Useful Links

• Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media research
• Learning to Love Criticism
• Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film
• Gender Gap in STEM
• The Bechdel Test
• A 2011 McKinsey
• Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead 
• Howard / Heidi experiment
• Confidence Woman in Time Magazine
• Thelma Schoonmaker in MovieMaker Magazine

Transcript

Zack Arnold: And now, part two of my interview with Kylie Wall and Sean Fever. I want to go ahead and switch gears a little bit. I’m going to play the devil’s advocate for a second, and I’m gonna, and I know that this is something that Kylie’s going to be able to rebut immediately, which is why I’m going to say it. But if I were to come out and say, “Well, women just don’t want to get into film, and they’re just not interested in post production, it’s just not their thing, and this is something that men like to get into. What’s your response to that?

Kylee Wall: I kind of checked into that because there’s plenty of women. Clearly, there’s plenty of women in video production majors and things like that. It’s hard to quantify it exactly, so I asked for anecdotal evidence from people across the the U.S. and they all say that their classes are 30 to 50% women, and so clearly there’s an interest here for women to get into post or video production in general. But then you look at Hollywood, and there’s 18% women. That’s a lot different. 18% is a lot different than 30 to 50% So where are all those other women going, and you can make a lot of conclusions from that based on observations from other women. They get out of the industry because it’s a toxic environment. Whether it’s actually actively sexist or they just cannot, they can’t live the lives that they want to because they don’t have the the societal support to be able to do all the other responsibilities that a woman is supposed to do, things like that. So I was kind of a lot of people challenge me on that because they’re like, “Well, Hollywood, 18% editors. Hollywood is a bubble. Like it’s not representative of the world. I know lots of women that are in video production in Florida and Kansas and all that stuff. So I was like, yeah, I know, and it’s really hard to quantify and count how many women there are actually in the industry because our job titles are different and people work as editors and shooters. So how do you count them? But I was looking recently at I was looking into reports for STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math, because our our careers are not exactly like that, but they’re not completely unlike that anymore. There is a huge technology element, so I think there’s something to be learned from all the research done with STEM because there is so much data available for those jobs, and there was a report by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 2011 that found that one in seven engineers is female, and there hasn’t been any employment growth in STEM jobs since 2000. And that basically is exactly the same number as the Hollywood film editors, women in Hollywood, but the STEM jobs-that’s all engineers. That’s not just a bubble. That’s a small section of the industry. So I think that you can make some conclusions there that there’s something in the pipeline that is just turning women away when they’re interested. And what exactly that is varies depending on how you look at

Sian Fever: It. I would totally agree. I think the toxic environment plays a big role in turning people away, or siphoning them off into different areas, or just you know turning them off entirely. And certainly, the first kind of two or three years that I was working in post production, and I was finding my feet, I was learning my craft, I was assisting other people. I was a junior at a production company. It was hard. It was hard every day, and a lot of it was it was discouraging. It was being passed over for things for seemingly no reason. It was nobody having confidence in me or encouraging me, not having a mentor either. And this is something that I’ve experienced from both sexes, and that you can also be in a position where there’s a sort of phenomenon that there is only one woman wherever you are. We’re sort of taught as women that there’s only one space, there’s only one opportunity, and only one person can have it, because these opportunities are so rare, so instead of helping one another, there’s a tendency to compete with one another, and so I entirely lacked a mentor where I was as well. And I had a female MD and I had a female head of department, and neither was particularly forthcoming in in mentoring me. And it would have been really easy to kind of step away into maybe producing, maybe in post coordinating, maybe you know other areas that were less technical. I think that is definitely a very real, very real thing, and it just took a lot of like grinning and bearing it, and I’ve got just got to get through this. This is a stage, and I’ve just got to get to the other side, and I’m very happy to report I feel like I’m out the other side.

Zack Arnold: You’ve definitely gotten out of the out to the other side,

Sian Fever: You know. So, just for any young ladies who are in post, who are listening to this, who are like, it’s a grind. Why is it a grind? There may be another side. Okay, just just keep going, please, please.

Kylee Wall: Yeah, and I think that it’s a lot of people say, “Well, I’m all the producers I work with are women, or the post coordinators and stuff. And I think that’s not really a not really a valid argument for women in post because yes, great, but there are always there’s always been women producing and coordinating because I mean that’s more traditional quote unquote women’s work, you know, organizing, keeping things on schedule, writing-that’s all kind of traditionally been more of a woman-oriented. More easily, those jobs are easier for women to get into in general. Like there’s not that technical barrier that exists. So yeah, it’s great that there are women producers, but it doesn’t really represent what we’re trying to say here. And I totally forgot the rest of my point.

