Contract system

Studios holding people on term contracts rather than engaging them film by film. In the Philippine version it reached past the stars: LVN held directors under contract, and craft workers too, including makeup artists and editors.

Its usual criticism is fair. Contracts of this kind were restrictive, the studio decided what you worked on, and stars in particular had very little say over their own careers.

Its usual criticism also skips the thing that mattered most to everyone who was not a star. A contract meant somebody was counting on you next month. Training, continuity, medical cover and the ability to refuse a bad job all follow from that single assumption, and none of them survived its removal.

Source: LVN Pictures, Wikipedia for the roster of contracted stars, directors and craft workers and the Cubao lot, and Sampaguita Pictures, Wikipedia for the parallel star system built on romantic pairings. Both are encyclopedic summaries used for the factual spine. This course’s emphasis on what the contract did for non-stars is its own reading and is not a quotation.

First used in: 3.3 · The one time a film worker had an employer