How to charge

Steve Laramie

Steve Laramie

Veteran
Dping a feature and I'm not sure how to charge. They are offering $12,000 for principle photography. However they don't know the shooting schedule yet. Should I take the 12 half now half later or should I set up some sort of day rate and risk short changing myself?
 
Well you should have your contract in place with either a day or week rate, in this situation just divide the 12,000 by the number of shoot days and that would be your day rate for the show, by the amount of weeks for a week rate, etc. and discuss with production what the pay periods will be. Don't see how you could "short change" yourself that way.
 
That seems a little worrying to me if they are preparing to hire a DP and don't even have the shooting schedule finalized...

If they are offering you 12K, what is the question? Your asking how to charge, but you say they already made you an offer. At this stage it's more of a yes, or no. Then your just figuring out how to break up that money into paychecks? I would just do a weekly check, example: 4 week shoot, $3000/wk.
 
Clarify and then contract. Either set a day rate or establish filming dates. 12K sounds like good money but if you have to work 250 days with your gear to get it, its not worth it.

Set terms like 30% for pre-production, 30% due on 1 week prior to first day of filming then remaining due at end of principal photography or XXX date. Which ever occurs first.

Then for future refence read this:

http://magazine.creativecow.net/art...out-business-at-55-that-i-wish-id-known-at-25
 
Andrew Brinkhaus said:
That seems a little worrying to me if they are preparing to hire a DP and don't even have the shooting schedule finalized...

If they are offering you 12K, what is the question? Your asking how to charge, but you say they already made you an offer. At this stage it's more of a yes, or no. Then your just figuring out how to break up that money into paychecks? I would just do a weekly check, example: 4 week shoot, $3000/wk.
Click to expand...

I think his biggest worry is accepting the 12,000 and then finding out the shoot is going to take a lot longer than what 12,000 would justify. I wouldn't agree on anything unless you are clear how long you are working. Or work out another agreement on a week/day basis like others have suggested, I know you run the risk of short changing yourself but it really is dangerous to get into an agreement where you don't know what will be happening. Maybe you could calculate some kind of daily rate and then find out how many days you can get for 12,000 and tell them thats the maximum number of days you'll work for the 12,000 agreement and if the shoot goes over that then you need to be paid according to a daily rate based on that.

Actors have these kinds of agreements so I wouldn't be too worried about bringing it up.
 
If they are offering u money without even knowing if they are shooting this film in 3 weeks or 3 months then they are blowing smoke up their asses. They are amateurs and dreamers. Still in case it does work out accept it as 3000/week or 4000/week (depending on what your rate is) making sure that they know the weekly rates too.
 
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