another important factor in being able to transition away from unpaid work, but that’s not the focus of this post. The question is: should anyone do unpaid work in the first place?

Well, I used to do unpaid work because I enjoyed it. It allowed me to exercise a degree of creativity I usually did not get from the corporate work that typically used to pay the bills. The material I got for my showreel was also useful.

But is it enough to say, “If a person is willing to do unpaid work, then there is no harm done”? Surely no-one is forced to do unpaid work? We only do it because we’re getting something out of it, be it an IMDb credit, showreel material, or simply enjoyment.

If you banned unpaid work you would shut down a vast number of productions. The general public wouldn’t care because they’d be productions that don’t generally reach much of an audience, but you’d be denying a huge number of people the chance to be on a set.

The problem is, there are far, far more people wanting to work in the industry than there are paid jobs for them to take. Geoff Boyle, NSC, FBKS said in a Cooke Optics interview that the number of people graduating from film and TV courses every year is about equal to the number of people already employed by the industry. So unless no one wants to have a career longer than a year, there are always going to be a lot of people who can’t get paid work.

So doing unpaid work can help you get the experience and contacts you need to fight your way to the paid jobs. But if my career is anything to go by, you have to do a hell of a lot of the unpaid stuff. For many people, no matter how much unpaid work they do, it will never lead to enough paid work to live on.

So perhaps all the unpaid work has become a sort of commiseration prize. You couldn’t get into the over-subscribed paid industry, but you can still work on films so long as you’ve got some other way of paying the bills. There’s the rub though: not everyone can pay the bills and still have enough free time to do an unpaid shoot. There is an argument that by making a shoot unpaid you’re discriminating against people from certain backgrounds who are less likely to have the requisite financial freedom.

Nonetheless, it is probably better that these unpaid shoots happen than not at all. The skills, confidence, creative outlet and friendships that come out of them are worthwhile. It would be lovely to wave a magic wand and make them all suddenly paid, but that isn’t going to happen. So I think unpaid shoots are justified on the basis that they allow some people at least the “commiseration prize”.

If you’re weighing up whether you should take an unpaid job or not, hopefully I’ve helped you to decide. It may help you get to the paid work, but that’s far from guaranteed. Don’t see unpaid work as something you simply have to suffer through to “pay your dues”. Only do it if you’re enjoying it.

And if you’re weighing up whether to produce a project where people will have to be unpaid, be realistic about what you’re offering them. Feed them well, make sure they have a good time, and don’t promise them things you can’t give them. I have more tips on looking after your cast and crew here.