FEATURE: TRAILER - SUPERSEEDS | Super Powered Adventure

Kholi said:
It's really hard to find great actors. I can't decide which is more important, or which to take if you could only have one or the other: really good actors or really good sound. Meaning, they're equally detrimental to making or breaking a project.

So, when I say to STAY AWAY FROM SAG IF YOU ARE LOW TO NO BUDGET ... it pains me. But, dealing with SAG is the BIGGEST headache I have come across so far.

Before you deal with SAG, remember these things:

1. SAG ULB says that you pay each actor 100.00/day minimum (with no residuals) and, on top of that, pension and healthcare. So, each actor's getting paid around 125.00/day or more. I can't remember the exact figure. It's a steal, and I'm not complaining about the money, but just realize that it's not 100/day, it's 125.00/day.

2. You have to pay through a Payroll system. That tacks on an amount per payment, not sure how much it is, but count on it.

3. There is a BOND that you have to pay up front to even use the actors. It's a percentage of all of the days you will pay your actors in the future. The bond is going to be painful, unless you figure out a way to shoot in seven days or under. So, add a few thousand on top of what you have budgeted to actors. You DO get this back, but it'll take like a month or more to do so. And, you probably need that money to shoot.. right?

4. The system is old. It's paper-based. Expect long wait times and organize months in advance...

I am not AGAINST the guild. It's great for larger budgets, the rest of that stuff. At that point, bonds etc don't really matter, you're paying to ensure a product and you probably have at least a million to work with. Cool.

They also make sure their actors are treated fairly (not like animals) and get paid, while taking a little cut themselves. There's a pension, I mean. So, of course it's a good thing depending on how you look at it.

At this stage in the game, dealing with SAG is a huge burden and I would rather pay the actors out of pocket. They get paid faster, I don't have to deal with the monster.

Of course, it's much harder to find great talent that isn't SAG yet or being forced to join the union. So gotta pick your battles.
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That sounds like quite a bit to deal with. I think actors are more important than sound though, because you can always do foley and ADR later. If you have good sound, I don't care what you do, you can't fix somebody's peformance if it doesn't work. That dog won't hunt. I think even though all of this is a hassle, you're doing the right thing. There's definitely some good actors out there not a part of SAG yet and some dying to be a part of it. A film like yours could really help in that respect - though I'm not sure if any of your actors are concerned with that. A SAG film seems to make you legit on so many level as well. You may not see it right now, but it will probably pay off better for you in the long run.
 
Barry_Green said:
Kholi, you've only been treated to the easy part. Wait until you try to sell the film, and find out that you may owe money to SAG on amounts that they make up out of thin air. If you sold it outright to a distributor for ten grand, who refused to sign the SAG Distributor's Assumption Agreement -- you remain on the hook for paying royalties to SAG, on whatever SAG thinks that distributor might have grossed. Here's a fearful example:
You sell the film to York for $10k cash, you pay your actors their royalties, you think you're done.
York goes on to distribute it however they do.
SAG estimates that York has probably grossed $700,000 dollars worldwide on your film.
SAG sends you a bill for 12.3% royalties. Yes, SAG sends you a bill for ~$75,000... on a film you sold for $10,000.
You take that bill to York, and they say "screw you, we're not paying that -- SAG sent that bill to YOU, not to US."

If your distributor doesn't sign that Distributor's Assumption Agreement, you are perpetually and forever S C R E W E D. In that scenario, you would have been better off never selling the film in the first place.

You'd better know exactly what you're getting into, before signing that SAG agreement. For no-budget folks, it's rarely a good idea.

