Crew Deaths Put Safety Back In Spotlight For Guilds & Studios
As IATSE nears what is likely to be the final round of talks with the studios over a new three-year contract beginning Monday, safety is again one of the primary concerns of guild members.
In December, a woman died in a car accident after a lengthy overnight shoot on Peacock’s upcoming series Hysteria! Her death was not previously reported widely or linked to the production but, earlier this year, more on-set accidents did begin to make the news.
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In February, a crew member on the set of Marvel’s Wonder Man died after falling from a catwalk. In April, several crew members were injured after a stunt-gone-wrong on the set of Eddie Murphy’s Amazon film The Pickup.
May brought another crew death. This time, Rico Priem, a grip for more than two decades, had just finished a 14-hour production day on the first responder procedural 9-1-1 when he died in a car accident shortly after leaving set at 4 a.m. He was driving from Pomona to his home in Woodland Hills when he experienced “sudden cardiac dysfunction due to cardiomegaly,” according to his autopsy report.
Deadline spoke with below-the-line folks from across the country, who point to bloated production hours and diminishing quality of life as contributing factors that are largely overlooked but can lead to myriad health and safety issues both on and off set.
In Priem’s case, sources tell Deadline that he and his family were aware of his cardiomegaly, which means an enlargement of the heart. Studies show that lack of sleep and increased stress can lead to complications with that condition.
“[The studios] focus on physical dangers of the job, but the most dangerous thing is the overworking,” an Atlanta-based crew member tells Deadline.
IATSE is going back into talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers through Thursday, with the potential for some additional bargaining sessions in early July. The below-the-line unions are racing toward a July 31 expiration date on their current contracts, and all have said they are not interested in extending to accommodate further talks.
A Typical Workday
Priem died after a 14-hour “Fraturday” — a term used by crew to describe a Friday overnight shift that extends into Saturday morning. Deadline understands this shift was preceded by another 14-hour shoot the night before. The crew had about a 10.5-hour turnaround time between shifts, about 30 minutes longer than the rest period required by IATSE’s current contract with the studios.
Disney, parent company of 9-1-1 producer 20th Television, did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment on what happened to Priem. If it does, this post will be updated. After the accident, a spokesperson for the studio said: “On behalf of the studio and everyone at 9-1-1, we send our sincere and deepest condolences to Rico Priem’s family and friends.”
Lengthy production hours have become a central part of the conversation between below-the-line unions and the AMPTP in recent years. In 2021, IATSE sat on the brink of a historic strike after contract negotiations stalled largely due to the union’s insistance on longer turnaround times between production days.
The union eventually secured 10-hour rest periods for its members (an additional two hours compared to the previous contract). On weekends, crews are entitled to a 54-hour turnaround time, per the contract. However, these rest periods, when honored, begin when the production wraps, meaning they include any round-trip commute in addition to time with family and sleep.
On 9-1-1, Priem faced at least a 90-minute commute to Pomona each day he worked. Deadline understands Priem was hired temporarily to assist the production as it pulled off a particularly difficult stunt that required a more robust crew — which was ultimately what led to the even longer production hours.
Prior to his death, a source close to production tells Deadline that Priem and the rest of the crew had been scheduled for a 12-hour day that was extended due to complications with a controlled burn that was being used for a stunt.
To its credit, the source calls the 9-1-1 set, which pulls off flashy stunts on a near episodic basis, “one of the safest that I’ve ever worked on.” However, those safety protocols take time, which can lead to ballooning production hours to pull them off.
“I know friends who are working 14- to 16-hour days every week,” one Texas-based crew member, who had his own harrowing accident falling asleep at the wheel after a long production day, told Deadline. “This used to be the exception and now it’s becoming more of the norm.”
As for The Pickup, sources tell Deadline that production days were regularly around 10 hours. But, while the hours weren’t as grueling and nothing about the on-set accident pointed to sleep deprivation as the primary culprit, “the level of hurry up that we get from production is excessive,” one crew member who worked on the film said.
“If it’s not 14-plus hours to make a day, it’s trying to shoehorn 13 hours into a 10-hour-day instead of taking care and precaution,” the source said, voicing a concern of many that any reduction in current hours would only lead to more safety concerns due to rushed schedules.
