At what point should gear charges be extra?

[Peter C.]

I’m pretty sure that is what a business is supposed to do.

When you get your car serviced does the mechanic charge you for the tools he uses?

[JimGao]

When you get your car serviced does the mechanic charge you for the tools he uses?

I know what you mean, so hopefully you can understand what I wrote/write

My comment was just to highlight how easy it is to spin what someone else says, and not read or understand them in context. Most of what is said above is all good information, yet there are some surprisingly passionate disagreements.

[CharlesPapert]

Well, for many services including automotive, the bill is separated into parts and labor.

I did the kind of work-for-hire being described here for many years before moving into the type of work that very much delineates equipment and day rates.So my memory is fuzzier on the other scenario but I do need to ask for those that work in it: do you have provision for the length of day and what happens if it goes into overtime? How is that calculated if you have an all-in rate with equipment? Surely you are not working on flat deals regardless of hours worked?

[Doug Jensen]

Well, for many services including automotive, the bill is separated into parts and labor.

Well, billing for parts is more like billing for expendables. You don't get a separate bill for ordinary tools (wrench, screw driver, etc.)

do you have provision for the length of day and what happens if it goes into overtime? How is that calculated if you have an all-in rate with equipment? Surely you are not working on flat deals regardless of hours worked?

For most of my freelancing career, my rate was based on a 10 hour day. Normally that included myself, an audio person, and all "ordinary" gear. If a day went into OT, I just divided the day rate by 10 hours, and kept the clock running at that rate until the day ended. For example, if the day-rate was $2000, then OT would be $200 per hour. The audio person got paid from me on the same basis.

If a day ran short, no discount was given.
If someone wanted a half-day rate (and I felt like taking half-day booking) the rate was 2/3 of the day-rate. The best days were when I could book two separate half-days the same day for different clients. My record was three billable half-days in one day and I still got home before dark.

However, with all that said, working by the hour for a day-rate is no way to get rich in this business. The real money comes when you can hang out a shingle and function as a production company, which is hired by a client to produce and deliver a finished product for an agreed upon price. That is where the real money and creative freedom lives.

[CharlesPapert]

OK so--you were able to base your hourly OT on a rate that was all-in with equipment? That's interesting.It's essentially production services at this point as you indicated it included audio person. Very different setup than on a, let's say, non-broadcast industry model, where OT is very laid out after given number of hours (traditionally straight time for 8, 1.5x for next 4, then 2x, but there is a LOT of variation on this now even amongst different job categories within a department).

I was "spoiled" from the early days by the Steadicam rental, which is traditionally its own rental separate from day rate, except in the situation of all-in production services as Doug described. A good 35-40% of my annual income came from the Steadicam rental, and when I moved up to DP I didn't want to give that up (I knew what few DP's do, that Steadicam operators often make as much hourly or more than the DP they are working for). I re-invested the capital from the sale of the Steadicam into lenses, and continued to acquire gear until I was providing generally 1/3 to a 1/2 of the rental package on any given show, which ultimately translated into 50% of my annual income. The formula is that I work with a rental house to assemble the package, they bid on the full package, then once the producers negotiate the discounts it is applied equally to their gear and mine to match the agreed total (and I either bill through the rental house or direct to production). Unfortunately, in recent years some bad actors in the rental house space have driven the market into the ground and rental rates have plummeted (in the LA market anyway), so the returns are diminishing and I'm starting to divest my gear as it isn't justifying the cost of doing business any more and will get worse in the future.