"Women have to work twice as hard" – debating gender bias in the film industry

Different routes into the industry

In the 1980s, Claudia was studying dance in New York and working as a waitress when a colleague – who also happened to be a cinematography tutor – noticed she had a good photographic eye and asked if she'd considered cinematography. "I had no clue what it was about," she remembers, but accompanying her friend on set, she was "mesmerised". He gave her work, encouraged her to go to film school, recommended her to others, and her career snowballed. "My break was having somebody who could say, 'I believe in this person, she has talent.'"

Laela took a more traditional route, working her way up from a role as a runner, but found that she always had to be the one to push herself. "Every step up through the hierarchy that I took, happened because I decided to do it," she says.

"We must push back against our biases"

What holds women back most of all, according to Laela, are the "calculations people make in their heads that they don't even voice. They don't offer you the job, they don't look at your reel, they don't recommend you to someone, all because they unconsciously think you're not qualified – or they think a man they just worked with is more qualified – and they don't even know why they think that," she says. "Both men and women are guilty of doing this."

More open conversation and analysis of our inherent biases is needed in order to effect change, along with recommending women for jobs. "People in the industry have to be willing to extend offers of work to people they wouldn't necessarily have thought of first," she says. "There might be someone you never expected who could just transform the situation for you, and bring something to it that you'd never have thought of."

Times are changing

The industry is slowly changing. "There are huge changes from when I started 25 years ago," says Laela. "I certainly see many more women shooting and putting themselves out there, whether it's on social media or in the documentary world."

Advances in technology are breaking down barriers at the budget end of the industry. When Laela started out, an entry-level quality film camera cost $100,000; today's models are a tenth of the price. Laela has done a lot of work with the Canon EOS C300 and its successor, the Canon EOS C300 Mark II, which she finds remarkably user-friendly. "Especially in documentary, you're reacting to events as they happen and you want your equipment to react with you," she says. "The Canon EOS C300 Mark II is less obtrusive than many other cameras, and people are not intimidated by its presence. At the same time it's a complex camera, capable of many things."

Claudia praises the creative potential afforded by the Canon EOS C300 Mark II's 8.85MP Super 35mm Canon CMOS sensor. In the early days, she explains, "you need a palette of colour and contrast and possibilities, but also a camera that is consumer-friendly so that you don't get overwhelmed. I think Canon should win an award because I feel the layout of the camera and the easy-to-understand menus are wonderful to start out with."