Getting payed for your Independent Film

If you are Director and Co-Producer of your won Screenplay. How do you decide what you should be payed. Do you include a Salary from the budget? Do you award yourself a salary for being a Director, writing the Screenplay and for Co-Producing etc???
 
I think it depends on the budget. At the low budget level, I'd say pay yourself a flat fee for the time you'll take off from your day job to shoot. Regardless of how many jobs you do on the film, just pay yourself for missed work to keep the budget low, and yourself alive
 
If you are Director and Co-Producer of your won Screenplay. How do you decide what you should be payed. Do you include a Salary from the budget? Do you award yourself a salary for being a Director, writing the Screenplay and for Co-Producing etc???
For clarity:

An independent film is a movie made outside of the studio system.
Many people here believe there is a budget cut off point; that at a
certain budget level the movie is no longer “independent”. So in an
attempt to not get off track I'll keep my answers to a relatively
realistic budget where everyone is getting paid but still meets the
criteria that will stay in the “independent” realm.

There are many different budget ranges (as El Director mentions) so
it depends. I will only speak about a project where everyone is paid.
In that type of independent film even the writer, director and co-producer
gets paid. Everyone gets paid so the answer is yes; you award yourself
a salary for everything you do.

You decide based on two factors. How much of the back end you are
taking. The total budget.

A reasonable “rule-of-thumb” would be 2% to 3% for the screenplay and
2.5% to 4% for directing. The producing team may take 4% to 8% of
the total budget. So if you are one of two producers or one of three...
well you do the math.

So on a budget of £100,000 you would pay yourself £3,000 for the
screenplay, £4,000 for directing and £4,000 for co-producing. Depending
on the project and on your experience you could offer to take £6,000
for producing/directing and drop the script fee in half. As always, it
depends. And experienced writer who wants to direct may take a
larger fee for the script and less for directing.

You can do the math for a £10,000 project.
 
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