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.