Hey guys. I'm in the process of setting a budget for a pilot episode my brother and I are making, but I'm a little stumped on knowing how much to pay our actors. We'll need to hire 9 good actors and about 32 extras.
We were thinking about paying our "good" actors 300 dollars per day for 10 to 12 hour days and our extras 50 dollars per day. We were also thinking about using non-union actors, which brings up another question. How do we ensure that these actors will show up and play their roles?
The reason I ask is because when we were shooting the promo for the pilot we were working on a shoe-string budget so we couldn't pay our actors that much and since we didn't have them under any legal binding contract, they were pretty laxed about showing up to the shoots because they often cancelled at the last second to do higher paying gigs. Definitely understandable, but it was frustrating because we had to move the shooting dates, which caused us to go over the budget.
Anyway, I'm really trying to avoid that when we do the real thing because we're campaigning for a lot of money so we need to be able to deliver. We figure 300 is good considering these guys aren't even b-rated actors but they're definitely talented enough to pull off the job. Do you guys think this is enough?
Also, we'll need them to also show up and dedicate their time to complete this project. What kind of legal mess do I have to get my hands into if I want to make sure my actors do the job when we need them to?
Thanks!
We were thinking about paying our "good" actors 300 dollars per day for 10 to 12 hour days and our extras 50 dollars per day. We were also thinking about using non-union actors, which brings up another question. How do we ensure that these actors will show up and play their roles?
The reason I ask is because when we were shooting the promo for the pilot we were working on a shoe-string budget so we couldn't pay our actors that much and since we didn't have them under any legal binding contract, they were pretty laxed about showing up to the shoots because they often cancelled at the last second to do higher paying gigs. Definitely understandable, but it was frustrating because we had to move the shooting dates, which caused us to go over the budget.
Anyway, I'm really trying to avoid that when we do the real thing because we're campaigning for a lot of money so we need to be able to deliver. We figure 300 is good considering these guys aren't even b-rated actors but they're definitely talented enough to pull off the job. Do you guys think this is enough?
Also, we'll need them to also show up and dedicate their time to complete this project. What kind of legal mess do I have to get my hands into if I want to make sure my actors do the job when we need them to?
Thanks!