Independent Projects Are Able To Use Guild Members
Regardless Of The Budget!
Independent producers often think they are unable to use Director
Guild members on their projects. This is untrue. The Guild offers
the independent producer the opportunity to use Guild members
as Directors, Assistant Directors, and Production Managers. As
talked about in the Indie Producers Handbook, the Guild offers
agreements for all budgets of projects.
Recently the Guild and the Independent Producers Association
restructured the agreement that has been in existence for several
years in an effort to stop runaway productions. Guild members
may negotiated their own deal for a film budgeted under 2.5 million
dollars and even of the film is budgeted under 1.5 million dollars
guild members may work for food if they want to. Clearly this
implies that Guild members want to do the project for other than
the money. The want and need to exercise their creative memory
and juices towards a project about which they might be passionate.
If the budget of the project is 2.5 million but no more than
3.5 million Directors may receive a minimum of $70,000 with an
appropriate deferral after the producer has recouped 200% of the
negative cost. For projects budgeted from 3.5 million to 7 million
Directors may be paid 75% of their salary from the cash budget
while deferring the remaining 25% until after the producer has
recouped 200% of their negative cost. Of coursed for agreeing
to defer the Director will get an additional deferred amount.
This same situation is true with the support team for the Director.
Full pension and health benefits as well as full residual payments
will be made to the full directorial team members at the same
rate as projects made under the basic agreement.
This is a minor but producer favorable change to the existing
agreement between the DGA and the IPA so that more Guild members
may work on Independent projects keeping the work at home. This
agreement went into effect September 30th 2002 and remains in
effect until August 30th 2005.