Sian Fever: Yeah, what was the figure? That sorry, I I think my ears were closed. What was the figure that you said the percentage was of women in in post? You reckoned

Kylee Wall: In Hollywood films? Yeah, 18% This

Sian Fever: Is a figure. This kind of 18% 17% 22 and a half percent. This is these figures keep coming up over and over again in studies that I’m looking at. In, for example, the Geena Davis Institute of Gender in Media, ah, it’s doing some great things. Some very, it’s commissioning some very cool studies, and I think a month or two ago it came out with a study, and it concluded a whole bunch of things, and it was looking at films internationally and the representation of women in those films, and it came to a whole bunch of conclusions. But one of the most interesting ones to me was that only in crowd scenes in films, only 17% of the people in the crowd were women. A crowd, just a crowd in the street, or a mob, or at work, but only 17% in this fictional world, the population is only 17% women. It seems, and it seems that this figure is something that we have come to see as normal. We’ve come to be comfortable with, and so it could also be that we have hit our kind of quota, if you like. We’ve we’ve reached the point, the sex ratio that we’re comfortable with, and because we’re comfortable with it, we’re not pushing it further, so that could also play play into it. That in more of a general sense.

Kylee Wall: Yeah, I was looking at actually. I wrote down the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. Their celluloid ceiling reports that they do every year, which are amazing. They said females accounted for in 2013. Females accounted for 15 of protagonists. So again, that same number that we’re just like, okay, a couple of women, then we’re good.

Sian Fever: Yeah, that’s how.

Kylee Wall: Interesting. I

Sian Fever: Was watching. I was watching Fast and the Furious Six. Don’t hate on me. I love this series. It’s hilarious. Vin Diesel’s amazing, and it’s amazing, and that Fast and the Furious Six. the The cast is like half women, but it epically fails the Berkdale test. None of the women have none of the women speak at all, at all. And the only like it’s ludicrous. They’re standing there in all the scenes, watching the men make all the important decisions, but they don’t speak. They’re not part of the pot, other than to just kind of be there. And when you start noticing those things, it’s it’s kind of obvious how this is feeding back into our society. But what was really interesting about what you just said about Hollywood being a bubble and that probably we’re not going to see 18% across the board just in support of that, I’m often the only female editor that my clients have worked with before. I often get, “Oh, you’re a woman!

Kylee Wall: Oh, wow!

Sian Fever: To to kind of put some life experience behind that fusack, because I know that’s you’re keen on that, right? Well, I

Zack Arnold: Think also what what what may be working against you is that it’s your name too. Like if if your name were Henrietta Fever, they would know when they look at the piece of paper they’re getting a female editor. But your name, like I mean, you just you don’t know what you’re going to get. So I think that that could be another one of the reasons why it’s like, oh wait a second, I didn’t expect you. You know, so I could see that.

Sian Fever: I’m an enigma. Exactly. And that accent,

Zack Arnold: And and the little accent above the a doesn’t help either, because that just that just totally throws everything into the mix. Because it’s it’s even an unusual spelling of a of a name that can go either male or female, so you just never know.

Sian Fever: Who’s this foreigner coming in to steal our jobs and our women?

Zack Arnold: Exactly. Yeah, that’s

Sian Fever: Me.

Zack Arnold: Anecdotally, as you guys were kind of talking about this, I’ve been racking my brain about where have I been working with females in the industry, and am I seeing the same trend? And one thing that I kind of realize is that a lot of the directors that I work with are female. Like, if I could make a list of all the directors that I want to be on their short list, or I’m on their short list if they have a feature or a TV show, most of them are actually females. I know several TV writers that are female, but I’ve only worked with one female editor outside of my editor, The Cut Go Far. I worked with Amy Fleming, who worked on House and does Sean Ryan’s pilots, and so she’s you know fairly big time in the TV industry. I worked with her, and I’m friends with Dodie Dorn. Who’s one of the top editors in the industry? Her most recent project was Fury, the the movie with Brad Pitt. But other than that, I don’t. I and I if I’ve worked with another female editor, and I’m forgetting, I’m going to feel awful about it. But I can’t think of any other female editors that I’ve worked with. I’ve worked with quite a few female assistants. But the other thing that I can think about, and this is veering off topic a little bit. I have never in my life met or, come to think of it, ever heard of a female DP. Oh,

Sian Fever: Really?

Zack Arnold: No, I don’t know any female DPs, and I can’t even name one.

Kylee Wall: Yeah, I think the numbers for that. I think cinematographers were like 3% Yeah, like that’s even

Zack Arnold: Worse, right?

Sian Fever: Yeah, I knew. I knew a female DOP took me under her wing because for a while it took me a while to figure out that I wanted to be an editor, and actually I was sort of thinking of being a gaffer at one point, and I was consider doing you know my like kind of electrician’s qualifications, and I was doing a lot of camera assisting, and I was told in no uncertain terms by this female DOP that if I wanted to do this. I had to be three times better than my male counterparts. No shadow of a doubt. I had to be epically better-not just a bit better, but epically better. Really, to be hired, and also that the physicality played into it a lot because you’re carrying massive kit all the time. You know, you’re carrying boxes of lenses and you know massive camera bags and you know all of the rest,

Zack Arnold: And I think that that’s an interesting that’s an interesting point because there are certain jobs like if if you work in construction and you wield the jackhammer all day long, I don’t think it’s sexist to say well that’s a male dominant industry just because of biology because based on human biology men you know have more musculature they have the hormones to produce stronger muscles, like so, it just makes sense to say that the vast majority of people that are holding a jackhammer and breaking down concrete are men. That makes sense. When you look at editing, doesn’t make any sense at all. But I’m not saying that it justifies it. But that is something that made me think, oh well, maybe it makes a tiny bit of sense that there are less female DPs. But frankly, there are so many freaking people on set that carry all that stuff. Like I can’t even stand being on set because it’s like being in an ant hill. There are people everywhere. It drives me crazy. So to say, oh well, all DPs are men because you have to be strong to carry all your stuff. You’re not carrying your stuff anyway. By the time you get to that level, everybody’s carrying it for you. So there, but you can look at that both ways.

