In France freelancers as we know them in the UK and USA do not exist in Film & Television.

An individual cannot issue an invoice in France without having a registered company for very specific scope of work. 

Some Film & TV industry professionals have their own French registered business to invoice in the manner of “Schedule D” staff in the UK (Consultants/Officially licensed Drivers /People who hire out gear etc.). However they are the minority and this is not how most of the Film & Television industry operates.

The majority of French crew are most often registered in the “Intermittents du Spectacle” scheme. This means “temporary workers of the entertainment industry”.  Here let’s refer to those who work in this industry as “technicians” and not freelancers, because the term as applies to France is misleading. They are in fact not freelance but hired per job on a day by day basis, with a payslip, and those hours declared and filed to the government.

The government run scheme allows Film & TV freelancers to have unemployment support in the form of “dole payments” (unemployment pay) from a fund they pay into with each payslip/hours accrued. This means that between contracts and in “downtime” caused by seasonality or other reasons they received around 60% of their daily rate in order to not lose them to another industry while they seek their next film job. In this way the French Government supports the French film industry.

In order to gain access to this scheme, the technician must register with the unemployment agency and post 510 hours of relevant work in the industry within any 10 month period. Once these “hours” have been achieved and recorded at the National Unemployment office ‘France Travail” then they begin to be entitled to their unemployment pay between contracts. 

Each year the technician must work to renew their status by achieving the number of hours (510 in 10 months). If they do not, they lose their status and relevant unemployment rights. Therefore people want to work as much as possible to keep their hours.

Technicians paid under this scheme have a base rate underpinned by the union rate card. The unions renew the rate card every six months as they agree new rules and regulations to safeguard workers. 

Our job as producers is stay across the newly published and agreed rates and terms. Our duty is to apply these for the fair treatment of all workers in the Film & Television industry. The base rate is not what the producer pays, not what the technician receives. The technician receives the base rate minus – 30% (approx) in net pay as explained in the example in the section just above. 

Sometimes foreign clients ask us to align rates with their local country rates but the French union rate card is strict per genre (TV documentary and entertainment / Fiction and commerical / Social media and corporate). Therefore it is often not possible to reduce rates to what would be paid in US or UK. This is consequence of the choice of choosing to shoot in beautiful France, and accepting that the unions protect the staff here means a higher rate cost to Producers.  

Are you a Crewing agency?

We are not a diary service nor booking agent, and tend to only book crew on the projects in which we have a larger involvement or scope.

 We do sometimes book crew for our longstanding clients but when we hire crew to your production we are legally responsable for them, and if we aren’t on set to manage or oversee how the crew are asked to work, our insurance and accountability would nevertheless be engaged as soon as they are declared for work by The French Fix.