Chapter 5: The Production of Extras in a Precarious Creative Economy
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Over the past twenty years, regional governments around the world and global film industry corporations have collaborated, if not colluded, to provide a steady stream of workers for film location shooting through legislated incentives. Seeking to reduce labor costs in relation to other fixed expenses, industry executives have successfully used incentives to reduce budgets. Meanwhile, regional policymakers have looked to film and television production as a panacea for anemic economic growth and declining employment indices.¹ Together, governments and industry have made labor into one of the primary fault lines in the political economy of film production.
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5.1: Introduction
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Introduction to the focus of this chapter: the film industry strategy of creating a moral economy that calls for low-paying or unpaid jobs, as a form of boosterism for local economy and culture, through the case study of the production of the HBO drama Treme in post-Katrina New Orleans.
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5.2: The Treme Moral Economy
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The production of the HBO drama Treme in post-Katrina New Orleans. Includes discussion of the choice of the production to hire local residents as extras and media labor, as simultaneously an economically efficient and a moral choice; the application of this case to Mark Banks' concept of a moral economy.
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5.3: A Little Extra Work for a Lot of Extras
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The role played by wanting to be a part of something larger in attracting would-be extras to a production; contrasts between the low-paid extras of most major productions and the high standards set by Treme in a precarious local economy.
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5.4: To Be (an) Extra
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Discussion of some of the reasons why so many New Orleanians sought to be extras on Treme, even at the cost of giving up free time and working at the bottom of the production hierarchy: a sense of emotional solidarity with the show as a means of post-Katrina recovery, memorialization of personal experiences, or seeking to record themselves as belonging to the city. Contrasts between some extras' lived experiences and the sense of authenticity that the show sought to create.
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5.5: Concluding Futures?
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The broader labor implications of so many New Orleanians volunteering for low-paid or unpaid labor on Treme, including the exclusion of people who lack the free time or the social connections to work on the show, the undermining of improvement of public services, and the promotion of the idea that private companies are the best managers of the public good.
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5.6: Notes
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