Directors’ Pay Campaign
Directors often work for months and sometimes years underpaid in development to drive a project forward. Directors as the creative lead hold the specialist responsibility above all crew for the complex creative delivery of a production.
Directors show up giving 100% of themselves to a project, working long days in increasingly pressured schedules, embracing new technology skills, COVID protocols and working with tightening budgets.
The Challenge
Directors undertake the job of visionary creative, solving complex problems and identifying effective economic solutions on productions yet productions demand that directors accept pay that has been frozen for years despite productions making healthy profits and the expansion of SVOD services. Freelance directors careers are too unstable to challenge unfair pay as they risk being black-listed.
Join The Campaign
The time is now to change rates for directors, for too long too much money is spent on production and not the key creatives that lead the production. SDGI is calling for proper investment in the directors both up front and at the back end. Join our fight for director pay equity by registering a job on our director pay portal so we can better understand your pay on a project and start campaigning for you.
Register directors pay details in our Pay Portal
Add as much or as little information on your project, the director’s rate being the most important piece of information.
5 Resources on Pay for Directors
Read Financial Terms for Directors GUIDE
Read SDGI’s terms to help you understand contractual terms relating to your pay as a director.
Use this GUIDE for your projects with Arts Council
Use this guide for your projects with Arts Council. In this Fair and Equitable Remuneration and Contracting Policy, the Arts Council articulates its position and expectations with regard to remuneration and contracting within the arts sector.
Read this GUIDE on Directors’ Pay in Europe
Learn how directors and authors are paid. Read an explainer guide made by the SAA on on how directors and authors are paid for their work.
Learn about Directors Guild of America Residuals
In the USA directors recieve “residuals” and include television reruns, home video releases, and exhibition on pay television and subscription video on demand services. Residuals obligations do not depend on profitability, they are triggered by the project’s exhibition. Different formulas apply depending on the nature of the project and where it is used. Residuals can be based on gross receipts, telecasts, or the period of time a project is exhibited.
Read Director’s Earnings Report from FERA
Read a report by FERA on Directors’ Pay across Europe.
Watch Explainer Video
Watch this old but useful video that presents the principles of the situation for European screenwriters and directors. What are the professional lives of screenwriters and directors like? How do they make a living and what are the challenges they face?