Sian Fever: And I’ve done assisting, like you know, come on, this stuff doesn’t, you know, carry safely the

Kylee Wall: Way the world. Bend your

Sian Fever: Knees, you know, bend your knees, carry things safely. Observe your health and safety, and you know, run like a mad chicken, you know, with the kit around. You know, I’ve I’ve done that. It’s it’s it’s not a thing. It’s perceived to be a thing, and it’s the perception that really is the issue.

Zack Arnold: So I’m glad that you brought a perception because it’s literally like you’re you’re inside my brain, and you know where I want to go next. I want to wrap this up soon, but if somebody’s listening to this and they’re kind of like me, where they’re the goldfish that can’t see the water, and you’re thinking, “Wow, I didn’t realize that any of this was happening, and geez, I actually have a couple of females in my office. Like, we can’t fix this problem overnight. The first step is recognizing there’s a problem. So, if you’re the goldfish trying to find the water, what’s kind of the first thing in your eyes that you think people can do to just start to change awareness?

Kylee Wall: Well, I think that actively realizing that and accepting that sexism is a thing, and it’s not just women are making this up, or it’s I’ve heard it called this false war on women. Like as long as you accept it as a thing, that’s a great first step because then you start realizing all these things that you might experience or actually do in your daily life, and then you can change your own actions, and I think that makes a big difference. And then beyond that, actually seeking out and hiring women, like not just when they cross your desk on applications, interviewing them, but actually going out and trying to you know find women that that you want to interview, and mentoring women. I think that actually actively going out and reminding, especially young women, that this is a career that’s open to them, so that they have that epiphany like Sean had, where it’s like, oh, all of these paths are open to me. I think that’s a really good way to start.

Sian Fever: Absolutely, I think listening is absolutely key. There’s a tendency to interrupt women because this is something that we is is one of the biggest challenges I face. Is that I’m talked over, I’m interrupted, and I’m told that I’m wrong. There was, gosh, I learned about this study back when I was doing A level English language. It’s actually on our curriculum, and it said that it was in mixed gender conversations, the rate of interruptions will favor men 94% of the time, and what that means is when men are talking to men, they kind of bounce the conversation back and forth, and they’ll interrupt each other evenly. When women are together, and it’s just a two women. They’ll bounce back and forth, and they’ll interrupt each other evenly. They’ll give each other the floor in the conversation. When it’s a man and a woman, the man will interrupt 94% of the time. Almost every time, every interrupt in that conversation will be the man taking back the conversation. So the fact that you are-I don’t know whether that’s something that you’re aware of-but the fact that you are letting us speak is progressive in and of itself, and that must sound completely barmy, but but and it is. But that is really key. So my advice would be to listen and listen in full, and accept somebody’s life experience as truth rather than question it. One of the most the saddest things that I guess I experience is when I’m telling some of these war stories, if you like, and someone says, “Yeah, but how do you know that that’s sexist? How do you know that’s really sexism? Like, how do you know though? Like, you don’t know. How do you know? You’re like, because I’m on the receiving end of it. I have the full spectrum of how I’m treated on a daily basis. So when somebody say doesn’t look you in the eye, like dismisses you, that’s a really that sticks out, you know. And the times that someone has not looked you in the eye and ignored you in favor of the man standing next to you, like it, you know, friend, you know that that’s the root cause of that.

Sian Fever: Yeah, that’s a big Experience, you know.

Kylee Wall: There are a lot of women out there, especially that will listen to your life experience and then say, “Well, I’ve never had that happen to me, and therefore dismiss that it’s a thing at all because it doesn’t fit. You know, like I said in my article, people reject things because they don’t fit the narrative of what they think it is like-that’s especially in like rapes and stuff like that-because it doesn’t fit the movie version of a rape. Oh, how could your husband rape you? So just that whole thing of accepting people, accepting that as truth instead of immediately going on the defensive and saying, “But I hired a woman, or “But I was hired by a woman, or I know a woman. You know, that’s a really big deal because it shouldn’t be as progressive as it is, but it really is.

