The Life of a Delivery Gig Worker

Gig work (such as rideshare or food and grocery delivery) during the pandemic has helped make our lives safer and provided unparalleled convenience— but it has led to a topic almost as tense as the 2020 presidential election. California’s Prop 22 to limit work parameters for gig workers stirred a heated debate - with Silicon Valley companies providing shiny commercials of smiling workers arguing for freedoms and less regulation. But let’s take away the veneer and fancy ad dollars. Who are these workers and what do they want? For many of us, we only have experience around a gig worker when they’re dropping us off or arriving with our food. And to be honest, we were probably more focused on our tacos than the working conditions and lives of the person arriving with them.

Delivery The Smartphone Film

Delivery is a feature film we are crowdfunding in the pre-production stage that will put a face to the current gig work economy through the fictional narrative of a young queer woman who makes up one of the growing numbers of real gig workers struggling with poverty and homelessness around the United States. Her weekend routine is near 24/7 work, living out of her car, waiting for the next order— hoping to achieve difficult company quota bonuses that will make the extra toil worth it... if she gets them. Her life is dictated by her food delivery app by the name of Deliver-Yum! that micro-manages her time and metrics as a worker moment by moment and the sea of faces she delivers to make split judgments on who she is and if she gets a tip.

Visual Style

Our vision for Delivery is to focus on a highly visual story where we learn information from the lead character, Addy. A homeless person doesn't announce their status, she hides it and hides it well. She keeps her trauma at bay like a hungry lion. By using a smartphone, we get a voyeuristic/Cinéma Vérité experience as if we're sitting in the car next to Addy as she tries to make her deadline.

The close quarters of the car will create claustrophobic moments where the character isn't even able to stand up to pee in a bottle. We will also use a fisheye lens to expand these areas, such as Addy's living quarters in the trunk to make her world feel bigger when she's alone. Addy isn't talkative when she's alone and focus will be on her actions, movement, and quick thinking... providing silent and highly visual moments.

Why Delivery is an Important Film Now

The current pandemic is the exact reason why Delivery is an important film to open a discussion about workers and workers rights right now. Exacerbated by Covid-19, we have a clear divide of workers who can afford to isolate and keep away from exposure and healthcare, gig, and service workers who must show up every day and put themselves at risk. The first group of people have more of an ability to order delivery for food and groceries, essentially hiring the gig class of workers to put themselves in harms way on their behalf for what often constitutes as less than minimum wage. While the pandemic is not the beginning of this socioeconomic divide, it is exacerbating it and using the wholly relatable elements of the pandemic can showcase how promblematic this divide really is. 

We also feel using facemask for our characters is a great way to showcase the frequent dehumanization of our gig and service workers, who, prior to the covid pandemic, already frequently experienced being viewed as "lesser than." Now with even less connection through a mask, the journey to be seen as a person is even harder. 

We anticipate completing Delivery and taking it on a festival circuit before getting it on streaming apps so everyone can be a part of this journey. 

Please Share us on Your Socials! 

The more people know how much you love this project, the more support we can get to make our goal. If you’re not sure what to say, here are some easy social media posts you can copy and past to tell everyone how much you love and support Delivery The Film!

No matter where you post, feel free to use this link the the officer Delivery The Film Poster when posting to your socials: https://tinyurl.com/jank77yt

(Twitter) Check out this great new project on @seedandspark showing the life of a modern delivery gig worker shot on a smartphone! @delivery_film needs your help reaching their goal, donate and share this post if you can help: https://seedandspark.com/fund/delivery#story

(Facebook)I’m so excited about this new project on @Seed&spark called called Delivery by @10by10Studios! They are raising $10,000 to start on a smartphone journey showing the life of a modern day gig worker. We need to stand with and humanize and empathize with our gig workers out there, working during the pandemic! Please help them reach their goal-- donate and share this post if you can!  https://seedandspark.com/fund/delivery#story

(Instagram) Check out @Delivery_the_Film fundraising right now on @seedandspark! This smartphone film will show the life of the modern delivery gig worker and how vital of a workforce they are to us, especially in a pandemic! Please help them reach their goal by donating and sharing this post! https://seedandspark.com/fund/delivery#story

Filmmaking and Covid-19

We take the health and safety of cast and crew extremely seriously and will be rigorously engaging in the SAG Covid-19 standard protocols to reduce risk. Protocols include limiting the amount of individuals on set, routine testing of cast and crew (regardless of vaccination), supplying and enforcing the use of PPE (such as sanitizer, facemasks, face shields, gloves) on set, as well as hiring a Covid Operations Officer to enforce Covid Safety standards and frequent sanitization. 

Luckily, do the the nature of this being a smart phone project, we will have a smaller filmmaking footprint which will help us reduce overall crew needed on set at a time. This will also aid in harm reduction by limiting each person to the least amount of exposure to others. 

Filmmaker Statement - Kay Tuxford

The summer of 2019, I became a full-time Gig worker, delivering food, groceries, and other household items. I worked quite a few of them: Postmates, DoorDash, UberEats, InstaCart. If my bank account was low and there were groceries, medical bills, student loans or film festivals I needed to pay for, I went on my apps and tried to ameliorate the financial blows. As I traveled across Orange County and LA County working, I ran into other gig drivers and quickly found myself connecting and hearing their stories. Timing was everything. On the weekends there would be difficult bonuses that, if you spend your entire weekend living out of your car, you could make a few hundred dollars extra. We powered through these weekends, obsessed, hyper-vigilant at the dangling carrot that could make or break if we paid rent or not. Their stories resounded with me, especially in a modern era where the job market does not resemble what our parents had and we are experiencing a schism between an individual and the economy.

During these 3 day stints, I spent a lot of time in my car, seeing parts of Southern California I had never seen before, by myself, and thinking about this story. The story of Addy, a delivery girl for one of these types of Apps, struggling as I had seen all of my fellow workers struggle, to get the money they needed to live. Like Addy, I didn't drive up and down Hollywood Blvd in typical LA movie fashion but often wove my way around the marshlands of Bolsa Chica, the crowded impossible to park streets of Long Beach, and hungry 20-somethings in dorm rooms across the city, hoping for a couple of decent orders keep my earnings in the red.

My goal is to take everyone on the drive -- around cities we rarely venture forth on our own, and through the world of gig service work, where our humanity is sometimes a secret we keep to ourselves to get throughout the day, put on a smile, and hope it's enough to get a tip.

I hope you'll come along with me and help make Delivery an extremely special story.