The one saving grace is if you're lucky enough to get picked up by a distributor who is already a SAG signatory, because in that case they are presumed to have automatically signed the DAG and you therefore have no more worries about royalty payments, those become the liability of the distributor and no longer your liability. But other than that, unless they specifically sign that agreement (and when you're talking about a low-budget distributor, why would they?) then you remain liable, and in lieu of actual accounting reports, SAG can estimate what they think the distributor's gross revenues were. It doesn't matter what you got paid, not one bit -- the contract you signed said that you would pay a royalty based on gross distribution revenues, and you remain liable to that until someone else signs the DGA assuming liability onto themselves. And if the distributor won't give SAG accurate accounting reports (and why should they?) then SAG retains the right to estimate what they think the distributor grossed, and bill you based on that.

It's crazy.

That's the #1 problem I have with SAG. They can bill me for money that I never even received. Ain't right.
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Pretty crazy, because I just had a talk about this about a week ago. The SAG issue is a serious one that anyone trying to go into SAG should study up on. I had NO idea about the Assumption Agreement, and it's a good thing I heard it from a few sources before we even got to that stage. We definitely won't be selling without one.

Barry, now that you've said it, do you know if the ULB has some hidden clause that states you have to upgrade if you sell? The new ULB contract I read (over and over) didn't have any upgrade clauses written into it, residuals etc.

Info?

UGH... that machine is crazy...
 
Haha! Yeah, it is pretty nuts, man. Some people thing it's a conspiracy to keep people OUT of the business, or from starting their own. I think in the hay days of FILM only productions? Maybe? But, now, I don't think that's possible. If you avoid the unions altogether they'll come after you, anyway...

It's good to go through this now so I know what to deal with, but I am definitely trying to watch my back as best as possible.
 
Kholi,

If I remember correctly, for ULB, if the film doesn't have a theatrical release before a DVD release the royalties per actor (overall) go up a bit on DVD distribution. However, this was with NGL which we shot three years ago.
 
Brandon Rice said:
Kholi,

If I remember correctly, for ULB, if the film doesn't have a theatrical release before a DVD release the royalties per actor (overall) go up a bit on DVD distribution. However, this was with NGL which we shot three years ago.
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That's under the ULB and not the MLB?

Do you know what the royalties percentages are for actors? I thought I remembered being told it was a certain percentages that is then split amongst the actors. Is that right?
 
Wow. Thanks for bringing this issue to light Kholi, and for that scary factoid, Barry. Any other tidbits/battles you had to deal with while making your feature?

Much appreciated.
 
And, mind you, this is not meant to bash SAG. This is meant to protect the indie producer. Know what you're getting into. Know what you're obligating yourself to. And make an informed decision. You may decide that the SAG contract is vital to your production. Or you may decide that your risk tolerance level won't allow you to sign the contract. You may decide that you're a risktaker and you're willing to do whatever you need to, to make your film, and you'll face the rest of it when that day comes. It's all up to you. Either way, make your decision based on all the relevant factors and information.
 
So let's say the indie producer gets a bill for $70,000. How should he or she communicate that they are being billed unfairly, and refuse to pay? What are the consequences of refusal to pay? Blacklisting? Collections? Bad credit?
 
Well, you signed a legal contract with SAG that said you would agree to those terms and pay. You also signed a legal contract saying that if you took a distribution deal, that you would ensure that the distributor signed the DAG.

If you didn't follow through on getting the DAG signed, then you're the one who's in breach. If you breached the contract, you don't really have any standing -- you said you'd do it, so now you gotta pay the price for not doing it. What recourse would there be? Bankruptcy? Sign the film over to SAG entirely? I mean, you already sign the film over to SAG when you sign their agreement, because SAG takes out a lien against the film until you've paid all their estimated fees in full.

In short, there's no shortcut. If you're shooting under a SAG contract, you're committing that you will abide by the terms of the royalty payments. If you get an offer from a distributor to buy your film, but they refuse to sign the DAG -- then you are probably better off turning down the distributor's offer. And if that's the only distributor who makes an offer? Well, you're 100% screwed at that point. You probably can't take his money, because it might very well cost you much more... it's not a good position to be in.

