There are things I love about what I do, and things that are just annoying. On the list of annoying is this time period after a movie wraps production, and your line producer and accountant are no longer employed, BUT it doesn’t yet make sense to bring a post accountant on. (because we are a post house internally, during the offline, there should be literally one check every two weeks to cut…and it doesn’t make much sense to pay someone to do that)

However, there is, invariably some problem with something that crops up that is more involved. And to be honest, I often have to make some value judgements on the worth of my time on if it’s worth fighting over or not. I am not only in the middle of finishing this project, but ramping up on others, and I only have so many hours in a day.

So, for the past few weeks, I have been dealing with one of our actors business managers. She is claiming her actor was underpaid for the two week period. (let me first of all say, she was not…) However, the difference in what the business manager was claiming, and the payment already given was about 800 dollars. I did a couple of calls, and quickly realized that, although I was correct in the payment given, this business manager was about to make my life hell with calls, emails, and trying to get SAG involved. Was it worth it? I came to the conclusion that no, the $800 payment was worth it to make her go away. So, I commenced the payment, and brushed off my hands, thinking it was done.

But, no. The business manager thought that the adjustment wasn’t right, and called our SAG rep to complain. Now, let me say, that we have a great relationship with the unions when it comes to payment. We do all step ups as soon as we are notified, we don’t miss P&H payments, we are responsive to anything that is an actual problem, etc.

So our SAG rep takes a look at everything…and determines that I should CANCEL the additional payment made. We were right in the first place on the payment, and don’t owe anything additional. (which I had told the business manager repeatedly)

Well, there you go. Your client has now lost $800 I was willing to give her, because you decided to escalate.

Happy?

I am, she’s out of my hair now.