Sian Fever: Yeah, I think acknowledging that your experience, the way that you have experienced the world, the way that people react to you, the path that you walk, is not universal, is an is a very important step in this conversation. We as men and women typically we’re we’re in two different groups that are treated very differently. So my experience of walking down the street is going to be very different to your experience, Zack, of walking down the street. We’re going to have very different concerns walking down the street. You know, if I hear footsteps behind me, that sends alarm bells to me. If you have someone walking behind you on the street, Zack, it’s chances are you’re not having a similar reaction, and there are lots and lots and lots and lots of things like that. So accepting that your experience is not going to be the same as someone else, I think, is really valuable, and then you can say when you’re listening. If I’m listening to Kylie’s story and it’s not my experience, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. That doesn’t mean that it’s not valid. Doesn’t mean that she has made it up. So I think that’s an important step. Also, I think supporting women, just emotionally supporting. I think you know if someone says I’m having a bad day because someone was very condescending to me, knowing that that plays into a much bigger issue for that person. It’s not an isolated incident. It how it might be for somebody else that it’s tapping into a historical context. It’s tapping into systemic sexism, which in turn can be quite upsetting at the end of a long day. Is also really really valuable. I I can’t tell you how much I value the gentleman in my life who will just lend me an ear. You know, don’t underestimate the effect of just support can have for your colleagues. I would also say if you’re in a position to, if you organize events, if you organize panels, consider gender parity when you are organizing those things. More often than not, you have industry panels that have all men on them. Seek out women to be on these panels. Give them a voice. Give them a give them a presence. That’s incredibly valuable. We need to see it. We need to see representation of women in our industry.

Zack Arnold: I think that is a brilliant point that never occurred to me, but I’ve been going through my head not female editors that I know or have worked with, which are very few, but big name female editors. And I think about if like some of the biggest, highest grossing films on the planet are either being edited by women right now, or were edited by women. But then I think about the people that are kind of on the panel circuit, and I don’t see any of them at all. Like the the one that I thought of was, and I I think I’m is it Lisa Lasic? Is that how you how to pronounce her name?

Sian Fever: That’s just Whedon’s editor, right?

Zack Arnold: Yeah. Am I saying her name right?

Sian Fever: I’m afraid I don’t know. I’ve only ever seen it written down. But I was. Okay,

Zack Arnold: Good. But I was on a panel with her, and I mean, she did the Avengers. That’s one of the biggest movies in the history of film. But I don’t see her on panels all the time. But I think about all where’s her feature,

Sian Fever: You know? Where’s sorry, Zack? Oh, you look

Zack Arnold: At you’re interrupting me. Stop interrupt. I feel like I’m not being listened to right now. You know, but then you think about like Mary Jo Markey and Sandra Adair and like my friend Dodie Dorn and like I don’t see these people on very many panels, but I can think of a handful of guys that are on every single panel on the planet. And you’re almost like, well, I really want to see this panel, but I’ve already heard from all these guys three times. So that that’s an interesting thing I never ever thought of. Yeah,

Kylee Wall: It’s kind of persisting the whole thing where you’re only seeing 15% of the crowd as women, or 15% of the protagonists. We kind of have this established status quo for panels that we haven’t been able to get gender parity with for for some reason.

Zack Arnold: Right.

Sian Fever: Yeah, absolutely, and that that can be for a range of reasons. It can be the people that are choosing. I just see men as the default. It might be that they don’t know any women. It also might be the women that they ask don’t feel confident enough to take part. I think that’s certainly an issue, and we can bridge that gap by once seeking out women and by encouraging them to take that platform to make it less scary, to give them, you know, coaching in that, like that-that’s all very, very, very possible, and would really help, I think.

Kylee Wall: Yeah, a lot of the the young women that I talk to kind of like I’ll encourage them to get online and maybe like get on Twitter or kind of write a blog, and they’re like, “Well, I don’t really have anything to say, and I’m like, that is not true. And I feel like that is a lot more common in the the women than young men. Like they’re like, well, I don’t really have anything to add. Yeah, everyone does.

Sian Fever: Yeah, yeah. I think women. I think sorry, girls are taught at a young age that their voice isn’t as important. So there’s this self censoring happening quite constantly, and a kind of crisis in confidence in that sense. You know, young girls are not taught to take up the space, a physical space around them like men are. They’re not taught that the world is their oyster in the same way that boys are, and I that that is is just part of the same thing. And we can absolutely counter that as adults. We can absolutely work this out. And I have seen some of my male colleagues, and and part of this scene, if you like, do exactly that and approach women and try and give them the opportunity and try and give them the coaching that they’ll feel comfortable taking up that platform.

Kylee Wall: Yeah, I think that a lot of women once they kind of get into like post production, for example, they they continue to self censor to kind of meet because they kind of try to mold themselves to the environment. Because like for example, I I saw a study where workplace performance reviews from men and women, the ones given to women were judged more against their personality, and the men were judged on their actual job performance. So the women were given comments that they were abrasive or judgmental or strident, but only like one or 2% of the men’s reviews included any personality comments. So I think that women are a lot more aware that for whatever reason their voices are judged, their appearance and everything else, so they try to minimize all of that, and it comes out as not speaking as much, not asking for raises, not asking for promotions, and things like that.

Sian Fever: Oh well, now that

Zack Arnold: You now I’m totally going to interrupt both of you. I’m going to so be the male chauvinist because you just hit a massive hot button issue that I can’t believe I didn’t think to bring up, and that is wages. Do you have statistics that show the wage differential between women and men in our industry?

