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Hi there
My fellow producer, I am in need of some help on a sticky issue. And I hope that producer or fan alike can help me deal with the issue.
For people who know me, I produce Superhero Content in Australia. I have been making movie since 2016.
So the problem I have is this. I have a contract (more like an agreement on email) with all the actress we work with, and they are all the same contract, well, equal term and all. In the contract, I have stated that actress are paid only after a project is completed. Which was written because we have been burn by some other actress before (Who left without finishing the project) so to ensure the cast maintain during the whole term of the production, we listed that we only pay the actress after the project (Not just the shoot, but the whole project, like editing and stuff like that in Post).
So wind back to June, we had started the Agent Caracal 3 movie, which was designated a full length feature. So we shoot with the cast and after the first couple of shoot, 2 of the cast have a scheduling conflict (Both went to uni so their time are very limited) and we cannot schedule a single shoot in the next 3 months. Which we basically drag the production on for the duration.
And this is when this particular actress come to us and said she is tired of waiting, and she want to withdraw form the production and demanded full payment, meanwhile she is not allowing us to use any footage (very unique law in Australia, even if we have a release, you still need the person approval before putting their image on market). We tried to defuse the situation, by offering her a payment plan for an instalment so we can use her image, but she said no, and demand full payment. So we go to our lawyer, on his advice, he said what she is doing is breaching the contract and we should not pay her anything until we went into settlement (a process which both side sit down in front of a mediator and talk about it), so by settling in mediation, we should have a workable solution for both of us. This is in September.
So we send her an email, saying due to the payment clause in the contract, if she did not finish the project, we will not release any payment. We have done this because we try to get her into arbitration, but instead of going that route. What she did was harassing us, by posting nasty message on our Facebook, YouTube page, and threaten the owner of the studio we use (Which we have no relationship with beside renting her studio to shoot movie), to a point the owner call the Police. Then I started getting strange phone call, to a point I have to change my phone number.
So I have ask my lawyer again, he said by law, she broke the contract, and if this type of behaviour persist, we should also contact the police about it. However, in Australia, filming/movie making is a very small industry, basically everyone know everyone, so what she is doing is harming our reputation regardless if she lied outright, I also talked to my other actresses, one of them is a law student, she told us that while we are right to withhold the funding, but in a more humanity side, we should also compensate her for her work, because she did have two shoot with us.
So. This is what I afraid of.
1.) If we ignore her, and act according to our lawyer (Which told us to ignore her and withhold the payment) I am afraid it will trash our reputation.
2.) If we follow the actress (the law student) advice, I am afraid that will leave a hole in our procedure, it give way to other actress who would hold us ransom and demand for money, then what is the contract for?
I am torn between these two issue, now I have completed Agent Caracal 3 but I cannot show it, because that actress is barring us from showing it.
Any idea how to diffuse this situation? Should I stick to my gun or should I cave?
Thanks for your time.
Need some advice on an actress dispute
It sounds like breach of contact but you need to decide if the time spent on court dates, lawyers etc is worth the effort. I do have a question though. Why in your contracts are the models not paid until editing, post production etc is finished? Once she's done her job of acting her part is over and she should be paid. If it takes you, let's say two months, to get all that done why would you make the models payment contingent on something she has no part in?
That is my concern as well. but as my lawyer say, arbitration is very cheap (I remember it is a $180 flat fee for a single session) and you don't need lawyer to do, it's not going to court (as in I sue her or she sue us) but rather we just want to settle this. If arbitration fail, then yeah, maybe we could consider going to court. But we didn't even get that far...Valik10 wrote: ↑4 years agoIt sounds like breach of contact but you need to decide if the time spent on court dates, lawyers etc is worth the effort. I do have a question though. Why in your contracts are the models not paid until editing, post production etc is finished? Once she's done her job of acting her part is over and she should be paid. If it takes you, let's say two months, to get all that done why would you make the models payment contingent on something she has no part in?
As for why the clause cover all the way till editing? It seems unfair to the model/actress but you will know why if you live in Australia. That is because of the unique (and mostly harmful law to us producer) law in Australia. In Australia, it does not matter if you have signed a release, the person of the likeness you use can have the ultimate say as to what they want to do with their likeness, like IP law, but consider their face are IP. So basically, if the actress say "I don't want you to use my face" at any point before release, they can, and you cannot show their face, once you release your movie, then their IP become public domain, which mean she cannot request a take down without a court order.
That is where I got burn before, actually twice. One time I finish shooting the whole movie, pay off the actress, a few day before editing is done, one of the actress message us saying she no longer want to have her face associated with our production and done a runner. Which mean we paid and we cannot use the footage.
Another time is when one of the actress misread the print and refuse to shoot a scene in underwear. That time we did not lose big because we only pay half before she literally walk out. And there are nothing I can do to stop her from walking out.
So what we do is, after the shoot, we finish editing the movie, then have the actress agree to let us publish, and then we pay them. I know this is unusual, but we do have an unusual law.....