Does that mean that signing the SAG agreement makes it harder to sell your film? Of course it does. If you're making a film that is only going to attract smaller distribs (meaning, non-SAG signatories), then you'd be a fool and an idiot to sign the SAG agreement -- you will largely kiss off any chance you'll make any money at that point. If, on the other hand, you're making a film that you have very good reason to believe will be picked up by one of the major SAG-signatory distributors, then go ahead and sign the contract and use the SAG actors -- that's how the system is designed to work.

If you're making a no-budget indie, you'd be a different five-letter-word starting with "i" if you signed the SAG agreement and then hired no-name SAG actors. That's the worst of all worlds. The only reason to sign the SAG agreement is if it will let you land an actor which will dramatically increase your odds of selling to a SAG-signatory distributor. Any other course of action is indie film suicide.

Finally, if you plan to self-distribute, then you circumvent all of this nonsense. SAG can't stick you with "estimated gross revenues" because you yourself are the distributor and you can document exactly what the revenues really were, and what is actually owed. You can't do that when you sell to a distributor because you will have no idea what the real, actual revenues are. But if you're your own distributor, selling the film directly over the internet and four-walling in theaters, then you maintain all control over revenues and you can pay SAG a fair royalty according to the terms of the contract with no complications. Faith Granger is currently self-distributing "Deuce of Spades" and it's working for her, and if she had gone SAG she would be in (I believe) a pretty good position to be able to fulfill the contractual obligations without these potential disasters and timebombs that might derail other indies.
 
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Everything Barry says is true here. I'm continually amazed by people starting production, and having no idea of the legal minefield they're entering - and it starts long before the first piece of footage is shot; it starts in fact, with establishing a production company. Do it wrong, and there's hell to pay. So why do we so rarely hear about these disasters? Because the vast majority of projects (99.99999999%) go absolutely nowhere in terms of making a red cent, so there's no opportunity for anything to bite you in the behind, even though you are insanely exposed. The trouble is that making a film in a modern economy is hard from a purely structural point of view - it's all the stuff you need to know about law, accounting, taxes and so forth. Meanwhile, most amateur - young or old - filmmakers have a ton of enthusiasm and are not natural business people. And yet, film is a business that demands many talents, many of which have nothing to do with the art of film per se.

Frankly, I think these posts by Barry are worth more than all the thousands of posts and threads on some pixel-peeping aspect of some camera or other. This should be the focus of DVXuser - helping people make films. Of course, the website started as a gear forum, and the roots of that persist to this day, which is fine. I'm just saying, there is so, so, so much more to filmmaking than the art. Go learn it.

Thanks again, Barry, for making this a worthwhile site - sometimes I lose faith when I see all the personal attacks and dead horse flogging, but then I see a post like this, and my faith is restored :)
 
OldCorpse said:
Everything Barry says is true here. I'm continually amazed by people starting production, and having no idea of the legal minefield they're entering - and it starts long before the first piece of footage is shot; it starts in fact, with establishing a production company. Do it wrong, and there's hell to pay. So why do we so rarely hear about these disasters? Because the vast majority of projects (99.99999999%) go absolutely nowhere in terms of making a red cent, so there's no opportunity for anything to bite you in the behind, even though you are insanely exposed. The trouble is that making a film in a modern economy is hard from a purely structural point of view - it's all the stuff you need to know about law, accounting, taxes and so forth. Meanwhile, most amateur - young or old - filmmakers have a ton of enthusiasm and are not natural business people. And yet, film is a business that demands many talents, many of which have nothing to do with the art of film per se.
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While you're right, not all of us are this way. I've started other LLC's before and dissolved, and two different businesses.. Just not in the place of film, so, this isn't new to me, the information is also freely available. The SAG stuff is new to me, indeed.

It's not always wise to go full hackneyed on everything. Some things are worth the trouble. A lot of people won't just give someone money, even in small doses (5 to 10K) without it being funneled through a legal entity. And, sometimes you don't want that money to be attached to your own legal name and financial status for various OTHER reasons.

