Hi,
There has been a bit of turbulence in the background world over the past two months. On March 4, I
wrote about some shifts that were happening with some background casting directors and the local agents. If you don't know much, then I would recommend you
reading up on it.
You may or may not have seen the announcement go out from many of the background agencies in town about reducing their commissions for background performers. Here's what the letter had to say, which was circulated just over a week ago:
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Hello all Vancouver Background Casting Directors,The Vancouver Background Talent Agencies listed below, have agreed to reducing the commission fees on non-union background performers by 5%. This new rate will be calculated on the BC minimum wage and we will continue to follow the current Ministry of Labour Standards. And will be effective at the start of your next weekly payroll period on April 22, 2013.
This new rate will not change the non-union background performers current take home pay which is and will remain consistent with Ministry of Labour's minimum wage plus vacation pay.
We look forward to supporting your productions by providing quality, trained BG performers and to support the efforts of Save BC Film.----
I wanted to get some clarity about this letter so I spoke to Glenn Bottomley of Local Color Talent Agency, who seems to be the unofficially official go-to person to talk to about the collective movement amongst the background agencies.
The previous rate charged to productions for background performers was $12.26/hour. It breaks down like this:
$10.25 (minimum wage) + $0.41 (4% vacation pay) = $10.66 (performer minimum take-home pay as regulated by the BC Ministry of Labour)
$10.66 + $1.60 (15% agent commission) = $12.26/hour (fee charged to production)
And now (as of April 22, 2013), with the commission reduced here's how it looks:
$10.66 + $1.07 (10% agent commission) = $11.73/hour (fee charged to production)
The production now saves $0.53 for each hour that a non-union background performer is on-set. If you consider some scenes need many dozens, or even 100+ performers, this can be a significant savings for the production... on the backs of the talent agents. The performers will still walk away with the same wage.
Glenn pointed out that the commission structure is not necessarily a flat 10% for all. Union Background Performers are still being charged 15% commission and those who receive an upgrade or have a negotiated rate of more than the minimum required, may be charged a higher commission. Even this may not be the standard across all BG Agents as I recently saw a Facebook post for an agency indicating that their commission is 10% across the board.
What does this mean for you if you have a background agent? You should be having a conversation with your agent to be clear about what's going on and how the commissioning structure will or won't affect your partnership with them.
It's clear that there are still some challenges ahead for both background agents and casting directors within this community. It will be interesting see where things land over the next 2-3 months.
Kenji Maeda
CEO Production Heads Network Inc
