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SAG Ruling Won't Go Away Quietly You need to get your screenplay credits in writing before you take it to the market. We are nearing the three year anniversary of Global Rule One, the Screen Actors Guild's (SAG) notorious and largely successful effort to impose SAG's collective agreement beyond the territorial United States. Since May 1, 2002 , with few exceptions, television, theatrical and commercial producers outside the US seeking to engage a SAG performer have been expected to sign on to SAG's collective agreement, thereby forcing them to provide SAG residuals and conditions to all SAG performers appearing on their production. Whereas service producers have been largely unaffected by Global Rule One, independent producers in need of high profile actors in Canada have been faced with new and often prohibitive limitations when casting for a project. Before Global Rule One, it was possible to engage SAG actors working in Canada under UBCP/ACTRA agreements. This gave Canadian producers the ability to obtain star cachet while still retaining the benefits of the UBCP/ACTRA agreements, namely pre-paid buyouts of rerun residual rights, a ten hour set-to-set turnaround time, and the ability to offset any amount paid to an actor above scale against overtime. By contrast, the SAG collective agreement does not allow for pre-paid buyouts, provides a 12 hours portal-to-portal turnaround time (i.e. twelve hours rest not including travel time to set), and does not apply wages paid above scale against overtime. Still, producers seeking SAG cast still have several potential cost cutting options available. It is still possible for a Canadian resident actor who is a member of both SAG and UBCP/ACTRA to work under a UBCP/ACTRA collective agreement. SAG will not sanction them if you can convince the actor to give up SAG fringes. If your actor of choice is not a Canadian resident and you are working in television, other options are possible. Under the SAG Television Agreement an actor working on a production for basic cable who receives more than 200% of SAG scale may elect to apply any portion of their above scale fees toward a prepayment of residuals. In this scenario, the actor's agreement must specify the applicable number of prepaid reruns; a 67.5% portion of the 200% buys twelve runs, with any additional runs costing 1% of minimum scale each. Another cost cutting measure for television is the High Definition Video (HDV) option. Most US based actors belong to both SAG and AFTRA, who share jurisdiction over television. Despite Global Rule One, producers in British Columbia can still hire AFTRA performers under a UBCP agreement wherever AFTRA has exclusive jurisdiction, so long as any residuals are forwarded by UBCP to AFTRA. One anomaly in SAG and AFTRA's shared jurisdiction over television is that AFTRA has exclusive jurisdiction over productions shot in HDV. So, if you shoot television in HDV you can still avoid SAG fringes if a performer is an AFTRA member. So,
though Global Rule One may offend Canadian sensibilities, bringing
on SAG actors does not necessarily mean indefinite (and generally
higher) residual payments, the loss of between two and four shooting
hours each day, and the potential for budget crippling overtime
payments. And while bypassing SAG may be a hard sell for producers,
word has it there are still diplomats in SAG's constituency who
are willing to take one for the team.
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