I think the real business minded person does start a limited liability entity to take financial responsibility for a product. Some may disagree.
 
And, IMO, the flipside to all of the danger of going SAG is that most DECENT actors are SAG, in Los Angeles. They probably will not work on your no-budget projects and sacrifice their time on something they will get fined for. Non Union actors are typically not very strong, or, they're being forced to join the union as you cast them. Haha. And I do mean FORCED...

There are other avenues, as well, to dealing with it if it comes to not selling outright. All's well, and I don't regret going SAG because without it I wouldn't have gotten strong enough and dedicated enough actors I don't think.

Next time I may avoid it.
 
There are many reasons to go SAG, and you may have made the exact right decision for SuperSeeds. There are really only three routes -- total non-SAG (which leaves you with the situation you described), total SAG (which involves the contract obligations that we've been discussing, for good or for bad), or Fi-Core (which is the same as non-SAG, but I put it in a different category because some people may have no problem with it and others may see it as "using scabs" or whatever, and I'm not here to moralize on the subject, only to describe the options). There are many fine actors who are Fi-Core, and in smaller markets it's a much more viable option because there frequently isn't enough work for a union-only actor, so a higher percentage of actors in those smaller markets frequently choose to go Fi-Core so they can work both SAG and non-union jobs. Non-union (or Fi-Core) is infinitely easier on the producer, but it does limit the pool of actors you can choose from.

If you've got the money and the script, SAG is not nearly the burden that it is on a no-budget indie. The ULB and MLB contracts do help a low-budget guy get their film made with SAG actors cheaper, but they dramatically complicate the process of selling that film (unless you're lucky enough to get picked up by a SAG-signatory distributor).

If you've got no money and no reasonable prospect of getting picked up by a SAG-signatory distributor, I think going SAG ULB or MLB is a really bad choice for most. The main exception would be those who intend to self-distribute. If you plan on self-distributing, much of the peril of the back-end of the SAG contract would be entirely under your control and I would feel a lot more comfortable with that, than I would with trying to sell the pic to a non-SAG-signatory distributor.

And -- let's face it -- SAG does occasionally update their contracts. Their original "experimental" contract was simply horrible for the guerilla producer. The new contracts are much better and they really do make it much more practical for a low-budget guy to use SAG actors, I know of one film that hired a highly-upper-echelon actor with major major credits in megabudget Hollywood films, and the entire budget for the film (the cash budget) was $10K total. Getting the film MADE under the SAG contracts is much easier now than it used to be. But in my opinion, getting the film SOLD is far more complex and difficult than it needs to be. Perhaps SAG will revise their contracts in the future with the understanding that the $5m movie isn't being made anymore, now it's the $250k movie, and hopefully they will recognize the realities of distribution and make a contract that is more compatible with the needs of the microcinema/guerilla shooter.
 
I agree with you, Barry. Heck, for a no budget even getting to the part where you have to pay the bond is gonna stop most people. It's pretty much annoying.

I also agree that if SAG wants to even attempt to look like a good entity for their no named members, they will ease the ulb into a more distributor friendly contract. Blarg. I think self distribution is just not there yet for the indie no name to turn a large enough profit to move into another venture.

I know there are numbers being told but I have not seen any hardcore evidence to the fact that it is a viable option for those of us who want to keep moving up the budget ladder.

I do not... I repeat... I do NOT want to do another sub 100K feature. Ideally, the next would have a 250K budget and either one insanely high concept plot or a name or two attached. This also goes back to SAG because I want to use good actors, but if the budget is sub 100K next time that's not gonna happen.

This is definitely a business.
 
