Foreign travel jobs?

F

firehawk

Veteran
I'm in the USA. How do you guys charge for doing production in other places such as Africa or Haiti etc?
The entire time you are gone you obviosly cannot do any other work back home.
You've got to get there, do the work, eat, sleep and return..
 
Travel days are usually charged as a normal day and the same with all days during a production regardless of shooting or not. If you are booked you can't take any other jobs so that's the only way to do it. Sometimes I charge half a day if it's shorter travel.
 
I'm not in the USA but I shoot abroad all the time. I charge in the same way for foreign shoots as I would for domestic ones except for days when I'm not actually shooting, which are charged at a slightly lower rate and classed as travel days. All expenses are charged on, but I don't charge for sleeping...
 
I scale my travel days to be my 'normal' rate, and then the daily rate is increased. Whatever rate you decide on, there will be others getting more, and less. Try to not let it concern you. Make sure you are happy with yours and forget the others. It's also worth considering how much simply being there will cost you - so per diems should also be agreed to cover food, drink and other essentials you incur simply by being there. Confirm every single thing. No good setting a rate and then discovering hidden costs you have to pay out of your fee - so the country is important. Some countries rely on guides, fixers and tipping (or even bribes) and I remember one accountant asking me what I meant by writing bribe to golf course official on my invoice, and I had to explain that we needed transport for the kit and nothing was available, so a golf cart was made available by $100 in an envelope and no receipt!

When you are completely away from base, your fee must include you for the 24hrs a day, not just work time. Now I'm grey and old, the jobs where the fee is restricted or expenses are not included, I walk away from. Roughing it, and being totally on your own, with no money was fun in my thirties but now I'm even interested in hotel quality - as in I do not share rooms. Being asleep in a foreign country, with odd language and dodgy neighbourhoods and having somebody let themselves into your hotel room is not good for the heart - and worse when you discover the production company ignored your one in a room rule and double booked a sound guy - although sharing a double bed with a rather nice sound assistant once was something I'd overlook .................
 
morgan_moore said:
.. which is reasonable because on a typical 'foreign' you don't actually get time to sleep.
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True that.. ...filmed for 19 hours in Dubai on Sunday. Much of it handheld. Couldn't sleep when I got back to the hotel as my legs started cramping. Everyone thinks it's glamour, glamour glamour...
 
I charge the same day rate for travel or shoot day but I only invoice for gear the days it's working. When I travel internationally, we typically shoot longer days, usually 12 hour and I don't charge them OT unless we go over that. I sometimes will quote line items for A cam, B cam, sound gear, grip and lighting, slider, gimbal but recently I just give the client a choice of ala carte or a flat rate that we both find fair, regardless of which gear we use on a given day. Realistically, we are rarely sure of the exact gear we will use in a given day because schedules, locations and availability of talent can change hourly on documentaries and we have be ready to react to whtever is thrown our way. I usually end up doing quite well financially on foreign shoots, because they are usually 10 days to three weeks and we usually are shooting every day.
 
Do you up the rate to cover the extra two hours or are you just giving them two hours for free? I've never been asked for a 12 hour day, but I've had some friends that have and I think they just upped their base rate to include the extra two.
 
I think that a lot depends on the kind of shoot you are doing and who is paying you. I shoot for a couple of production companies internationally often. We usually sit down and look at what has to be done, the number of days "out" and what the "ah ****" factor is... meaning, bad weather, delayed or cancelled interviews, and so on. In the case of these companies we work out a rate for job and allow for contingencies.
In the case of "hired gun" work, like the others, gear is charged at time worked not time traveled. I charge home based day rate for travel, 1.5 day rate for work abroad based on a 10 hour day. All travel expenses including phone and data as well as a per diem. I also insist that the production company carry insurance that covers me for medical, life and equipment and I carry my own as well. Some companies/networks have a boiler plate contract for work abroad that you either take or leave.
 
Run&Gun said:
Do you up the rate to cover the extra two hours or are you just giving them two hours for free? I've never been asked for a 12 hour day, but I've had some friends that have and I think they just upped their base rate to include the extra two.
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Yes, my day rate for International travel is about 30% higher than shooting locally.
 
If booking yourself as your own agency, for travel jobs, do you take out an extra insurance rider travel & medical insurance overseas in addition to your business/gear insurance? How much should be allotted for this?

What do you set as your general foreign per diem (in comparison to your local per diem)? (actual amount would be great, but % difference is fine if you don't feel comfortable sharing).

When billing for travel days, percentage wise, how does that compare to a shoot day? IE is your travel day 30% of the cost, or 70% of the cost of your production days?
 
filmguy123 said:
If booking yourself as your own agency, for travel jobs, do you take out an extra insurance rider travel & medical insurance overseas in addition to your business/gear insurance? How much should be allotted for this?

It depends... on where you are going, what you are taking and who you insure you gear with. Let's face it this is a question that can solicit a variety of answers.

What do you set as your general foreign per diem (in comparison to your local per diem)? (actual amount would be great, but % difference is fine if you don't feel comfortable sharing).

Same situation as above. If you are travelling to London England, you will need a per diem rate that will allow you to eat more than deep fried mars bars, fish and chips and Chicken tikka masala I hope you get my drift.

When billing for travel days, percentage wise, how does that compare to a shoot day? IE is your travel day 30% of the cost, or 70% of the cost of your production days?
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Same thing. travel days in my case are my home rate and shoot days are +.
So I have to ask if you are both producing and shooting your project and attempting to budget for those reasons? In my experience unless it is major network that you are shooting for, you have to see what they want to spend and figure out if it is worth your time to do it. Foreign gigs are fewer and fewer with all the new tech and with the ease of finding a local shooter. Yes, you are a known quantity, but then again it depends on what it is you are shooting. A talking head ?...well I do a lot of talking heads for foreign broadcasters, in a variety of languages. Live hits too for India and London and Berlin...
So not to be preachy, but this new environment is YOUR competition for foreign gigs. I can't tell you how many foreign producer/directors arrive in my town with 2x 5Ds and hire locally for light and sound. They travel alone or with an assistant (often one they sleep with to save expenses) and some are bold enough to ask you to hook them up with a local rental company.
 
Yes, I travel for foreign jobs as my own agency multiple times per year.

One more question to add to my questions above: how many of you fly business class for your projects?
 
filmguy123 said:
Yes, I travel for foreign jobs as my own agency multiple times per year.

One more question to add to my questions above: how many of you fly business class for your projects?
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If you travel for foreign jobs multiple times per year then I fail to understand why you are asking these questions. No client has ever flown me business class, I have used my points to bump up usually at the end of shoot.
 
Uhh, because I want to know what other people are doing and see if I have room for improvement?

I work in video and still ask questions about video...

I appreciate your concern, but I'd rather keep the discussion OT regarding my questions and not derail it with side talk.

You can PM if you're interested. Thanks!
 
I normally charge same amount as for a day at home. Last time I shot houses and villas in the South of France for one magazine. They didn’t mind to pay for a car rental, even though we had only agreed for paid petrol (I was supposed to use my own car but it got broken). I think depends on the company as well, if I see that the guys are too greedy on small details (f.e. petrol) I think twice before working with them. Here is what I shot in France: a bizarre Pierre Cardin Villa (Cannes) https://tranio.com/france/adt/1635633/.
 
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