Utopian futures require present tense production ethics

I watched a documentary premiere at Visions du Réel two years ago. Beautiful film about climate refugees building cooperative housing in 2040. The Q&A was full of talk about solidarity economies and post-capitalist futures. During the after-party, I learned their assistant camera operator had worked a 16-hour day in 35-degree heat without proper water access because the location permit was about to expire. Nobody thought that was worth mentioning during the panel about imagining better worlds.

This is the gap I keep encountering: films with profound messages about justice, equality, or transformation, made under conditions that directly contradict those values. A feature about survivors of gender-based violence where the intimacy coordinator budget was cut but the DIT package wasn’t. A series exploring neurodiversity that scheduled twelve-hour shoot days with no quiet space for the autistic production assistant. The cognitive dissonance isn’t just uncomfortable — it undermines the work itself.

When your documentary argues for dignity in labour but treats your gaffer like a disposable resource, you’re not making art with integrity. You’re making propaganda, and not very convincing propaganda at that. Audiences increasingly notice these contradictions. Crew members definitely notice. And the gap between the utopia on screen and the reality behind the camera erodes trust in both the filmmaker and the vision they’re selling.

The justification is always the same: budget constraints, time pressure, the reality of independent production. I understand those pressures intimately — I’ve produced in them. But “we can’t afford it” stops being a valid excuse when you’re asking audiences to believe in radically different social arrangements while refusing to implement basic ones on your own set. If your film imagines a world where care work is valued, why is your craft services person working for minimum wage with no meal break? If you’re exploring indigenous sovereignty, why didn’t you budget for a cultural advisor until week three of post?

The practicalities are less complicated than we pretend. Safety protocols don’t require studio budgets. They require planning. An intimacy coordinator for a two-person interview about sexual trauma costs less than your colourist’s day rate. Proper hydration, reasonable hours, and a harassment policy you’ve actually distributed cost almost nothing. A pre-production meeting about cultural protocols before you film in someone’s community costs your time, which you were spending anyway.

What’s actually expensive is the retrofit. Hiring me to come in after you’ve already filmed problematic content and need it salvaged in post. Reshoots because your subject withdrew consent after seeing how you framed their story. The festival that drops you because crew members went public about set conditions. Legal fees. Reputation damage. These retrofits cost more than doing it correctly from the start, and they still don’t produce the same quality of work.

The resistance I encounter isn’t usually about money. It’s about control and convention. Producers worry that giving crew members actual breaks will slow down production. Directors fear that centering consent means losing spontaneity. But I’ve worked on productions that implemented rigorous safety protocols and consent practices, and they didn’t move slower — they moved more intentionally. The difference is preparation. When everyone understands the boundaries and workflows ahead of time, you lose the chaos but keep the creativity.

There’s also a category error happening in how people think about ethics in production. It’s treated as an overlay, something you add after you’ve planned the “real” work — the shots, the schedule, the budget. But ethics are structural. They should inform your shooting ratio, your crew size, your location choices. If you’re planning a documentary about economic precarity and your budget has line producers on deferred payment, your structure is already broken. The film you end up with will be compromised not despite your ethics but because of them.

This matters particularly in documentary and social-issue filmmaking, where the stated purpose is often to illuminate injustice or imagine alternatives. When there’s a fundamental mismatch between your film’s political vision and your production’s actual practices, what you’ve made is magical thinking. You’re asking audiences to believe change is possible while demonstrating through your own behavior that you don’t believe it enough to implement it where you have direct control.

I’m not arguing for perfection. I’m arguing for coherence. If your film is about the future, your set should reflect at least the present-day minimums of labour law, consent culture, and safety standards. That’s not utopian. That’s baseline. The utopian part — the genuinely ambitious part — would be exceeding those standards. Treating your production as a laboratory for the collaborative, equitable practices your film advocates for. Paying people properly. Crediting everyone. Building in rest. Making space for cultural consultation and disagreement. Actually implementing the power analysis your documentary is presumably exploring.

1. Production ethics aren’t external to your film’s message — they’re evidence of whether you believe that message yourself.

2. Most ethical production practices cost time and planning rather than money, and they prevent expensive problems in post and distribution.

3. If your film imagines better futures but your set replicates present-day exploitation, you’re undermining your own work before it reaches an audience.

The films I remember aren’t just the ones with compelling subjects or beautiful cinematography. They’re the ones where the production process matched the stated values. Where the intimacy coordinator was hired in prep, not in crisis. Where the cultural advisor was credited as prominently as the composer. Where the crew left feeling respected rather than extracted from. Those are the films that feel coherent all the way through — not because they’re perfect, but because someone actually tried to close the gap between the world on screen and the world behind the camera.

Todd Max Carey — Seven Journeys