Well, Kholi, that's been the everlasting dilemma in indie filmmaking, hasn't it. A film lives and dies by acting. Acting + concept = movie (everything else is minute by comparison). But the sad fact is, that most actors are just not even good enough not to hurt a movie. And that's SAG. And those who are not SAG - even worse. But you don't have money to pay SAG actors. So how to make an indie movie and still make money? Now think about it. Are you getting a weird feeling about which movies exactly succeed monetarily as total no-budget indies? Movies which eliminate the acting as a factor as far as they possibly can. Blair Witch. Paranormal Activities. A few of zombie movies. Note - nobody talks about the acting, simply because those movies are so constructed that they don't have to worry about SAG, non-SAG whatever. Is it an accident? Hardly. These are the kinds of things you have to think about when you're coming up with a movie idea that you want to shoot on $0. I've seen many scripts where the writer/director successfully avoided expensive stuff - cut down locations to a single room and number of actors to one or two, to cite an extreme example. Only that will fail too - because he now has a film that relies on just one or two actors being absolutely riveting - they have to carry the weight of the whole film. In other words, he's looking for Oscar level performances. On zero money. With non-SAG actors. Well, as they say, good luck. So you see, all that clever-cost cutting didn't buy him a thing. Because the cost is not just in the obvious - sets, shooting days, number of scenes, locations, equipment etc. It's in the very concept - how can I actually pull off the whole thing. How can I have minimal locations, minimum equipment and crew, and the concept/script such, that a bad or mediocre actor won't kill it and any warm body will do, SAG or non-SAG.

There are thousands upon thousands little projects going on all over every single year. Why is it that we never hear about them, but for a few freaks more rare than lottery winners (Blair Witch etc.). Because it's hard. It's extremely hard. There are so many conditions to fulfill that to do a breakout film on a $0 budget is more rare than winning the biggest jackpot in Superlotto. That said, it still is possible to do it, and we are all dreamers, because without dreams, what is all of this good for :)
 
A discussion worth having, indeed.

I'm with you on all points, and if someone missed this in your formatting... it's bolded...

OldCorpse said:
I've seen many scripts where the writer/director successfully avoided expensive stuff - cut down locations to a single room and number of actors to one or two, to cite an extreme example. Only that will fail too - because he now has a film that relies on just one or two actors being absolutely riveting - they have to carry the weight of the whole film. In other words, he's looking for Oscar level performances. On zero money. With non-SAG actors. Well, as they say, good luck. So you see, all that clever-cost cutting didn't buy him a thing.
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I've been over-spouting this to friends and some people asking advice on going into production... I'll ask "what's it about?". As soon as I hear something about Post-Apocalyptic or One location my red flag goes up. The next question is: do you have a name attached? AKA a good? Because, you're gonna need it.

Blarg... this is tough stuff, I'd say I need a break soon but my breaks consist of... working.
 
OldCorpse said:
Frankly, I think these posts by Barry are worth more than all the thousands of posts and threads on some pixel-peeping aspect of some camera or other. This should be the focus of DVXuser - helping people make films. Of course, the website started as a gear forum, and the roots of that persist to this day, which is fine. I'm just saying, there is so, so, so much more to filmmaking than the art. Go learn it.
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By the way, I think you're right about this... after the long break from DVXuser, coming back and reading technical forums is really REALLY hard. There's an influx of people who talk more than ask questions and spread a lot of FUD about gear, process, etc. I love gear,it's what helped me get where I am, I'm open to a lot of options, well everything but SD haha... and I love learning about the process and what REALLY happens...

But... I'm bad at mediating my own posts and I'm getting exhausted with the members posting in technical forums. The only peaceful places seem to be the ones that get little traffic...

Think I'm gonna have to leave user altogether.
 
OldCorpse, this is an interesting point. The only (barely recent) counterpoint I can think of is Primer. It was allegedly produced for $7,000, yet managed to shoot on film, have multiple locations, and engaging acting. I don't think the actors were SAG (They shot in Dallas and SAG Indie didn't exist back then so I'm sure that $7k couldn't cover over $100 per day for everyone)
 
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