SAG strike

We have housing and food for everyone, so the per diem shouldn't be a big problem.

The issue is that what I thought was $100 is now $170. That almost doubles our SAG budget.

We are also using some AEA actors. Does anyone know how that works under the agreement?
 
smashedburrito said:
We have housing and food for everyone, so the per diem shouldn't be a big problem.

The issue is that what I thought was $100 is now $170. That almost doubles our SAG budget.

We are also using some AEA actors. Does anyone know how that works under the agreement?
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When we went to SAG for their monthly SAG contract seminar prior to our film I had asked the same question. They told me that all members of AEA, AFTRA and/or SAG fall under the agreement which means you have to treat any actors from any of the three unions equally (including pay, etc.)

Todd
 
Does that mean I have to pay them each $170 or $100? We could do $100, but if we have to pay AEA the bond and the health/pension...
 
Adam,
Thanks again for all the advice. As for resources, we have what we need to make this movie. It turns out my producers actually knew all this extra SAG stuff and were planning for it...silly director trying to get involved in paper work...

In terms of the rest of production and resources we are very lucky to be making this as a part of the school. We have 68 kids signed on for credit so our crew is free and luckily local businesses are donating almost all of our meals. We were even lucky enough to get some donations from places like zacuto and zeiss to help make our film look sexy.

We actually have a production blog with all this going in user films but no one seems to care...

Thank you so much for your help. Lonely Place for Dying has been a huge inspiration to me over the past year and we have been following your thread daily learning as much as we can.

Thank you to everyone on this thread for all of your help! Now lets pray SAG doesn't strike...
 
DCP said:
Funny, SAG had told us the bond was non-negotiable. We explained that we were the filmmakers and thtat as long as the other SAG actors had guaranteed payment could we not be forced into securing payment for ourselves (our budget was low and we need all the cash in hand we could get). We were told "No. We understand your situation but unfortunately we could not make exceptions." I should have pressed a little harder. 'However, we did under estimate our shooting dates (we were really most concerned about the dates that included SAG actors other than myself and Chris). For those shooting dates, we were 100% accurate, but for the dates that only included us... we did what we had to :smile:

We already got our SAG bond back (after about 2 months from wrapping) so no big problems there and we didn't even have to make a lot of phone calls. Go figure.

Todd
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It is non negotiable. You must pay a bond, period, end of story, How much you pay is negotiable to a degree. The cast budget on Corrado was $140K. I negotiated the bond down to $23,500; it should have been roughly double that. I went face to face with my rep and Tawanda Duck( her name for real), who is the overlord of all the reps. It was gnarly dude. I actually went to the SAG offices to plead my case.
 
taormina said:
It is non negotiable. You must pay a bond, period, end of story, How much you pay is negotiable to a degree. The cast budget on Corrado was $140K. I negotiated the bond down to $23,500; it should have been roughly double that. I went face to face with my rep and Tawanda Duck( her name for real), who is the overlord of all the reps. It was gnarly dude. I actually went to the SAG offices to plead my case.
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Yeah, I should have worked the angle a little better. In the long run, my brother-in-law put the bond money up and all was fine. Next film I'll know better and be a better pleader (if that's a word... if that's even a sentence; it's late and I'm going to bed:undecided).

Todd

btw, looking forward to seeing your film someday!
 
Prodigi Pictures said:
My bond was only 4K for a movie with a 200K budget.

The bond is based on what your total cast will cost. I think I accidentally backed my way into a great way of keeping the bond low.

I assumed we wouldn't get any movie stars. I assumed all of our smaller roles could shoot in 1-2 days. I assumed everyone would be working for $100.00 a day. So, the SAG bond came out to 4K.

When we cast celebrities three months later SAG didn't call us up and say "Wait a minute! You've done better than you thought you would! We need more money!" When we needed more days for some of our smaller roles SAG didn't call us up and say "Hey now! You said you could shoot that role in 2 days!"

So, one way of keeping your SAG bond really low is simply to assume the absolute, most conservative, most negative view of your own film.
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What? This makes no sense at all. The bond is calculated on the final cast list. It's nt some arbitrary number pulled out of the air!

Basically everyone on your cast was paid scale except two people, which is why your bond was so low.
 
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