Thinking About Equity in Production
Blog post by Jonathan Shipman - Partner, WheresSpot; Consultant; former Agency producer, HOP of integrated production at McCann; HOP and MD at Framestore NY.
There’s a kind of post on Wheresspot that typically generates a lot of energy: when folks post about trying to fill a position with a stated preference regarding race and/or gender.
This stirs up a lot of feelings for me. I can not tell anyone how they should feel about anything nor am I here as part of the Wheresspot management to make a pronouncement on what our policy is or should be. I can not even speak to what the proper legal position is. Hell, I am no lawyer.
So please take this as no more than an opinion, from someone who has been in this business for a long time. Can’t tell you how much I hate writing that last bit. I am no statistician and I have no idea how many commercials I have produced, likely well over a hundred. Of all the commercials I have produced all but roughly six were directed by men; of the six that were directed by women two were directed by a married couple.
I can also pretty safely say that only two women have lensed a commercial I was involved with. Does that make me a misogynist? I don’t think I am. In all of my director searches, I never put out a spec calling for male directors only. I never required the DP to be a male. But them there are the facts. Though I can not prove it, I guess that for most agency producers of my generation, their male-to-female and white to *other* director & DP ratio would not be that widely different.
Like I said I am no statistician but I’d say there is something wrong with these numbers. I don’t want to get into a debate about why this imbalance exists and while it may have gotten incrementally better in recent years, we are not yet at proportionally fair representation and we should be. I don’t have the answers, I just have my own opinions, one of which is that I am not put off by posts that state they are looking to fill a position with only a female or a particular race or ethnicity. I am not only not upset by these types of posts, I am encouraged.