Sian Fever: Oh, I

Kylee Wall: Don’t have anything for our industry now. It’s hard. It’s really hard to find that information. But I will tell you anecdotally. I talked to a really big editor. I don’t want to name drop anyone because it’s kind of off the record. And she said to me, this was last week. She said to me, I make good money, but I know for an absolute fact that the men around me make a lot more, and that’s just the way it is, and that’s how it’s always been. And this is somebody that has been in the industry for a very long time. And I mean, I obviously I don’t have any numbers to support that, but to have a female editor that’s been around since the ’70s telling me I don’t make as much as men, even though I know just and I’m just as good, I mean that’s telling to me.

Sian Fever: Oh, absolutely! I read a book on finance for women some time ago. This is not specific to our industry, but I think it illustrates an interesting point that typically when men go to negotiate their salary, they just aim higher. They have a certain value that they accept of themselves and that they’re aiming for. So they go in and they go in with like a ludicrous sum, and I want this much. And more often than not, they get sort of what they’re asking for. They get something around that, and in. From their first job, and women typically don’t do that. They sort of undervalue themselves, and so from the beginning, starting point of a career, you have a massive disparity in in what men and women are getting paid because of sort of what they’ve asked for, what they’ve negotiated, and this this sort of continues. And so whenever I’m talking to a female friend and they’re saying, “Oh, I need to go and ask for a pay rise, and I really don’t want to, and this is a horrible topic. It’s uncomfortable for everyone. And I’ll sit and coach that person for like 2030, minutes, and be like, “No, you’ve got you’ve absolutely got to ask. And nothing bad is going to happen if they say no. And you know, and more often than not, that person comes back and is like, “I got the pay rise. I got it, and I got more than I thought, and I got more than I thought I was worth. And again, this is this is we can tackle this. You know, we we can sort this out. This is not beyond us. This is not just the way it is. You know, I I disagree with that sort of defeatist attitude. I’m I’m ever an optimist, Zack. Well, I’m I’m glad to hear that. And

Zack Arnold: Now, in what I could could do based on that statement is I could play the devil’s advocate and I could say, well, well, then it’s your fault that you’re not making as much money as me because you’re not asking for the money, right? Oh, and if you dig much deeper into that, you can say, well, there are so many reasons that society has conditioned females in a way to think, like you said, they’re not worth it and they’re not worthy to ask for as much. Because when I think about salary, I will ask people that are colleagues in my industry, or I’ll talk to my agent, and I’ll say, “Listen, for this job, what is the going rate? And I’m never thinking, “Well, what is the going rate for a man versus a woman? So to me, like we have such a quantifiable job when it comes to salary. Like there are certain areas where I could see that there would be more disparity, but with what we do, I look at like for example, when I was on Black Box working, you know, on the other side of the wall from Amy Fleming, we were doing the exact same job for the same number of hours per day for literally, I hope at least the exact same dollar amount. So I don’t even think to myself, well, there’s no gender disparity in salary because we were doing the same job and we had the same title, same number of hours, same shows. Like, but to me, I know that there’s a lot more gray area, especially in the freelance world, because I remember being freelance, and they would the first question they always ask is, “What’s your rate? When you work in TV, it doesn’t work that way. They tell you what you make, but when you work as a freelancer, you kind of dictate it. So that’s a really good point to bring up is like how how do you bridge that? If I were to say, well, it’s your fault. Let’s say that I’m right. I know that I’m not. I’m certainly not saying that for real. But let’s say that I am right, and it’s all your fault. How do you convince women that they should be asking for the same thing?

Sian Fever: The first thing that I would say is that I don’t personally like assigning blame in this in this issue because with blame comes guilt and then guilt becomes problematic and I really just want to hug everyone for the most part like I just want to like run around and be like we’ve got this we can do this guys we can move I’m really genuinely excited about moving forward on on this issue and including everybody. I just think it’s possible, and I think once we sometimes let me start again. When I have this conversation a lot, I am when I go to a trade show, when I go to an event, I’m normally one of the only women there, and I’m approached by a significant number of men who want to engage me with this, and they want to. They generally say, “It’s so great to see you here. I don’t understand why there aren’t more women here, and we start a dialog. And I, so I talk about this this quite a lot in that conversation. The part of the conversation I try to get over quickly is the fault blame thing, the guilt thing that I think the other person that conversation is waiting for, and include them in the solution. Do you see where I’m going? It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s the way that it is right now, and if we come together, we can change it. And so, so the first thing I would say is fault and blame, meh. But in the spirit of answering your question, if we say that this is exclusively an internalized issue within women, how I would say we tackle that is by just going for it, just ignore every feeling in your body that’s making you uncomfortable and awkward in talking about this, and just go for it. Nothing bad is going to happen, I assure you. The worst thing that they’re going to say in your negotiation is no, and then they’ll give you another figure that they can afford, and then you get to make that choice. It’s not a a black and white conversation. It’s not going to end the moment they say, “Well, we can’t afford you, so we’re going to put the phone down. That has never happened, and I constantly am negotiating a rate on jobs. Not once has anyone said, “No, not once has somebody laughed and gone, ‘Ha ha ha! You’re, you are. This is ludicrous. How could we ever pay this much for you?’” They’ll say that you know what that can’t quite fit in our budget, and they’ll leave it open for you. And then maybe you say, okay, well, you know, maybe I could drop it this much, or look, you’ve got this type of job, and I understand you don’t have much money, so maybe we can do a little bit of this, or go for it. That’s that’s my advice. Is just just go for it. It’ll be fine. The

