TV and Film freelancers don’t need to be reminded that production work is pretty thin on the ground right now, so when a film company advertises on Facebook and Instagram for Runner/Drivers, numerous freelancers jumped at the opportunity.

However when it comes to the details, it turns out that all is not entirely as it seems with this work (advertised by Rory Davidson of Fullscale Films) as it turns out not to be production work at all. This freelancers discovered once they’d signed a non disclosure agreement and were told that the work was to canvass people to sign up as signatories for a candidate in the upcoming election.

The candidate in question is Niko Omilana. He is, apparently, some kind of big cheese YouTuber and is currently trying to get enough signatories to allow him to stand in various northern seats, albeit when members of the public are approached, the freelancers in question have been told to withhold pretty much everything about the candidate they are being asked to support (if anyone asks if Nico is running in their constituency they are told to say yes but “please DO NOT ELABORATE!” ).

There is apparently some kind of “satirical” documentary involved at the end of this nonsense, details of which being hard to obtain given Omilana’s proclivity in papering everyone involved in NDAs (which numerous people then dutifully broke when they realised that, despite appearances, this was not production work at all).

Rory Davidson at first claimed that everyone who is doing this doorstepping work have been promised two months’ work on this “documentary” but somewhat backed off that when it came to supplying any actual details of who, what, when, how and where.

All in all this looks like one to take a pretty wide berth around. Freelancers Beware!

**UPDATE**

There is more detail in this BBC News story.