Free The Work asks commercial directors about equity obstacles in production

Free The Work is seeking feedback from commercial directors worldwide as it continues its work to identify equity obstacles in the advertising production process.

The group launched its second annual Director Census, which is aimed at gaining a more comprehensive understanding of commercial directors’ experiences. The anonymous survey is open to all and closes on Sept. 4.

Free The Work, a global nonprofit initiative and talent discovery platform for underrepresented creators, has long advocated for hiring diverse creators. Its first global census, released in 2022, focused on impediments to that goal in the pitch-and-bid process for commercial and branded content between 2019 and 2021. 

That first survey revealed three key areas of concern:

• The need for paid pitches.
• The need for improved transparency in the pitch-and-bid process.
• The need to better protect people in marginalized identity groups against discrimination and tokenization.

The 2022-23 edition of the survey expands the scope to explore directors’ interactions with the pitch process, production, on-set culture, post-production, work-life balance and the awards circuit.

“We’ve worked hard to fine-tune our questionnaire and really zero in on some of the chatter we all hear anecdotally but no one ever wants to risk saying out loud for fear of or pushback or alienation,” said Pamala Buzick Kim, executive director of Free the Work. “These results will lend clarity to industry-wide discussions on issues directly affecting creators, such as payment for pitches.”

The survey process more generally has helped Free The Work highlight specific “equity obstacles clogging the current system and prohibiting creators from truly connecting with audiences by producing authentic content that speaks to them,” Buzick Kim added.

Free the Work’s second Director Census is led by directors Alma Har’el and Lauren Greenfield, as well as Institute Pictures, and is supported by directors Aaron Stoller, Adam Hashemi, Amber Schaefer, Aoife McArdle, Crystal Moselle, Elisha Smith-Leverock, Femke Huurdeman, Floria Sigismondi, Georgia Hudson, Jeanne Kopeck, Kenn MacRae, Liza Mandelup, Matt Lambert, Nico Casavecchia, Nisha Ganatra, Peter Darley Miller, Rachel McDonald, Sydney Freeland and Tim Bullock, along with the DRCT—Union of Commercial and Branded Content Directors in Germany.