The Regularity Of Production-Related Accidents
When one of these accidents makes it into the news, tributes pour in to honor the affected crew, along with calls to action. Crew-related social media pages call for change in the form of improved working conditions. Priem’s death, which came during IATSE’s current bargaining cycle, even prompted the focus of negotiations to momentarily shift to quality-of-life issues.
But, as many crew members point out, for every story that is publicized, there are countless that fly under the radar.
Throughout the process of reporting this story, Deadline discovered that one woman died in an overnight car accident after working a 16-hour shoot on the Atlanta set of Peacock’s Hysteria! The 27-year-old, who worked in the show’s costume department, died from blunt force trauma to the head shortly before 5 a.m. on December 15 after her vehicle “collided into [an] unoccupied utility vehicle” on the shoulder of the highway, according to police and autopsy records.
A crew member who also worked on Hysteria! told Deadline that, following her death, the production scaled back to 10-hour days and did not wrap later than 2 a.m.
Deadline reached out to Universal Content Productions on this matter and have not received a response. If the studio responds, this post will be updated.
This type of story has become all too common in the film and television industry, as one Los Angeles-based grip with more than two decades of work history says: “We’ll never be able to even reach our retirement…because we’ll die before we get there.”
The Complexity Of Finding A Solution
Despite repeated calls for change from crew members across the country, the problem persists. Currently, the below-the-line unions’ contracts don’t dictate the length of production, and there is only a financial penalty for studios that violate crews’ contracted rest periods.
But, “the financial penalty is not really a penalty. It’s just something they can budget around,” adds an L.A.-based crew member. It’s a sentiment echoed by more than a dozen crew members Deadline has spoken with about the issue.
While the hope was that these penalties would disincentivize studios to regularly impede on crews’ rest times, the idea that they’ve by-and-large been ignored has prompted the unions to again bring this issue back to the bargaining table for ongoing contract negotiations.
“We see that some of these companies or productions will continue to film excessive hours that are way over the top … and they don’t even blink at the fact that it’s costing them more money, so obviously they can afford it,” Teamsters chief negotiator Lindsay Dougherty tells Deadline. “So that tells us that we should be asking for more, which is exactly what we’re going to be doing in terms of these penalties.”
In addition to IATSE, the Hollywood Basic Crafts have also turned their attention to quality-of-life issues, including overworking, that plague their members. Deadline understands that, as Dougherty mentioned, the Basic Crafts have broached the subject of higher penalties with the AMPTP, though it’s not clear how responsive the studios have been to the proposal.
But even if the unions achieve a higher penalty, many worry it won’t be enough to stop the trend from continuing; as one crew member puts it, “There is no doubt that there is a financial benefit [for crews] to working overtime.”
In fact, relatively stagnant wages over the past several contract cycles has put some below-the-line folks in a position to rely on the penalties they receive to make ends meet. It’s part of the reason why substantial wage increases have become a cornerstone of the unions’ current negotiations with the AMPTP.
Deadline also hears that revisions have been made to the “soft language” in IATSE’s contracts that encourages productions to provide rideshare or hotel rooms to overworked crew after more than 14 hours. But, as many have pointed out to Deadline, the language doesn’t require the studio to offer, instead putting the impetus on the individual to ask for such accommodations.
“My experience is the crew is not that comfortable asking, especially if you’re a daily hire,” an L.A.-based crew member said.
Others expressed they felt comfortable asking and had not received any pushback when doing so, but they did also say that, even if approved by the production, the crew member still has to seek out their own accommodations and submit for reimbursement. This means fronting the cost and potentially eating into their rest period even further, if they have trouble finding a hotel room or a ride so late at night.
These conflicts suggest that there is a limit to how much influence a stronger contract will have on this ongoing problem. Dougherty says she believes the most meaningful way to address it is through legislation.
“I think, at the end of the day, there are going to be productions that continue to film more than 12 hours a day. They will continue to do whatever it takes to make their product, even though it requires their workers to be exhausted at the same time,” she said. “There are countries out there that will not allow workers to work more than 12 hours a day … and these employers [abiding by those laws abroad] happen to be the same studios and streamers we’re talking about right now.”
It remains to be seen how far the new contracts will go to address overworking and quality of life issues like this one, though, it is at the forefront of rank-and-file members’ minds as they weather a continually tough time for below-the-line workers.
As an Atlanta-based crew member posits: “If the only thing that makes the job a good job is the check that comes after a 70-plus hour week, then maybe it’s not that great a job.”
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