SAFETY ON SET - HAPPY CREW, HAPPY YOU!

The old saying used to be, 'The Way to A Man's Heart Is Through His Belly.'

I think the new saying should be

'The Mood of Your Crew Depends on What They Chew'.

The choice of caterer and style of catering could be the difference to a smooth running successful production and a virtual disaster.

Catering is often the most underrated element of any production, when it should be one of the most important considerations, especially on long running shoots.

We live in an age where food allergies and dietary preferences play a major role in the recruitment process, it's basically now law in many countered to adequately consider and document the dietary needs of the cast and crew under your employ.

The gathering of this information not only allows the production to plan ahead for their catering requirements, it also allows production to advise their medical staff of this information so they can forecast any potential adverse reactions an plan for whatever action may be required at any given time throughout the production.?

This preparation whilst being law also minimises the productions exposure to the risk of down time, loss of productivity, workers insurance claims and/or potential litigation.

But this compliance doesn't really focus on the menu, whilst production companies might meet their minimum requirements in this regard, merely ticking the boxes just doesn’t cut it.

An entire crew’s mood and attitude can change the instant they are offered crap food.

I’m not saying you have to serve caviar and lobster at every meal, (I'm definitely not saying don't because no one will say no to that)... You don’t have to spend a fortune or cut out hand arounds when required, merely offering a good, appetizing selection of food that caters for everyone’s needs is all that it takes.

I recently worked on an away job in an extremely remote location, one of my crew had specific dietary needs, whilst the production recognised this need on paper and ticked their boxes legally, they fell terribly short when it came to meeting my co-workers needs in reality. Like is said, this was an extremely remote location, so when adequate food was not supplied on a regular basis, we found ourselves with no other options, some days my colleague would just go without, it wasn’t like we could just wander down to the corner store or call for a delivery.

The day we finally got fed up enough and actually packed up and headed back into town to get some adequate food, we were actually chastised by production for not going through the proper channels, and, when I responded to this, maybe in a not so politely manner, I ended up being the bad guy. this wasn’t without trying to go through the proper channels and notify production of the ongoing shortfalls, which were continuously ignored, not my finest moment but in the end my team’s well-being is all that mattered, and something needed to be done and said.

My point here is that, on paper for legal purposes, the production company was seen to be doing all the right things, but in fact they were not, and all this did was create animosity between my workers and the production company because they felt as their health and well-being did not matter to them, the only thing that mattered was getting the job done at any cost which made for a very difficult and dangerous work place.

This entire experience could have been completely different merely a bit more consideration and forethought.

Why do I care?

Why should you care?

Well, over the years observing crews’ on set behavioural patterns, the one thing that stands out is their mood and attitude when they have been poorly fed. They're immediately disgruntled, distracted, and disillusioned as to why they should care about the project, if the project doesn’t care about them.

Beyond this, what I've found is that a happy crew is a safe crew, they care about what they're doing, they care about what others are doing, they help each other out, they look out for each other, they interact, collaborate, they work at making whatever they're doing to the very best it can be.

Conversely, unhappy crew members become introverted, disconnected, distracted and disillusioned. They tire easily, lose focus, make mistakes and cause accidents.

It’s no secret that nutrition and diet play a major role in sustaining energy and concentration.

We work long hours and days, for weeks on end, and we as crew easily fall into bad eating habits, which not only leads to fatigue, it can also cause a variety of unnecessary ailments and side effects.

It does not take much to make the right decisions when it comes to catering for your crew, in the long run the potential small increase in up-front costs could mean enormous savings and rewards for you, your crew and the final product.

SAFETY ON SET might just start at the breakfast table.

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