Zack Arnold: Other thing that I can mention as well, if somebody’s listening to this and thinking, “Well, I want to ask for a rate, but this producer is going to devalue me as an editor. If you’re a female, it’s not just that you’re a female. Producers devalue all editors, and they undercut all editors. Nobody thinks we’re worth anything, and we don’t get paid nearly what we should be. So, yes, I’m not. I’m not discouraging what you’re saying at all, and saying that there’s you know not gender disparity. But if you’re discouraged, every single editor feels that way because every time I go onto a new show, I say, “Well, this is my rate, and they’re like, “No, that’s not what we’re paying you. It’s like, okay, you know. And again, white male, dark blonde hair, blue eyes. You know, and I’m not getting paid when I’m supposed to be getting paid either. I haven’t gotten my going rate for years, so you know, it’s it’s just editors in general.

Sian Fever: Oh yeah, absolutely. I I I don’t think that this is exclusively an issue that women face at all. At all, this is an issue that freelancers face. This is people that filmmakers. This is an issue that filmmakers face. Sorry, the internalized issue of that that awkwardness and not really wanting to have the conversation at all and avoiding that conversation and and kind of shooting yourself in the foot. I do think is probably more of an issue that that women are dealing with. I have

Kylee Wall: I have an observation about that that I’ve read about, and I wonder what you think about it. That women that do ask for raises are kind of labeled by men or women as bossy or demanding, and it kind of damages their reputation after that. Whereas men asking for raises, duh, they’re supposed to, they’re dudes. But women, it’s like, oh, well, she’s getting demanding, and it can hurt your reputation. So, what do you think about that?

Sian Fever: That’s interesting. I can absolutely see see that in parts of my experience, especially

Kylee Wall: When you look at the statistics about how women are judged on their personalities. And

Sian Fever: I found one study that there was a correlation between likability and success. The more successful a man was, the more likable he seemed, and the exact opposite was true for women. The more successful they were, the less likable they were. That’s so sad.

Sian Fever: So sad. So much sad. Yeah, I think I have once. I think in negotiating pay had a reaction that was less than favorable, but it was pretty flash in the pan. I just stuck to my guns, and they went okay. So I honestly, I think, oh, who cares? Ask anyway. Who cares?

Kylee Wall: I agree. And I think it’s something very

Sian Fever: Sorry. You can only you can only worry about what people think of you up until such a point. You know, like it doesn’t. Your work speaks more. At the end of the day, your work speaks more than what people thought when they were trying to. You had a conversation negotiating a rate. Honestly, do not worry. Please don’t worry. Do it anyway.

Kylee Wall: Trying to persist the idea of like unlearning this whole casual sexism, I think, will help a lot with that because as when you realize what you’re labeling, you’re you’re putting a label on a woman as demanding or shrill that is tied directly to their gender and not just because of their personality at all. Once you realize you’re doing that and you can stop, then it makes a huge difference.

Sian Fever: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Zack Arnold: The the next comment that I really really want to hit on, and I have to admit that even I looked at myself and thought, even I’ve probably said this before. But you said about documentaries, you made a comment. Well, she should stick to cutting documentaries since she’s got a woman’s touch. That was something that really resonated with me, and even made me feel guilty because the editor that I hired for my documentary was a female, and I know that I consciously never thought this, and I hired her because she had cut the sales reel for the film and helped me raise money. And I said, “Well, she’s the best person for the job. She’s passionate about it. She knows the project, and she’s a really, really good storyteller. But I know that I’ve probably said something similar to this, and I know that it’s a really common thing. So, where in the world does this concept come from? That for certain projects, like there are projects I have not been hired on because I wasn’t a woman and it was a romantic comedy or something where it needed quote unquote a woman’s touch. So where does this come from?

Kylee Wall: With the whole documentary thing, I’ve been I’ve been kind of thinking about that too, and I think maybe it comes around to documentary being an easier entry point. So you have a lot more female directors, from my experience, there, and they hire more female editors. So it’s kind of like there there are more women in there, and so it kind of persists an idea that women are better at that for whatever reason. But then you look at the other side of it and say, a man edits an action sequence better, and it’s it’s just. Goes back to this really boiled down sexist argument of pink and blue and Barbies are for girls and trucks are for boys. This really deep cultural thing. I’m not exactly sure where the the whole documentary thing, but I hear it all the time that people are like, “Oh, we got to hit a female editor. Women are better at editing documentaries. Like they’re better storytellers. It’s like no, it’s that’s not really true. Everyone’s, you know, everyone has their own individual strengths and weaknesses. So I’m not really sure what I think about that exactly.

