"Resident" Designer Status?

[McDingo]

Hello all,

 

I'm a resident technician (sound) at a provincial venue. Although not primarily a producing house there are occasional productions for which a sound design is required. I have always been paid the same fee (not huge) regardless of the size of the show which sort of balances out over time. However....

 

A recent full production paid me the same fee PLUS £100 to design both sound and AV. I raised this with the manager at the time saying that the AV was not an add-on, but rather a whole separate requirement due to the nature of the show. At this stage there was no brief for the AV element, and it was only during the production week that it turned out that the AV was a constant part of the show, running throughout the two hour performance requiring hundreds of specialised images and multiple bespoke videos. In terms of time, it took much longer and was more involved than any sound design I've done.

 

My manager insists that the MRSL rate for 'resident designers' is about £460 and that in paying anything above that means that he's being generous. I think that this is a misunderstanding of 'resident designer' and I'm hoping that someone out there can clear this up.

 

HE thinks that 'resident designer' is any resident employee who then takes on the design work. I believe that 'resident designer' is a designer who is resident, is salaried to design, and is paid an additional fee for Intellectual Rights / developing the overall look / feel of the production. If this is the case, the work undertaken for the production would be on salaried hours, whereas the fee I get to design can't include salaried hours as I'm working full time as a technician, and all design work is done in my own time, effectively freelancing.

 

I would appreciate any feedback on whether I'm right or wrong about the 'resident designer' status (I'm quite prepared to be wrong, I'd just like to know...!), and if anyone would like to suggest what a suitable fee for a freelancer creating two hours of show-critical AV would be, that may also help in my discussions.

 

Thanks in advance. Any questions or further details needed, please ask!

[ImagineerTom]

Unfortunately any discussion about being "resident" or "A designer" is clouded by the fact that those terms aren't standardised and open to so much reinterpretation with many producing theatre's handing out the official title "resident director / resident designer / resident choreographer" to anyone who happens to have created more than 2 shows in the venue. It is worth noting though that all of the agreements covering designers (and all other creative roles) include not just a flat fee but also a payment structure for ongoing royalties / reuse of your designs and are backed up with clear defined copyright and creative ownership statements which are much more important than the initial fee. Imagine you'd done this AV design for the first tryout of Eugenius (originally a one-off staging of a kooky show no-one expected to go anywhere that's now had multiple runs and is about to move in to the west end) if they had paid you £1000 with no defined ownership or royalties then you would have been overjoyed initially but upset in the long run and if they'd only paid you £100 for the initial job but you'd since had nearly 2 years of royalties and a proper west-end credit you would have been considerably happier. In absolutely any creative/design job you take on it is essential that at the very least the issues of creative ownership and future use/royalties are defined however unlikely it is you think they will be needed, it's a 1:100 chance of the show going on to something bigger but when that show does get big and it's using your work....

[McDingo]

Thanks Tom - that all makes sense. One element that you didn't address though - assuming 'resident designer' is any designer in-house regardless of other role, would you expect the design to be completed in contracted regular hours as part of the production period, or done exclusively out of office?

[ImagineerTom]

Depends what your contract says - are you employed specifically as a technician or does your contract use more general terms as to what you job/roll is and does it address how issues like National Insurance / Tax are applied to the extra money you are being paid.

 

Remember that the minimum wage rules will apply to you here - if the total number of hours you work, divided by the money you get paid is less than £8/hour then you are breaking the law, as well as the working time directive regs about the total number of hours you work in a week.

[Junior8]

 

HE thinks that 'resident designer' is any resident employee who then takes on the design work. I believe that 'resident designer' is a designer who is resident, is salaried to design, and is paid an additional fee for Intellectual Rights / developing the overall look / feel of the production. If this is the case, the work undertaken for the production would be on salaried hours, whereas the fee I get to design can't include salaried hours as I'm working full time as a technician, and all design work is done in my own time, effectively freelancing.

 

 

The job title is totally irrelevant here, all that matters is on what basis the work is done, who is paying and how. Tom is right it will depend on what the contract of employment says and more particularly who the customer is and who has paid you under what contract. If the venue is paid by the visiting show for the AV work and the venue pays you through the PAYE salary then you are working for them and not their customer. I know this is hindsight but naturally it would have been better to have had this discussion before the event rather than after. Especially as, as Tom again points out, the implications for future use of your work could be profound. In law unless there is a contract to the contrary intellectual property rights in anything produced during an employment by an employee lie with the employer and not the creator. In contrast if you are 'commissioned' as a freelance to do a particular job the rights belong to you. So by extension one assumes that if the venue was commissioned to produce the AV work they would own the rights (no matter which employee carried out the work) unless they had a contract that ceded the rights to the client.

 

 

 

 

 

[McDingo]

Thanks for the reply Junior8. My contract is specifically and uniquely as a technician, the work is for an in-house production that won't tour / return so it's definitely a one off. I am paid an additional fee which is attached to my salary, so PAYE etc. is all taken care of, so the contract is not as a freelancer. I suppose my question is that if I'm paid a desgin fee as a resident designer, and it's all inhouse, is it reasonable of me to assume that I can undertake the work on salaried hours, or am I expected to treat it as a freelancer and complete the design work entirely in my own time? Obviously the fees are quite different, and if I am expected to do it in my own time, then the fee isn't really worth it.

 

 

 

 

[Junior8]

Thanks for the reply Junior8. My contract is specifically and uniquely as a technician, the work is for an in-house production that won't tour / return so it's definitely a one off. I am paid an additional fee which is attached to my salary, so PAYE etc. is all taken care of, so the contract is not as a freelancer. I suppose my question is that if I'm paid a desgin fee as a resident designer, and it's all inhouse, is it reasonable of me to assume that I can undertake the work on salaried hours, or am I expected to treat it as a freelancer and complete the design work entirely in my own time? Obviously the fees are quite different, and if I am expected to do it in my own time, then the fee isn't really worth it.

 

That's a good question but to be fair also one which many on a salary rather punching a clock have had to wrestle with forever.* If the contract specifies the hours you are paid for then your employer would either, in my view, have to put up with some lack of time spent on core duties to get this work done or pay you extra money for the extra hours. If though, as many contracts are, the agreement is vague on hours it really is down to discussion. It's a matter of judgement about whether the additional fee is economically worthwhile. Back in the day when I was salaried my approach really depended on how much I was enjoying the extras. But on occasions I let some other things slide to get what I saw as a chore done and if they moaned I simply pointed out that there were only so many hours in the day.

 

* I often think that if we were all on hourly pay recorded by timeclock employers would think twice about some of the work they take on and we might all be better off. But that's another story...

 

 

 

[gareth]

if I'm paid a desgin fee as a resident designer, and it's all inhouse, is it reasonable of me to assume that I can undertake the work on salaried hours, or am I expected to treat it as a freelancer and complete the design work entirely in my own time?

 

The only person/entity who can answer that question is the employer - whatever is agreed contractually will be between you and them, and there's no standard answer to that question.

[Jivemaster]

Likely your contract of employment or job specification says "and other like tasks as requested" or similar words.