Relying On A Union For Your Performer Credits And Pay
Jun 6th, 2009 by Alan Yu
While on set the other day I was talking to a person who worked on a movie recently and was originally supposed to just be doing some simple background work. However, as it turned out he was playing an even bigger role as in the movie he ended up getting stabbed and bloodied up like crazy by one of the key characters in the film.
Now in most cases you would assume that would fall in the lines of a stunt or principal work. While I wasn’t working with the person to see this myself, he mentioned that he had to also take a fall and the camera was on his face in a close up a lot. However, the production did not give him a credit role for that.
Instead, what he got was an SAE (Special Abilities Extra) upgrade which means the performer gets paid a lot more minus any kind of an acting credit. As a result, the issue was brought up to the performers Union here in BC as the process is that they will review the footage to see if an upgrade or credit is warranted.
Unfortunately, he mentioned that after they reviewed it they determined that his role was not integral in moving the story forward and therefore the production did not have to give him a credit upgrade. He then mentioned that Unions don’t usually fight for you in these types of situations either and so he just left it as is. However, he did enjoy the experience.
I never been through a situation like this personally. But a good point he brought up is that if you ever do have an issue like this you have about 30 days to rectify it. So don’t just sit there and waiting for the last minute to bring the issue up if you encounter something similar.
At the same time, I guess this example shows that you can’t necessarily just rely on the Union to be your savior. In this situation what you could do is ask the production people ahead of time on what type of credit you would be receiving for doing this. Example, like in this case if they said SAE and not stunts then you could just make it clear in a professional way that you shouldn’t be doing say flips if it is not stunt work. That way, you can get everything sorted out right away.
