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My favorite half day requests are the ones for the "middle half" 10-2 or 11-3. Yeah, sure I can book another job around that...

I will only do it for repeat, good clients and always with the caveat, if I get an offer for a full day, you will have first shot at up-ing it to a full day.

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I've always charged half day rate for travel, but I'm thinking about charging a staggered rate - Half day for short flights up to 2hours, or driving up to 250 miles- full day for longer flights or driving journeys. Haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do for international flights especially those that cross the international date line. At the moment I charge a half day for all dates covered so shoot in Japan comes out 2 half days on the outbound journey- tho bizarrely it's only one half day coming back to the USA as I land in in LA before the time I leave Tokyo. (Better not tell the producers or they'll be trying to tell me that they gave me an extra half day to my life and I now owe them!)

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BTW, how much do you guys usually charge for a travel day when there is no filming at all, only sitting in the plane etc?

Seems like a lot of companies try to pay 50% day labor. Sometimes it's their policy and part of their established deal. Sometimes you can still negotiate that, sometimes not. If it seems easy enough, I will *sometimes* do it for that. Know the job! Are you just hopping a plane for 2 hours (plus airport hassle), or are you responsible for helping with the gear (as in ALL the gear, not just your 302 kit in a Pelican 1510), rental car, whatever. It can turn into a much bigger hassle than a day of mixing. Let's also be real, with TSA etc I don't think any kind of travel day is going to be less than 4 or 5 hours till you are in your hotel room, or it would be called a commute!

Are you doing prep when you land? If you roll sound for a minute, it's work, but if you are traveling AND building a kit, then it's a normal full day of work (that can lead to OT with travel delays). I recently did a job where we flew, but PAs drove a cargo van with the gear. They also had our luggage, but got lost/delayed. It ended up being a late night of us sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for our personal luggage just to go to sleep. Honestly the OT was probably still less than the cost of our personal baggage being on the plane.

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I usually charge 2/3 day rate for half days. During a busy time when I was a lot younger and hungrier I remember getting in 3 half days in the space of 12 hours. It was tight but it all worked.

I did that last year I pulled a full day for a known client where i had a set end time. And turned around to to a phone interview for another client that needed something to lay under graphics.

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Lets face it!

Doing a job for less than a days rate is not helping you or the industry.

In the UK the union rate card makes no mention of a half day, that's because there is no such thing. God forbid the day when we operate like plumbers at so much per hour.

Malcolm Davies. A.m.p.s.

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I think there needs to be some qualification about what is a half day. Remember there are people posting from all different countries and possibly not everyones idea of what a half day is could be the same. In Australia a normal day is 8 hours. Therefore a half day is 4 hours. What seems to be confusing a lot of young Producers is that a normal day can constitute 8 hours at normal rates and then another 2 hours at overtime rates for a 10 hour day. Thus, a lot of Producers ring up and ask for a 5 hour half day, which isn't actually a half day at all.

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Oh, our 10 hours doesn't include lunch. So usually wrap time is 10hrs, 45mins from call.

Same here. Though this seems to have only just started happening.

A show I worked on late last year had three rates; Half day (5 hrs), eight hours, and full day (10 hrs).

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IT DEPENDS!!

The normal persons' work days are 8 hours, but the movie biz has long had a 10 hour day, variously calculated for hourly equivalent. Legally, a 10 hour day is 11 hours of ST pay..

Union contracts specify a minimum number of hours call for a work day (and a maximum duration for an optional half day rate in some circumstances. Many crew negotiate an (in effect, overscale) minimum call -- say: 10 hours minimum when the contract minimum is only 9 hours. most non union projects offer a day rate for 10, or 12 hours.

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IT DEPENDS!!

The normal persons' work days are 8 hours, but the movie biz has long had a 10 hour day, variously calculated for hourly equivalent. Legally, a 10 hour day is 11 hours of ST pay..

Union contracts specify a minimum number of hours call for a work day (and a maximum duration for an optional half day rate in some circumstances. Many crew negotiate an (in effect, overscale) minimum call -- say: 10 hours minimum when the contract minimum is only 9 hours. most non union projects offer a day rate for 10, or 12 hours.

correct and this generally holds for the video side as well. With the exception of network work overseas where it is a 24 hr buyout. So basically they send you to iraq and you are technically always working. It was explained to me by somebody who had been around a lot longer than me. That it is supposedly customary in europe for a day rate to be whole day. I don't know if that is true or something the network news devisions made up to screw with freelancers. But it is as I understand it how things are applied to their freelancers most of whom are union.

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" network work overseas where it is a 24 hr buyout. "

not just overseas, this only applies to specified hazardous assignments (combat zones) where the arguably generous rates are flat, although these networks are not abusive to their folks...

I'm not sure about the combat zones I used those as an example but I also have a buddy who spent 2 weeks catnapping under his tripod when the pope died for the same reason. like I said my understanding is it has something to do with other countries not having such a thing as overtime. And I do not mean to imply that the nets are abusive to their people though it probably sounded that way. I was just trying to point to he fact that there is a major difference between how you get paid stateside vs outside the us.

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Hey, if they want to pay me portal-to-portal from my front door until I return and they are paying me double (or more) over my 10 hour rate plus all the travel (and they will have to cover that absolutely) then they can send me just about anywhere.

I wonder how much the guys who have to travel with Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel get paid? He usually pulls the short straw and gets sent to be up-close-and-personal with giant weather problems as they are happening. To me, that is almost MORE dangerous than combat, b/c you possibly can hide from combat. You can't hide from Momma Nature when she's pissed.

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I got to spend two days with Jim covering storms in the midwest and ended up at a town hit by a tornado. Very nice guy and the weather channel had us bill direct and paid everything. Made for a nice weekend, at lease pay wise.

Did get wet, but never scared by the weather. More worried about the AC cord running thru the two inches of water we were standing in.

Scott.....

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Ah, cords though water aren't a problem as long as they are in good repair... Now if you are talking about the ENDS of a cord in water - That is a problem!

I work in rock-n-roll sometimes too, and at certain venues, they have to run heavy audio cables through a trench under the mosh-pit area to get from the stage out to where the front-of-house position is, for all the mixing board signals and then the returns for the speakers. There can be a LOT of power running through some of those cables, and I've never heard of a problem with liquid contacting the cables.

Now, you don't want to be the guy pulling UP those cables after the gig - We call that the "beer trench" for a reason, but there is FAR MORE in that pit of sick than just beer. We send the newbie on the crew to do that, b/c everyone else has already done it and KNOWS how disgusting it can be.

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Same here. Though this seems to have only just started happening.

A show I worked on late last year had three rates; Half day (5 hrs), eight hours, and full day (10 hrs).

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Apologies Australian compatriots, I've always based myself around the MPPA (Motion Picture Production Agreement) which is based around a 5 day, 40 hour week, thus if I'm doing a 10 hour day it is 8 hours at normal rates and two hours of O/T. As I'm from a Film background I thought both Film and TV production were based around the MPPA Agreement, but I must be wrong. Don't production people ring you up and ask for 8 for 10 deal?

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