Question about Director's pay.

T

thecuban

Member
Hey everyone,

I just want to ask a question regarding a Directors pay in a movie.

I know there isint like a standard pay or set pay or anything, But

For Example say, a Director like Jason Reitman when he Directed "Juno" the movie cost $7.5Mil to make and grossed $143Mil... around how much money did Jason make for this movie ?

Another Example would be like Ryan Fleck who Wrote and Directed "Half Nelson", this movie grossed almost $3Mil dollars, around how much do you guys estimate he made ?

and then of course there is Christopher Nolan who Directed "The Dark Knight" and we all know how much money that made - $518Mil, how much do you guys think Nolan racked up out of that ?
 
Depends a lot on the deal. Sometimes for a big budget movie a director can get up to $20 million up front, but more commonly they'll get a large % on the back end.

For Indiana Jones 4 I remember Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford all didn't get paid until the movie made $xxx,xxx,xxx and then split something like 85% of the profit past that point.

Requiem for a Dream had a $4.5 million budget, and Aronofsky took home only $65,000 I believe.
 
It all depends on the deals. Every single movie is different in financial terms from other movies. What you do see is similar practices in most movies. Like a director getting a salary and part of the profit.

I think I heard while watching the director's commentary of "Pan's Labyrinth" that Guillermo gave away most of his pay in order to finish the movie. It was purely a work of love for him. He would've done it for free, but he has to feed his family. :)
 
Another thing: how would you figure out how much you should charge for projects? Like I've been getting into music videos and short films but haven't done a whole lot of the former, so it's been hard to figure out how much I should charge
 
I suggest charging however much it costs to rent all of your equipment plus cost for your time.

i'm not sure how long you would be working there so it could differ. a 1 month shoot could be different than a 1 week shoot.
 
it's all about the contracts. some directors get paid up front to make the movie and then some on the back end points.
directors like spielberg, zemeckis pretty much any director that is SUPER famous, can ask for anything to make a movie.
why? cuz the studio knows the director is bankable in the profits.
if you are a newbie, you will probably make a low percentage of the budget and maybe a little on the end if you "actually" make money at the end.
but on music videos etc... the band will give you $X amount of dollars and directors make around 3-7% of the budget. unless you're big... then you can make more.
but it seems like you are a newbie, so just say... " hey, ill make you a music video... blah blah... here is a reel of my work that i've done... as you can see, i make some good ****. i would like to charge $xxx.xx for my services." ( i'm thinking that the first music videos that you will make are probably bands that are so underground, that they make pretty much nothing as well. ) :|
 
Working with indie bands is a tough one, that's almost my entire experience in film so far, besides corporate work where you are able to charge at least a fair rate for your time / equipment.

Bands rarely have more than $1,000, and often not even that much. That isn't enough to make a music video, really. It's enough to film them in live concert, which is probably what I'd suggest if you want to make a few bucks. I'm not interested in the few bucks route, so I've just used indie bands to shoot great stuff for my reel and gain some experience while funding the videos myself. I don't think any record label is going to be impressed by what most people are doing for $500, honestly. There are those occasional, extremely gifted filmmakers who can pour 6 weeks into a no-budget music video shoot, beg, borrow, and steal whatever equipment is needed, and have some professional friends to help, and they come up with a killer concept and make a killer video for nothing. But whether it's tons of time and bartering or a decent amount of money, it's tough either way, really.

If you want to make some cash on music videos I might suggest asking if you can film the band live when they perform somewhere, get a few good cameras, and set one up for the wide shots and then go in hand-held or close-up tripod on the other, then you edit together what you have from those two sources. Sure, it's going to be pretty crappy compared to a real music video, but the band will have something to show as a sample of their performance style and for their fans, and they can pay you probably $500 to do that and you'd make a tiny profit, but even to pull that off you're going to need two decent cameras, at least something like a DVX (you might not have much chance to light anything, besides whatever concert lighting or bar lighting is available to the band), and at least something as good as an iMac with iMovie or something. That's pretty low-end, but, eh, I mean it's possible.

It also depends where you are, I have no idea what other peoples' experiences are like, but living here in Los Angeles it's somewhat of a nightmare to deal with bands. Because there are so many people like me who are willing to spend their own money making music videos for a reel, and there are so many film school students with access to great equipment for free, and friends who know what they're doing, bands have very high expectations. It doesn't matter if they're not paying you a penny, they still act like you are Mark Romanek and they are The Killers, and you're going to make them their dream video, budget be damned. At least I've encountered this again and again, and it's tough to feel really good about yourself even if you make them a great video because you still are dealing with budgetary restrictions, whether it's $3,000 or $10,000, that force you to say no to some of their ideas, no matter how good they may be.

As for feature film directing contracts, they vary wildly. A first-time director will often be paid a fairly minimal (union) amount, which isn't bad but it's not that impressive either. More established directors will be paid much better, and very well established directors get a percent of the gross much of the time, like a Steven Spielberg or a James Cameron or something. I know Cameron gave up his salary for Titanic, his entire pay and his back-end participation, because of the budget overages, but Fox and Paramount gave him a TIDY sum at the end of that, it was I believe roughly $75 million!!! I'm not sure of the legal specifics of that, as to why the companies wouldn't just say, "Gee, thanks for making that great film, but, uhh, yeah, you were stupid to give up your percentage." I am assuming, unless there are other reasons, that it was a gesture of goodwill for the film making $1.835 billion at the worldwide box office, and figuring that if you piss off James Cameron and he never wants to direct for your studio again, that is going to cost you a HECK of a lot more than $75 million! Nobody knew at the time Cameron wouldn't do anything for a long time after Titanic. I mean you figure if a guy makes you that much money, it's only fair to reward him because you want a filmmaker with that type of financial potential on your good side. And I'm assuming that was the sole reason for the compensation, which wasn't legally obligated at that point.
 
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