Calculating overtimes in film & TV crew ‘package rates’
Often, local production crew (especially those below-the-line) are paid package rates, rather than on an hourly basis, to compensate for the longer-than-usual workdays in the industry. Package rates fix the payable amount either for the entire project or per day for a guaranteed number of work hours on set, including overtime.
Sometimes, however, productions exceed the original number of guaranteed hours and fixed payments make it difficult for the average crew to compute how much exactly they are owed by the production for such excesses. Here’s how it can be done, thanks to this article:
Suppose a crew is paid a package rate of ₽2,000 for each shoot day. Current guidelines provide that a shoot day not exceed 14 hours, from the earliest call to tail-lights. In those 14 hours, crew takes 2 meal breaks for an hour each and works for the rest of the day. The daily package rate of ₽2,000, therefore, amounts to 12 guaranteed hours of work.
Labor laws mandate an 8-hour regular workday, while work performed in excess thereof is considered overtime. On an ordinary working day, overtime pay is pegged at 125% percent of the hourly rate. Regular rate and overtime pay, meanwhile, increase based on applicable premiums.
Using the example above, of the 12 guaranteed hours, 4 hours are prepaid overtime at 1.25 times the hourly rate or 5 (4×1.25) of additional straight time — ‘normal working hours paid at the regular rate’ — for a total of 13 (8+5) straight time hours.
Of the ₽2,000 package rate, hourly rate, therefore, is ₽153.84 (2,000÷13). Regular rate is ₽1,230.72 (153.84×8), while prepaid overtime is ₽192.30 (153.84×1.25) for each exceeding hour or a total of ₽769.20 (192.30×4) of overtime prepayment.
Now if the shoot exceeds the guaranteed hours, say 2 hours in excess of the agreed 12 hours, additional overtime pay equal to ₽384.60 (192.30×2) must be paid towards the crew on top of the package rate.
All these can be expressed as follows:
Prepaid overtime (OP) = guaranteed hours−8 normal work hours
Total straight time hours (ST) = 8+(OP×1.25)
Regular rate (RR) = package rate÷ST
Overtime rate (OT) = RR×1.25
This is a follow up on earlier posts “How the DOLE & FDCP joint memo affects your production budget” and “Counting the hours on and off set differently: local vs. distant vs. locked shoots”.
