The Gig Is Up

Synopsis

From delivering food and driving ride shares to tagging images for AI, millions of people around the world are finding work task by task online. The gig economy is worth over 5 trillion USD globally, and growing. And yet the stories of the workers behind this tech revolution have gone largely neglected.
Who are the people in this shadow workforce? THE GIG IS UP brings their stories into the light.
Lured by the promise of flexible work hours, independence, and control over time and money, workers from around the world have found a very different reality. Work conditions are often dangerous, pay often changes without notice, and workers can effectively be fired through deactivation or a bad rating.
Through an engaging global cast of characters, THE GIG IS UP reveals how the magic of technology we are being sold might not be magic at all.

Director Biography

Shannon Walsh is a filmmaker, writer and Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at the University of British Columbia. She is writer and director of the feature documentaries Illusions of Control (2019), Jeppe on a Friday (2013), St-Henri, the 26th of August (2011), and H2Oil (2009). She premiered her first nonfiction VR, Disappearance: Hong Kong Stories (RIDM 2018), and finished a short doc, Matsutake Hunters (AmDocs 2019), for TELUS Originals. Her fiction screenplay, Unidentified Minor, was shortlisted for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, and participated in the Stowe Story Lab, and Women in the Director’s Chair “Story & Leadership” lab. In 2017, the script won Best Low-Budget Screenplay at the 15th Female Eye Film Festival, shortlisted for the CBC-TIFF Diverse screenwriting award, was semi-finalist in the Cinequest Screenplay Competition, quarterfinalist in the Shore Scripts competition, amongst others.