For many young talents who are interested in entering the film industry, the primary concern for them would be how much they will be able to earn.

Unlike the neighbouring city Hong Kong, Macao’s film industry is still young and therefore there isn’t any film industry worker association or union to negotiate an income standard for industry workers. In other words, there is no minimum wage standard for film industry workers in Macao. There is no framework to refer to when paying professional talents in the industry.

The film business has a long industrial chain. Different professionals are responsible for their own part of the production process. We have directors, actors, script writers, camera crews, art directors, production teams, recording crews, etc. There are also industry workers that specialise in technical operation. When you talk about the salary for the core production team, the figure could be vastly different for different people. Some people are literally paid with nothing while some earn hundreds of thousands of MOP. It is very hard to determine how much people can get. For instance, script writers that work for films with a budget of less than ten million are paid within the range of MOP100,000 to over MOP1,000,000. It has a lot to do with the reputation of the script writers and the allocation of the budget. Although scripts are the backbone of films, the pay standard for script writers is still controversial even in regions with a mature film industry. In Macao, ordinary script writers receive an average of a couple thousand MOP as payment or utmost tens of thousands. If the director himself or herself is the script writer, chances are there is no payment for the script at all. The income disparity in the film industry has resulted in this dire demand of script writers. Film production teams in Macao have to look for writers from other regions. If the film is about Macao, the production team will then need to spend a lot of time explaining the historical context and current social environment to the script writer.

Technicians in the film industry do not have an income standard either. Let us look at the lighting and camera crew as an example. Generally, the salary for the cameraman fluctuates. In common situations, the salary depends on workload packs. One pack is around 10 hours or 12 hours. If the actual working hours exceed the pack range, there will be additional pay. In Macao, most of the production teams do not pay the camera crew based on working hours due to several reasons. But of course, it is essentially about the budget. At one occasion when I was talking to a film producer in Macao about why industrial workers in the city are not paid for their additional working hours. From the perspective of an investor, the less they invest, the less risks they would face. On the other hand, the production team on the ground naturally feels incentivised to work for a few additional days to spread out the working hours and improve the film quality. Both sides’ reasonings are understandable. But the point is even if we have more investment coming in, the production would still fail to be commercially successful if there no proper marketing. On top of that, the investors also question the qualifications of the industry workers in Macao. This is why it is not unusual to see people get paid differently even though they are in the same position doing similar work. The investors are willing to pay double the local salary or more to industry workers from other regions. But of course, local industry workers also need to reflect on their own work efficiency and quality. For instance, filming crews and directors from Hong Kong are renowned in Asia and around the globe. They are known and praised for their efficiency and precision. Do industry workers in Macao have the confidence in competing with them? Are we able to keep up with the industrialisation in the film business? Industry workers in Macao also face the challenges of lacking work opportunities. We always compare our salary standards with the ones in Hong Kong but never achieve similar standards. This builds up resentment among local industry workers while there is no solution to the issue.

The salary for industry workers in Macao is very hard to determine and cannot be solved by regulations. It is difficult to judge the value of the work people do in a cultural and creative industry and set their salary accordingly. As for the technical teams, there is no deciding factor that ensures a salary standard either. Having more work experience in the industry does not equal to better work outcome. It takes some technical talents only two years to be able to do a lot better than the veterans. Some experienced professionals still have not achieved much despite their ten years of working experience. What exactly can we use to judge a film professional’s value and determine a salary? The film business cannot survive based on dreams and passions. Surely, we can treat the film business as a hobby and contribute to it in our spare time. But if making films is merely a hobby in Macao, the film industry will never truly become an industry here.