Tuesday, March 23, 2010

"The Check's in the Mail"

I got my first taste of residuals this week with a check in the mail from DVD/Pay TV sales for Angels & Demons.  Yay!  It won't make me rich, but will allow me to pay my rent and bills this month!  Coincidentally, friend/teacher/actor/blogger extraordinaire, David Dean Bottrell just wrote about residuals this week on his blog.  He has much more experience with them and explains the whole reason they exist (as well as the desire by some to get rid of them! grrr...) much more eloquently than I can, so check out his post Magic Envelopes.

4 comments:

  1. Woohoo! Congrats! Who in a cast is eligible for residuals and who isn't? Do you have to be a union member to get them?

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  2. Thanks! All principals in a cast are eligible for residuals. The amount is based on role, how many days worked, etc. And yes, you must be a SAG member to get acting residuals -- or to work on any SAG movie for that matter. A perk of joining the union for sure!

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  3. So even though your role in A&D was small, you're still considered a principal (because you actually have a character "name" or credit and your not just a run-of-the-mill extra)? AND because you're a union member...?

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  4. yes, one way to look at it is every actor that's in the credits will get residuals. and to even work on any studio movie (and basically any movie that has any sort of distribution, i.e. that anyone sees) you must be a SAG member -- a vast majority of those films are made under the Screen Actors Guild contract. if you are not a member, but they want you to be in it, say a line, whatever (think Brett Favre in There's Something About Mary), the production has to sign a waiver (a Taft-Harley) and pay a $500 fee, at which point said actor gets to be in the movie, and gets the privilege of joining the union -- oh, and gets to pony up the $2300 joining fee.

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Thanks for commenting!