I’ve recently received my first significant contract lesson dealing with people on the independent scene.  This is a situation where I did draft a contract but it was not as extensive as it could have been.  I did not cover myself in scenarios where an independent project does not work out after committing so much time.  The lesson of the month is that wording is everything.

After exiting the stage from a 6-month engagement with a low-budget independent Afro-futurism feature film set in Chicago, I attempted to negotiate a reduced rate for the time spent helping the project on its feet.  I had a very interesting conversation with the director whose business acumen and knowledge of putting together a movie, in my opinion, have come into full question.  A few things were made clear to me.  One, there was no respect in regard to individual lives committed to the project.  Two, she viewed her film as an opportunity for me to meet the people she knew rather than a project that was in need of good professional help.  Three, the director has a backwards philosophy on what it means to work in independent film.  I will omit numbers in this description but I will discuss a specific moment that was debated.  I made a statement comparing the reduced rate she chose to pay me with two weeks of minimum wage.  This is after 6 months producing and re-producing a project that kept hitting a wall due to the investors.  This new rate is a quarter of my initial promised wage if the project wrapped production.  Now, mind you, I did not request my full wage after quitting.  I took several hundred off the first offer and was willing to go as low as half.  But there’s something about being paid an amount that says more about a person’s perception of value than it does about the amount of work put in.

The director made some interesting statements about hours not being considered on the clock when working in independent film, as if I cried about not being paid by the hour.  Then the director spoke on independent film as if it’s this thing that people get involved in for no pay, all for the righteous sake of putting one person’s vision on the big screen.  Independent film is most definitely not a gold mine.  Independent film is where the artist’s soul is fed, even if the pockets aren’t packed.  It is that indeed.  But independent film, like film on any level, is a business.  There are parameters.  There are numbers.  You choose a number.  You work much harder than what that number says you are owed.  Than you work harder than that.  And people show their respect and value for that if they have integrity.  I didn’t get involved with an independent production for the numbers.  If that were the case, I would never have accepted a producing position that was being paid half the rate of the Director of Photography.  Especially when the project and most involved with the project are non-union.  This was a project that began with 85 pages, 26 characters, 12 days to shoot and all for under a 20K budget.  It needed assistance.  So think 6 months on that, location scouting, casting, meetings, hiring crew, scheduling, script notes, insurance, new budgets, an Indiegogo campaign, canceling shoot dates, hiring new crew, budgeting again, crew meetings, rehearsals, equipment, new negotiations, filtering all personnel concerns, rescheduling again…and all for one minimum wage check, which was worded to me as “based upon the work completed.”  That right there is a matter of value and integrity.

I say all of this to put the matter bluntly; when negotiating contracts, I’ve learned to cover Murphy’s Law.  If it can happen, it will happen and one must be prepared.  Find the real value in each scenario and fight for that on paper.  With the way that I felt after that phone conversation, I now know that contracts are there to make sure that everything is a legal matter rather than a street matter.  LoL.  In a different life, for a different person, this could have easily been a street matter.  There’s no secret how much work is put into an independent film.  It’s no secret that most independent films fail to see fruition because the funding isn’t there.  We as professional artists have to remember that time is time and value is value.  That’s why the contract is so valuable.  An in-depth contract.  I truly wish I’d covered every base on how I spent my time.  Especially for a project that did not involve me on the development level, which means I did not start in the creative room.  My time was requested to help organize things.  So yes, time and numbers matter.