Stephen Williams

If you don't provide food the crew, you will loose your crew for longer, that will cost you way way more than the cost of feeding people. It's actually very cheap insurance. Say you have 50 people, they drive off from the location looking for a restaurant or in reality 10 different restaurants , others may go to a bar, one will go shopping & get lost. Someone will get their car towed away, have an accident or break down.

So what is your opinion on the matter? I am sure you have one :D Was it acceptable for Phil to get coffee for someone in another dept?

In Max's ideal world there would be a coffee maker in every department & nobody else could make coffee as it's potentially dangerous therefore highly paid coffee makers are required :D

Not correct, the individual technicians will be in greater demand & will be able to command a higher pay check in future, thats how it works is a capitalist system :D

Bear in mind that working in Commercials is hard work, your treated like poop, have to pander to fools but make a good wage. Only do a low budget or a freebee if you can do what you want & have fun. I shot a feature in the summer 28 long days, best fun I ever had in 35 years however I would have earned more on a 3 day commercial. We all have a choice.....I could have sat on the beach but chose to work with a Director who has given me a huge amount of fully paid work over the last 5 years. Yes it was worth it & will happily do the same next August if he has written another script :D

The double rate applies for single day jobs, I don't think you could expect that on a 13 week show. Producers have been telling me I am too expensive for 35 years, I don't take any notice. I know how much I want to earn a year & divide by 100, sometimes I do more than 100 days , sometimes not, thats the 'fun' of being freelance :D If people want to work for £60 a day, they are doing it as a hobby with no possibility of making it a career. I lost a film last year to a kid was going to supply a camera & be the DOP for free.

In Swiss society confidentially comes before anything else, that is why Tax evasion is not a criminal offence. If a banker even confirms a bank account exists he can go to prison. The social insurance fund cannot even pass data of employees to the Tax dept. In 2 cantons even with a court order a banker may not testify in court against a client, it's very different to the US where what Uncle Sam people jump.

Your having a laugh if you think freelancers should assume they will work 30 hours x 48 weeks a year. A freelance day rate must be a minimum of twice the full time rate, so min £136 a day. BECTU shows a min day rate for a clapper loader of £192 so I am in the right ballpark. Problem with communists is they work too cheap & then cry about it :D

In Switzerland a referendum can be forced if you get 10,000 signatures from the public, so there are many crazy subjects that are put to the public vote every month or so.

I understand that much of the French business is made with people getting unemployment benefits. The unemployment office will pay half of the days worked, so clever producers say the shoot has twice as many days as it does, thus getting free labour.

if you only make 1% of your income from your stock footage! you must be earning a fortune from your other work :D

Well Max, you have not denied that you have used camera assistants with your time lapse filming, it's all very funny, thanks for the entertainment. It's been a long time since we had such a great thread here! Where is Landon Parks :D

Often films make a loss a capitalist has to accept that. BTW I have seen the CV of a camera assistant who claims he has been your camera assistant shooting time-lapse....................

Of course thats correct, Max is a capitalist, he just does not accept it as he earns 10's of thousands rather than 100's of thousands.

Thats a very poor return, anything below 100% profit in view of the risk is an extremely poor. With 1 in 10 films making a profit, that great return has to pay the losses on the other 9 & still leave something left over for the producer. I know the producer of the MR Men cartoon series, they signed a contract in 1973 with the BBC to produce 13 episodes, the BBC paid £100 per episode for 7 years use. The episodes cost £2000 to make. They sold in 35 countries & costs were covered. The production company owned the film rights & 'thereafter', it's the meaningless phrase thereafter (at the time) that made the money in the end, video rentals, computer games etc. When the author Died his family sold the book rights, the buyer also wanted the film rights and paid £6,000,000 some 35 years later. It's the only speculative venture the production did that ever produced a big return 35 years later.....

What is stopping you & your friends making films that aim to loose money? If some of you own houses then they could be sold & the money spent for the good of your workers. Sounds like a great idea why don't you do it :D

Generally zooms are not used as you don't get the true effects as it's just a rear module on a lens. Cooke 20-100 has been used in the past. Why B4 mount? there is no 4x3, 2/3 sensor to use it on.

An A list star will not work for an advertisement for a £100k a day, they will want way more, however the person paying thinks it brings value. A DIT with equipment charging £150 a day for a single day needs to put up his rates, if he is any good he won't have a problem

Of course thats not the truth in £ or $ terms, possibly in percentage terms. I know a retired banker who has paid in excess of £20,000,000 to the UK government to date, as he says the government believe all your money actually belongs to them, depending on tax rates on his death he fully expects the revenue will have taken over 90% of his money over his lifetime, Max would like them to get even more.

If you did not have high earners, then the poor would have to pay vastly higher taxes, it's explained rather nicely here:- Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this… The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing The fifth would pay $1 The sixth would pay $3 The seventh would pay $7 The eighth would pay $12 The ninth would pay $18 The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59 So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20″. Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men ? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share? The bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay. And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving). The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving). Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,”but he got $10!” “Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!” “That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!” “Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!” The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

A camera without a ground glass :D. Thats the reason you do a camera check out, you won't be able to frame the camera either without a GG.

In the Uk the highest personal tax rate is currently 45%, was 50% last year, it's been 83% on earned income before & 98% on unearned income I'm my lifetime. It's also exceeded 100% at one point! So the government is actually the biggest benefactor from greedy producers who make millions, it's lucky as they have to get the money from somewhere to subsidise housing benefit for those on minimum wage & families earning substantially more. Douglas Slocombe earned substantially more than 250k when he shot Raiders of a Lost Ark over 30 years ago & he is still enjoying the benefits at 101 years of age. I can't see why anyone should begrudge him, he got lucky once in a very long & successful career.

That pretty much already happens , it's called taxation.

If the FDD is correct eye focusing will be fine, you may have a problem with very wide angle lenses so be careful with wides.

Those people lost their £1 due to greed, the person won £1,000,000 was LUCKY just like George Lucas . Clearly your not doing very much now or you would not be complaining, as Richard said why don't you share your stock footage income?