Certain jobs lend themselves to a job-sharing situation. WIFT NZ talked to experienced location coordinators Morgan Leigh Stewart and Stacey Ngawhika who made a screen industry job-share work for them.
Morgan and Stacey job-shared the role of location coordinator on the Netflix show Cowboy Bebop. A location coordinator's role includes things like running a budget, chasing contracts, sorting tenancies, doing staff and crew rosters, onboarding crew, running a department schedule, and the accounts.
Cowboy Bebop had a $70 million budget, and 400 crew, plus casual staff.
Morgan and Stacey split their days across the week: Morgan did Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and Stacey did Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Here are some things that helped make things run smoothly:
- Using a shared email so all enquiries went to one place.
- Setting up a communication channel on Slack so they could chat with each other.
- Emailing thorough handover notes to each other at the day's end.
- Working to each other's strengths.
- Creating a communication 'style guide' so emails were similar in tone and information.
- Creating a 'united front' supporting each other's decisions and ways of doing things.
- Having a shared desk/computer in an office with the HOD or managers - face-time is important.
- Morgan says next time she'd have a dedicated phone "so you don't accidentally receive work calls".
Benefits:
It's good to have someone to 'cross-reference' situations with.
There's built-in, capable cover on your sick days, or when an extra pair of hands is needed.
You can play to your strengths.
Challenges:
It can take some time each day to catch up on what happened the previous day.
Sometimes people get used to or prefer dealing with only one person.
Smaller productions could find it harder to include job-sharing.
Administration/coordination/desk-based roles would work best.
IMAGE: Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine in Cowboy Bebop