The Hours Problem: What the Data Says About Crew Fatigue

The long hours are not a rumour, a rite of passage, or a personality trait. They are measured, and the measurements are bad.

How many hours do film and TV crew actually work?

A UNI Global Union survey of working time in the film and TV industry found that one in eight people in the industry work in excess of 60 hours per week, compared with one in fifty in other industries. That is a sixfold difference against the general working population.

The distribution matters more than the average. It is not that everyone works slightly long weeks; it is that a substantial minority work weeks that other industries treat as exceptional.

What is that doing to people?

Research from Lancaster University's Work Foundation found that almost nine in ten people working in film, TV and cinema have experienced a mental health problem. The 2024/25 Looking Glass Survey found 35% of workers reporting poor or very poor mental health, with conditions worsening despite increased awareness.

Bectu's 2025 Big Survey put it in a wider frame: nearly six in ten workers across the UK creative industries reported feelings of anxiety or depression in the previous 12 months.

Younger freelancers carry more of it. Reporting on the sector's mental health crisis notes 63% of freelancers under 35 struggling with their mental health, and six in ten having personally experienced bullying or harassment at work.

Is it the hours themselves, or something else?

Both, and the distinction is useful. The UNI survey found 57% of respondents felt the lack of control over working hours had a negative impact on their wellbeing — not merely the quantity.

That points at three compounding mechanisms rather than one:

Each is individually survivable. Stacked across a twelve-week shoot, they are not.

What is actually being done about it?

The most concrete near-term change is regulatory infrastructure rather than legislation: the Online Interactive Risk Assessment (OiRA) tool for audiovisual productions is being revised to incorporate psychosocial risks — stress prevention, inappropriate behaviours, workplace violence, and scenes involving intimacy — with the updated tool due to launch in autumn 2026.

That is meaningful because it moves psychosocial risk into the same assessment framework as physical risk. A risk you have to formally assess is a risk a producer has to plan around.

What can a production actually control?

Turnaround. It is the one lever that is scheduled rather than negotiated in the moment, and it is the one most often quietly eroded. Our piece on turnaround time covers how the rest period actually works and how compressed days accumulate into a fatigue problem across a shoot.

Beyond that: publish the schedule early and change it less. The 57% figure is about control, and predictability is the cheapest form of control a production can give. Building the shooting schedule properly and getting the call sheet out with real notice is not administrative politeness — on this evidence it is a wellbeing intervention.

What can an individual do?

Less than the structure demands, which is the honest answer. But two things are within reach: treat turnaround as non-negotiable rather than as a favour you grant a production, and avoid building a career that depends on a single city's booking cycle — see managing a freelance film career.

If you are struggling, the industry has dedicated support in most major territories. Speak to someone before the wrap party, not after.