Zack Arnold: Well, the the one thing that I think about, and I’m always kind of going back to biology and evolution, and I always try to look at where everything started. And I think the one thing that might make sense is that just in general, women seem to be more patient than men. Not in post production. I just mean in life. Like you can look at studies about genetics, and in general, women are more patient. There are more patient species than men. And I think in documentaries you have to have a lot of patience because it’s much more of a slog to go through 500 hours of footage and find a story and actually be one of the main writers, whereas when you’re cutting like you know a network TV show, you’re just cramming a bunch of stuff together as quickly as you can based on a script that’s already there. So I’m wondering if that might be a legitimate reason and not. And I hope this isn’t a sexist reason. I’m just looking at it from an evolutionary standpoint, where I think that documentaries probably require more of a sense of patience. So I don’t know if that hits on anything or not. Have I just angered you guys? I really put it.

Kylee Wall: No, I’m thinking. I’m thinking.

Sian Fever: Yeah, this is this is quite tricky, and I think Kylie is right. I think that it sort of just stems from stereotyping, and it’s bollocks. Let’s face it. It’s to say that you know men are a certain way because they’re men and women a certain way because they’re women. Like maybe through socializing, but mostly no. And when we start putting men and women in boxes, and those boxes are labeled, this is how men and women should be, and this is why they’re this way. We’re we’re in a rubbish place. I think we need to open up those boxes and let people be who they are, regardless of their gender, men and women. It’s not nice to put men in a box where they have to act a certain way or feel they have to act a certain way. I think that to say that women have more patience, and that’s that may be why it may be that they’re perceived to have more patience, and in that particular area, perhaps there are more female directors. I think there, I think there are more female directors in documentary. Am I right in saying that? Like a lot more, and so that might be a reason that you know women are hiring other women. But I think it’s probably a little bit problematic to say that it is happening because women are more patient, I don’t think that’s entirely what you mean, Zack. But no,

Zack Arnold: No, I was just saying that I’m I’m trying to find any reason at all, even if it’s 1% just something you can something concrete to put your finger on and say, well, maybe this is a small percentage of it. I’m I’m just trying to find anything concrete because I like to make sense of things in a scientific, concrete way. I’m just a very analytical person, and I don’t think there’s a very clear reason for it. That’s the only thing where I can actually stick my finger on it and say maybe this has something to do with it, or maybe it’s just my experience. Because most of the people that I work with are females, and they’re just much more patient people, which is why I like working with them better. Because I just I don’t enjoy the whole alpha male atmosphere, where everybody’s trying to one up the other one, and you’re always thinking, “Well, I have to be better than this person and that person. I just, I’ve never been a subscriber to that mentality, and my entire life, the vast majority of my closer friends have always been women. That’s just the way that I’ve been. Like, I’ve always been friends with more women than men, and when I look at my career, I was just thinking about this over the the last 10 or 15 minutes. I think most of the projects I’ve worked on have been directed by women, so that’s just an environment I’m more used to. My first feature was a woman, my third one was a woman, my fourth one was a woman, my most recent one, the Chinese film, that was directed by a woman. Two of the directors that I’ve worked with on my last two shows have been women. Like, so it’s just an environment that I’m used to, and I guess I can’t put my finger on why that works. You know, like in the documentary world as opposed to the narrative world, trailer world. Because like the trailer world, you want to talk about alpha male dominant? My God, like that is just testosterone being thrown around everywhere.

Sian Fever: Well, I think perhaps to clarify my point, I think it’s the perception of gender stereotypes. Not that those stereotypes have any any validity at all. I think to your point about trailers, they’re all explosions, and it’s it’s big and it’s noisy. And of course, men will be better at this because they like explosions and are noisy, and these documentaries-they’re so delicate and so fragile and so nuanced-and the people are crying and the people are sad, and and that will be for the women. The women will make the delicate feminine documentaries. It’s just down to stereotyping, I think. I am just as capable as editing explosions as the next person. You know, one of my favorite. Quotes actually about editing. I think it’s Thelma Schoonmaker, and she says that someone asked her, “Oh, but how can you edit all these violent these violent movies? How do you how do you do this? And she kind of leant in and said, “Well, they’re not violent tonight until I’m done with them. And I love that. I love that. That sums it up to me. That’s like, well, of course, of course, we like you know everyone likes a whole range of subject matter, but it’s certainly a trend, and I I think it just stems from stereotyping. Nothing nothing more complicated than that.

Zack Arnold: Right. Well, I kind of going back to the whole trying to put myself in this position, which I know that I can’t do. But going back to what I had said about I know that I’ve been turned down for at least one or two jobs because they were either documentary or romantic comedy, and knowing it was because they wanted to go with a woman and how angry that made me. And then I think about that and I’m like, I went through that maybe once or twice in a 15 year career, and females are going through that with job after job after job after job, and that just frustrates the hell out of me to think that that’s just the way that things work.

Sian Fever: Well, thank you for sharing that experience, and I think it’s a really obviously a terrible thing. Like, like this sexism affects men just as much as it affects women. Well, I don’t know

Zack Arnold: About that. I think that it. I’ll be the first one to say it affects women more than men, for sure.

