There is no time, quite like Primetime!

Primetime is a visibility platform for all the women working above and below the line behind the camera, making it as easy as possible for productions to really shine a light on their hiring practices. With members in 55 countries, including BAFTA, Emmy, and Academy Award winners - Primetime is constantly growing and expanding.

Victoria Emslie is a British actress and the founder & CEO of Primetime. We sat down with her to talk about the reasons that led her to want to make a change and forced the industry to listen to her.

Can you tell us about your journey that led you to set up Primetime?

Everyone deserves to see themselves represented onscreen. With men outnumbering women 2:1 and in many cases 3:1, the only way to change this conversation onscreen is to change the conversation behind the camera. Shows such as Call The Midwife led to historic levels of applications to midwifery courses; we know that there is a direct correlation and impact between the stories we tell and what people believe they can achieve. Did you know that a woman's confidence peaks at 8 years old? That is due to the stories we tell her.

As an actor and activist with Time’s Up UK and ERA 50:50, being surrounded by powerful, inspiring, and supportive women helped me to find my voice and add it to the conversation.

Tell us a bit about the type of company that Primetime is, its ethos, and who is the team behind it all

Primetime is a vetted global platform for all the women working above and below the line behind the camera, providing the industry with a simple solution to look at its hiring practices and find inclusive teams. We have members in 50 countries, including multi-BAFTA, Emmy, and Academy award-winners, and sign-up for both individuals, companies, and men HODs is free. Members can upload CVs, bios, guilds, awards, projects, agents, personal pronouns, whether they are from an underrepresented background, and much more, and the site is kept free of profile pictures to combat unconscious bias; we want our members' work to speak for itself.

I am involved in the running of every aspect of the business, from the day-to-day admin to partnerships and business growth. We are currently working with a tech agency, Hactar, who are committed to social good projects who have built the platform alongside me, and without whom we wouldn’t be where we are today. As an individual outside of a larger corporation, it was very important for me to build a brand that is trusted by the industry, and having a team behind the tech build who were versed in making the data secure and GDPR compliant meant that we could set something up quickly and to industry standards.

How are you engaging with employers and what are the benefits for them to use Primetime?

The great bonus for employers is that they can sign up and search our platform for free straight away. All they need to do to take that first step is to join. Using our granular search functions, it allows them to find the right person for the job quickly and easily and as the site grows, we aim to put more interactive functionality to add a personal touch to helping productions find inclusive teams. We are also encouraging companies to make a pledge and this allows themselves to set targets and see how much they have done to improve their hiring practices. By holding up best practice, employers who are actively working to improve our industry will be rewarded and spotlighted. Win-win for everyone.

How did the hashtag #NoMoreExcuses come to exist and what impact has it had on social media?

There are many barriers to entry to work in our industry. With considerable data collected and published which show the scale of the inequality we are facing, I started to read the reasons people would give to not find and hire women. Everything from “We couldn’t find any women,” “if we had more women applying the numbers would be higher”, and my personal favourite, “Where are all the women”. I wanted to take this one excuse off the table by creating a platform that, functionally, provides the industry with the background it needs to hire a professional, and then populate it with women to say, “we are here!”

Improving the industry for all requires time, resources, and multifaceted systemic shakeups, but by answering one big question, I hope that it demonstrates that excuses are just problems that can be solved.

Has Covid had an impact on Primetime's timeline? Have your purpose or priorities changed in any way?

As for many companies and individuals, this last year has been incredibly challenging. I put all my savings into the business so that women do not have to pay to be visible and all the features we have on the platform are free for our members. This means Primetime heavily relies on sponsorship to keep us up and running and to grow in order that we can help as many women as possible. With uncertainty coursing through the veins of our industry, it meant that no new sponsors were in the position to support us financially last year which put the breaks on our next rollout of features. Having said that, great things come with having more time to plan, investigate and interrogate, and I don’t think I would have expanded the direction we are going in without that moment of pause. I can’t thank Panavision and Sister enough for sponsoring us for a second year during this time, their support will enable us to turn Primetime into a viable business. As a certified social enterprise, the more money we are able to make, the more we can invest in our members as we are committed to putting at least 50% back into the business and as soon as we have some income, I will be building a fund to finance our members’ work and create paid shadowing opportunities when working with production companies who are on board.

One of the benefits we have felt this year is the leveling of the playing field to some extent. People who might not have been available to talk prior to the pandemic, are jumping onto zoom calls and having conversations that we might not necessarily have had access to before. I also feel like our collective level of honesty has shifted; it’s ok to answer the question, “How are you?” with something other than the shiny “I’m great!”, and that can only be a positive step going forward.

For all the women who are reading about Primetime for the first time, could you tell us what are the benefits of joining this network? And can they join

As a simple solution to one of the industry’s most frequently asked questions, “where are all the women”, by joining you are helping us take that excuse off the table. Whether hiring or looking to be hired, there is strength in numbers and our extensive granular searches allow the right professional for the job to be found quickly and easily. The more information a member adds to their profile, the more searches they will be returned in. Sign up is free and members can take advantage of our sleek editorial layout to provide a showcase for their work. Adding projects, agents’ details, bios, CVs, awards, neopronouns, skills, bases, and much more. Working in a word-of-mouth-based industry, members are able to add testimonials and reviews. We know that unconscious bias plays a huge role in hiring practices and members do not have pictures attached to their profiles.

With endless ways to customise and showcase work, many members use their Primetime profiles as their personal websites. We also throw Primetime Pledge events, where those with hiring power commit to making real change through targeted 1-2-1 meetings with our members, who have gone on to be hired on HETV, Film and Commercial jobs.

Partnering with companies such as Netflix, we offer members exclusive screenings and content as well as invites to panels and other events, and with big plans for the future of Primetime, it has never been a better time to get involved and be part of the change. Just the simple act of showing up and being visible on the platform has a butterfly effect encouraging others to do the same, bringing more people with hiring power, and therefore more jobs for women in every department. The change starts with a simple action, and it is something that you can do right now.

What is the most valuable lesson that you have learned from setting up a platform that champions inclusivity and change?

Patience. Change is happening, but it can be glacial; and in a year where our lives have been turned upside down in a way which we couldn’t have predicted, even more effort needs to be focused on retaining talent and underrepresented voices within our industry, as they are the ones who have been disproportionately affected during this last year and are more likely to leave the industry for good. We simply cannot risk this.

The greatest gift I’ve had through setting up Primetime is working together with other organisations, supporting each other, and championing each others’ successes. People often ask me, “I suppose you don’t work with *insert organisation here* because you are competitors?” I always turn around and say, “No one person or single organisation is going to change the Industry by themselves, it is a group effort.” And follow that with, “We are working with them closely” or “I haven’t been introduced to them yet, would you mind making an introduction for me?”

When there is an understanding that yes, having competitors is healthy because that means there’s a demand for what we are doing, but also that as they make a giant leap forward, we are all making that giant leap forward together, that is when we will make sustainable change happen. Top tip: don’t pit organisations working in this sphere against each other. We just won’t rise to it.

Would you like to hear more about Primetime? Make sure you check their website or get in touch through their social channels:

Website: https://primetime.network/

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Twitter @PrimetimeNetwrk / @monhublot