Rats in a barrel: How production is eating itself
It's no secret that times are tough in production and as Chris Baker, Head of New Business at Park Village and a long-time production company rep says, it might just get tougher. But if there's one thing we can rely on, it's the ingenuity and never-say-die attitude of the production community.
)
The creative industry isn’t just changing, it’s convulsing. And not in the poetic, rebirth-of-ideas kind of way.
No, this is a bare-knuckled, teeth-clenched collapse of structure, sanity and solvency. In the space of two years, we’ve gone from bad to full-blown apocalyptic. Companies dropping like flies shot with that cool salt bug gun. Institutions we believed death-proof snuffed out overnight.
This is a bare-knuckled, teeth-clenched collapse of structure, sanity and solvency.
Take Technicolor. A titan of the moving image arts. One week it was humming along, business as usual, the next thing you know… gone. Vanished. A crater where it once stood, as if God herself had selected it for smiting. MPC and The Mill obliterated and, for a hot minute there, LinkedIn transformed into a mass digital wake. An open casket of VFX résumés and “any leads would be appreciated” cries into the void. Dear, sweet Jesus, save them!
Above: Sales rep are still painting their targets and working hard to seal the deal, but there just isn’t enough to go around at the moment, says Chris Baker.
I could go on about that particular situation, or about agencies currently boiling in their own financial-hell broth but, right at this moment, let’s talk about production. Rats in a barrel is what I see. Picture it; a splintered oak cask bound by rusted iron rings. Inside, a tangle of rats. The food’s almost gone. No exit and no hope. The only option left? Eat or be eaten. That’s production in 2025. Territorial. Hungry. A little feral.
Every sales rep in all sectors paints their targets and works hard to seal the deal. But the uglier truth? There just isn’t enough to go around.
As a sales rep, I can tell you, mouths are watering at even the scent of a potential brief. It’s not desperation (though that’s in the mix), it’s instinct. Pure, ravenous survival. We’re trained for this. Every sales rep in all sectors paints their targets and works hard to seal the deal. But the uglier truth? There just isn’t enough to go around. Add to that the rise of in-house agencies, the conversational hot potato no one wants to hold for too long, and you’ve got a landscape that feels less like a business and more like a siege. Scraping by with loan-out fees and co-productions.
And the mood music grows weirder as we get social. I attended Creative Circle recently, my first major event since the Arrows in March and, let me tell you, there was something in that sticky Margate air. We all smelt the acrid smoke from the dumpster fire back in London and a few more positive masks fell, revealing ugly truths. Is this the end or a transformation? Dreamland felt very much like Doomland at the awards. Like the end of an empire, romans raiding the wine cellar and partying before the barbarians charge in and take what they want. Though I sure hope that feeling is misplaced.
Above: Dreamland in Margate, home of the Creative Circle, more closely resembled Doomland.
Agency creatives, for their part, are living in a parallel barrel. There is still some meat left in theirs, sure, but soon it’ll be marrow time. Bones will be cracked. Lines crossed. Creatives today have to fight a bureaucratic battle royale just to get a half-decent idea past the client. And, once they do, it’s simple, old-school black board and chalk math: get the best director for the job.
Everyone wants to walk away with something good. Better than good, award winning! But in this market, ‘good’ is increasingly becoming a luxury.
And who can blame them? Everyone wants to walk away with something good. Better than good, award winning! But in this market, ‘good’ is increasingly becoming a luxury. But they sure do fight hard for it. Some rats will eat. Others will be eaten. That’s just a bald fact. Tragic but inevitable.
I know, I know… I’m laying the sentiment on thicker than a Christmas pitch deck, pounding the keyboard with pent up sales angst, but I hear things. Doom-truth spills in the dark corners of Soho’s fine dining establishments. And let’s be honest, this is exactly the conversation we’re all having over every late-afternoon pint or bleary-eyed 9am coffee. The truth is unspectacular and uncomfortably familiar: the market is bloated. There are too many production companies. Keeping up is like trying to watch all the Marvel output and follow the plot.
Above: The production industry, despite recent travails, knows how to survive; "If it rains, we sell umbrellas".
But why the hell shouldn’t people try? Production is fun. If it was only about money, we would all work in banks. We get into this game because we want to make stuff. We’re creative. It's week on week magic! But, sadly, I could throw a stone out of my window in central London and I guarantee it would hit three jobbing directors and still have enough momentum to dent an out-of-work creative via a ricochet.
I could throw a stone out of my window in central London and I guarantee it would hit three jobbing directors and still have enough momentum to dent an out-of-work creative via a ricochet.
And yet... there’s something admirable in the madness, the scrabble of rat on rat. A bizarre kind of Darwinian grace. The APA members have shown all the survival instincts of post-apocalyptic road warriors. If it rains, we sell umbrellas. When the pandemic hit, we pivoted to kitchen-table ‘micro studios’, Zoom wine tastings and virtual brainstorms that felt like hostage negotiations. Embarrassing? Often. Ingenious? Occasionally. Necessary? Completely.
Because if there’s one truth that remains, it’s this: no matter how broken the system gets, the people in it will find a way to keep dancing. Bloody, limping, duct-taped… but still dancing.
And after the rats eat, a few will still be alive in that barrel.