Sian Fever: Maybe let me rephrase. It it affects affects men as well in different ways. That perhaps they are a byproduct of sexism directed at women. So women have to act a certain way. Women have to be this. They have to fit in this box, and because of that, men also have to fit in this box over here. Do you see what I mean? It’s just that certain rights have been denied to women that have been given to men, so this has sort of gone unnoticed. But we’re currently experiencing a bit of a crisis in masculinity, where femininity is being redefined, and so also as a counterproduct of that, masculinity is also being redefined. And we we’re getting a lot of insults online about you know to be a beta male is an insult. You know, so these these issues are affecting men as well. It’s it just hasn’t been in law, in pay, in such obvious big ways. But where we are at the moment, I think it would be ignorant and unwise to ignore that.

Kylee Wall: I actually went into a pretty interesting discussion on a various Facebook thread. I think it was on Patrick Palmer, who’s the product manager for Speedgrade. So he’s in Germany, and he was talking about how he read the article and he can relate to it because, and this happens in the U.S. too. But he was saying in Germany they get 14 months of leave guaranteed by like the the country, when you have a child, and for him, he took two months out of the 14, and his wife took 12 when they had their baby, and his employer was totally supportive of it. But he knows so many men that you this is technically legally available to you, but if you’re going to take that kind of leave, then your reputation is damaged, or your employer makes it clear that you’re not going to come back to work. They’re going to find a way to get rid of you because they don’t appreciate that you’re you’re taking paternity leave, that it’s emasculating or something like that. So I think that there that happens in the U.S. too. We don’t have the that kind of leave available, so taking paternity leave here for things like that typically is also frowned upon because you’re just using vacation time. Although with editors, you know you’re able to schedule shows and stuff around things like that. But anyway, my point is that stay-at-home dads or men that take time off for having child-rearing responsibilities are kind of viewed in a negative light, and it’s kind of turning around. and And a lot more men are staying at home or staying at home for part of their children’s lives now. But they have to have support groups for that because it is such a thing that just gets so much like negative commentary from men and women about why is he staying home, and it’s it’s damaging for men. It’s damaging for women that you know don’t necessarily want to to do that, but they feel like they have to because otherwise their husband or partner or whatever is going to have a bad reputation in their career. So I think that’s a really good example of how sexism is pretty damaging to men too.

Sian Fever: Yeah, great example. Thank you.

Zack Arnold: I literally was just going to bring that up next. That was going to be my next question. So you read my mind. That’s exactly where I wanted to go. So you just saved me a question.

Sian Fever: We’ve we’ve all got to go together. We can’t leave anyone behind in dealing with this issue. It’s not going to work if we just solve equality for one tiny, for not tiny, but one specific demographic. There’s only one part of the problem, and that isn’t achieving equality at all if everyone isn’t equal. If everyone can’t be who they want to be outside of the box that society tells them that they have to be.

Zack Arnold: Well said. So, do you guys have anything else? You feel that we haven’t covered because this is more your your area of expertise than mine. I feel like we’ve we’ve hit a lot of good topics, but is there any stone that we have we have not turned over?

Sian Fever: There was one thing that I was going to say about going back to panels, industry panels, if I may.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, of course. Go ahead.

Sian Fever: If you find yourself in the position of moderating a panel, which I have done, and you get to the end, and there’s a Q and A portion, and you’re choosing the people who are going to ask the questions. Ensure that in the people that you choose, you are taking a selection of the demographic, because typically the people that put their hands up first are men. Same in the classroom. Men put up their men and boys put their hands up first. They’re encouraged and they feel empowered to do so. And women will wait for maybe I’ve noticed like six or seven questions to go by before they very tentatively raise their hand. Do us a favor. Pick on those ladies when you when you if you have a big selection of people to choose, choose to choose a lady if they have their their hand up, and that will encourage other ladies to also ask questions in that forum. That was something before moderating I never would have thought of, and even so, somebody had to point it out to me that I was subconsciously choosing almost exclusively male males with questions. So that’s something that I think also can have quite a big impact, and it’s a very small change.

Kylee Wall: And to add to that, with moderating, which I’ve noticed, and this is true of most other media. Like if you look at red carpet interviews, they’ll ask women about their clothing or their their kids, but they don’t ask men. They ask men about the work, and so I would encourage people on panels to ask men about work life balance. I always try to do that because it’s really interesting. Ask men more about things that typically people ask women for for no particular reason.

Zack Arnold: I’m sorry. What were you just saying? Something? What? Oh, I wasn’t listening. I’m sorry.

Kylee Wall: I almost fell for that.

Sian Fever: Oh, I did for a second. Sorry.

Zack Arnold: I’ve I’ve I’ve just been I’ve just been getting worked on the last 90 minutes. I totally missed what you just said.

Episode Credits

This episode was edited by Kristin Martin, and the show was executive produced by Kanen Flowers. We are a member of the THAT STUDIO podcast network.

The music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Dorian Cheah from his brilliant album ARA.