Paying someone on one project, then no pay (meals only) on next project - Reasonable?

[hscully]

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So you are doing something out of passion and yet are unwilling to spend money on it??? On every of my personal project i paid my crew - $100-200/day and because i couldn't afford to spend much i would only get the bare-bone crew - usually just a few people. So my out of packet expenses usually are around $1-1.5k/day. I can't believe that if you are truly passionate about this you can't spend that much. Unless you are a poor student, if you are unwilling to spend some $ then you are simply not passionate enough. Period. Moreover you are creating an unhealthy environment of double standards - when you work for others you want to get paid but when others work for you, you expect cheap/free labor. This double standard undermines the industry. Lastly, if you are making a feature lenght films and still have no money then you have not prepared yourself properly - you have not talked to enough people to get support of enough folks that could allow you to raise your minuscule budget of 30-50k. In other words you are acting on an impulse, and that's not a great way to make a feature length film as you gonna be stuck in a 6 month long period of production and post on that impulse film.

I agree. I would substitute "raise the money" for "spend the money." I think that raising the money for below the line costs on important projects is responsible for any producer/director. Your wife won't kill you and you get to fight another day. Plus you will be spending money you didn't expect to spend anyway, so raise the dough.


Look, I shoot no-budg stuff with writer friends and actor friends for all sorts of things - a few of pages over a weekend for a short comedy or a teaser. Fun, volunteers, a lot of laughs, and no great camera moves. I get to test and shoot and maybe improve my reel.

You can always do whatever you want but ultimately you're paying for someone to stick around. Usually you don't pay on the short, since it's only one or two days, but then pay on the feature, seeing as how it could be an entire month or more. Not paying for that long you'll start to get a crew that ditches you for the first little bit of money that comes their way.


I have an honest question for you, do you work on other peoples films ever? Or just your own? As someone who does this for a living and primarily works on other peoples movies, I'm sure I look at all this a little differently.

Definitely. Your crew will bounce at the first sight of a paying gig. Would you blame them?

If you are really doing a feature, shot everyday over a period of weeks who will work for you? Don't they have jobs? If they work in film then this is their job and you need to compensate them. Listen to Patryk and Ryan. Otherwise, shoot a short, or a digital comedy, or perhaps a little teaser from your script. Maybe you could ask your camera op to help you with a teaser to help raise money for a feature length he or she could get paid on. I dunno. But if you have a script you love then give it a chance and produce it.