“We need to start protecting our workers better.” It’s a line that should feel obvious, but hearing Bela Padilla say it in a House Committee on Creative Industries hearing on March 16 gives it weight. 

Invited as a resource speaker for the proposed Philippine Film Commission, Padilla laid out what many in the industry already know: long hours, unsafe conditions, and wages that don’t always match the work being done. 

“If we want to compete globally, we also have to treat our people fairly,” she added.

The instinct is to treat this as an industry problem. Something that begins once you “make it.”

But it doesn’t.

By the time filmmakers enter the professional space, they’ve already learned how to work under those conditions, because they’ve experienced them early, in student productions where the same issues are often normalized.

This isn’t to dismiss the progress being made. There are now more avenues supporting student filmmakers than ever before. Grants from the Film Development Council of the Philippines, like the Student Film Assistance Program, offer ₱30,000 to ₱50,000 for thesis films. Larger initiatives like Sine Kabataan and CinePanalo provide six-figure support, alongside mentorship and labs. Organizations like the Academic Film Society are building networks meant to bridge the gap between school and industry.

These matter. They make it possible for more stories to be told.

But they don’t always change how those stories are made.

Funding, while helpful, often stretches thin across production needs. Equipment, locations, and post-production take priority, leaving little room for proper compensation or structured protections on set. Support exists, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into better working conditions.

And so the same patterns persist.

Students have brought up numerous times online how they struggle producing films may it be for academic requirement or for creative expression because of how demanding work is. Waking up early, going home late, sometimes they even shoot films overnight.

These are not rare complaints. They are familiar enough to be expected.

It’s often framed as part of the process, a kind of rite of passage. You learn to stretch resources, to push through exhaustion, to make things work even when systems don’t. There’s value in resilience, yes, but there’s also risk in what that resilience is built on.

Because what gets normalized in training rarely gets questioned later.

Padilla, in the same hearing, highlighted the need for protections for women on set and limits on working hours. These are standards the industry is still trying to formalize. But in student productions, they are often absent altogether, replaced by informal agreements and blurred boundaries.

So when young filmmakers step into the professional world, they aren’t just bringing their skills with them. They’re bringing habits, expectations, and a sense of what is “normal” on set.

That’s what makes this conversation difficult. The problem isn’t just that the industry needs reform. It’s that the pipeline feeding into it is already shaped by the same gaps.

Padilla’s call for change is necessary. But it also raises a quieter question: if we want to fix the industry, shouldn’t we also look at the spaces where its future workers are first taught how it works?

Because film labor issues don’t suddenly appear on professional sets. By then, they’ve already been learned.

PHOTO: CONGRESS TV DIGITAL (via YouTube) and Pexels