When discussing day rates, what do you think is a good cut off for FTP to have before an employer's post is automatically classified as "Low Pay" and is listed in the Low/No Pay Jobs section, regardless of where the employer would like to post it? As a jumping off point, for department keys-
Gaffer
Sound Mixer
Key Grip
Production Designer
First AD
Key Hair, Makeup
Costume Designer or Key Stylist
Obviously there are others, and DPs are sort of in their own world of higher rates. Also, these would be base rates and wouldn't include the kit rentals for certain crew members, but I'm curious where people would draw a line?
$400/12
$350/12
$300/12
$250/12
Currently there is a job listed for my position that wants to pay $100 a day, flat, and FTP does not have it in the Low/No pay section. Skipping over the discussion that this is actually against the law, and that the "Producer" is requiring one be an experienced individual if they apply, nobody in their right mind would call below minimum wage anything but low pay, and especially for a department key.
Im with you I have had the same question. When is the line drawn for said category. The minimum wage in California is $10.50. So for a 12 hour day that would be $126 very low in my opinion when you considering many factors. How long the hours are, the responsibility a crew member has that being PA, Grip, Gaffer, electric etc. Or let alone there knowledge and skill set that that company gets for that price.
I feel like they should put a project in low pay if its under minimum wage. Now thats tricky because its different in every state so I don't know how they would regulate that or if they make a bench mark rate any job under this amount is low pay/no pay category regardless of location.
Its a very subjective topic and also have so many area with no answers. I know as a DP I consider a lot of factors when a job is presented to me with a specific budget low or high. But I do agree that there needs to be some sort of number set for what is considered low pay/no pay. Im curious to read others thoughts as well.
It's Tom here, from the Film and TV Pro team.
Great topic. Glad to see you're discussing this.
To clarify where exactly we place the line, any employer posting on the paid jobs board has to agree that they're at least paying State Minimum Wage. If we spot an employer posting a paid job with a rate under SMW, it gets moved to the Low/No board. This is calculated on a state-by-state basis.
So, if any of you discover that a job is paid less than SMW, please let us know.
"Sign up for our paid service at $120/year so that you can hunt for about 2 gigs per month that apply to you. Oh, also they'll probably be minimum wage. That's only about $5 per minimum wage gig you apply for!" says FTP.
I like FTP's total non-reply to my e-mail on this issue.
Why don't you try:
advertising on the site
making the job-providers pay more to advertise
or at least moving the minimum wage jobs to low/no pay?
Kicking the costs to the job-seekers is immoral, full stop.
Relegating things to whether a job is paying minimum wage or not isn't the answer. Standard rates should be known in the general market and in the US this is standard pricing for a professional sound mixer, which is my usual job:
$500 - $600 for 10 hours or $650 - $750 for 12 hours labor.
Kit rental of a basic package (Boom, mixer, and two wireless) runs for $275 - $325 a day and additional gear is extra depending on what it is.
Man how rates have gone down. When i was working in Highschool as an electric i was pulling 300/day, I know the Gaffer on those shows was 600/day. And this was all non-union, in the late 90s!
In any case, I would say any rate under 200/day would be "Low" budget, and anything under min wage should be deleted.
When looking at this site for gigs I'm looking for a project that is interesting and will add quality to my resume. I don't divide the rate by hours. I look at the overall amount of the project. As a costume designer I'm more concerned if the costume budget is somewhat in balance with the script needs, although I have recently used promotional wardrobe for 75% of the cast's outfits.
I don't care how the projects are divided on the site because I always look at both.
This needs to be addressed ASAP. I am PAYING for this site, you need to provide quality for my payment, if you cannot update the site to keep the low budget stuff out of the fully paid section, then what am i paying for? You already forced a payment option, and now there are hardly any real paying gigs on here.
Fully paid should always be at least 300 a day, mostly 500. FTP is taking our money and laughing. I just checked this morning and about half of the job positions listed in the fully paid section were around 100 a day. There needs to be a "flag this ad" button so things can be monitored. Every week its the same thing, hardly anything on here in the "fully paid" section is even remotely close to the going industry rates.
FTP needs to fix this or I'll be pulling out of this paid stuff since its no better than the "low / no" paid section.
I think this a very useful discussion, but we aren't talking about where all this starts. I'd love to work on higher budget shows, but those are fewer and farther between. There is a glut of low-budget fare in the market as a result of budgets being pushed down. This is where they post. Unless I am missing something.
Just chiming in to fix Kenneth Keeler's comment about what a minimum wage day would look like. At $10.50, a 12 hour day would actually be $147, NOT $126. To do the math on this that accounts for 8 hours of straight time, 2 hours of 1.5x pay, and 2 hours of 2x pay, you would multiply the base rate ($10.50) by the number 14, not the number 12, like Kenneth did. This is important!!!
Handy chart here, if the number 14 is confusing. http://www.lineproducing.com/payhour-calculations
6 years ago
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