Calculating Overtime in the Film Industry
Calculating overtime can be such a mysterious question for people in the film industry. With prepaid overtime and a lot of misinformation floating around, it’s difficult to figure out your hourly rate or know at what point you should be paid what. There are a myriad of different state laws out there, so we are going to focus on California for this post. The general idea of how to calculate overtime will apply for all states, but at what point you receive the overtime will change.
The FLSA or Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay hourly employees 1.5 times their hourly pay for every hour over 40 in a work week.
California has taken this one step further and required employers to pay 1.5x for:
- Hours worked over eight in a workday
- First 12 hours on your 6th day
- First 8 hours of work on your 7th day
And then they’ve required the employer to pay 2x the hourly rate for
- Hours worked over 12 in a workday
- Over 8 hours on your 7th day
We know when they are supposed to pay 1.5x and 2x your hourly rate, but what is your hourly rate? Usually you just get a call and they say it’s 500/10, with no mention of an hourly. We’ll try and break this down to you.
Calculating your Hourly Rate
What we’re going to do is figure out the hourly rate so that it equals 500 after working 8 hours straight time and 2 hours of 1.5x pay. Since we have 8 hours of straight time and these 2 hours of 1.5x, we basically have two different hourly rates mixed together. We need to convert it to all straight time.
Example 1:
In this example our rate is 500/10. We are going to assume we took a half hour lunch and then worked the full 10 hours. Because lunch is unpaid that would be 10.5 hours from call to wrap.
Take the 2 hours of overtime and multiply it by 1.5x. This will turn the 2 hours of 1.5x into 3 straight time hours.
Adding this to our other straight time 3 + 8 = 11 straight time hours total.
Now we can divide 500 by 11. 500/11 = 45.45
That is our straight time rate, to get our 1.5x and 2x rate we just multiply.
| 1.5x: | 45.45 x 1.5 | = 68.18/hr |
| 2x: | 45.45 x 2 | = 90.90/hr |
So now we can check our work.
| Straight Time: | 8 x 45.45 | = 363.60 |
| 1.5x: | 2 x 68.18 | = 136.36 |
| Total | 499.96 |
You are always going to be just a few pennies under or over, they’re issues with rounding. If you like you can always add a penny to your rate, you’ve earned it.
Example 2:
Here’s another example with a 12 hour rate, we’ll say our rate is 500/12. Again we’ll assume we took a half hour lunch and worked the full 12 hours.
Lets convert 12 hours into all straight time first. You’ll be working 4 hours at 1.5x so we’ll multiply those two together.
4×1.5 = 6
Add 6 to the 8 hours straight time you’ll work. That’ll be 14. Now we divide that by our day rate.
500/14 = 35.71/hr
35.71 is our straight time rate, now we can find our overtime rates.
| 1.5x: | 35.71 x 1.5 | = 53.57/hr |
| 2x: | 35.71 x 2 | = 71.43/hr |
Then let’s check our work.
| Straight Time | 35.71 * 8 | = 285.68/hr |
| 1.5x | 53.57 * 4 | = 214.28/hr |
| Total | 499.96 |
Example 3:
The last one we’ll do we are going to actually do some overtime. Lets say our rate was 650/10 and we worked a 13 hour day. We are going to say we broke for two meal breaks, once at 6 hours and another at 12 hours. Our time on the clock was 13 hours.
Since we are on a 10 hour rate, we’ll divide by 11 to get our hourly. Remember that is what we figured out earlier is the equivalent straight time we work.
650/11 = 59.09/hr
Our overtime rates are then as follows:
| 1.5x: | 59.09 x 1.5 | = 88.63/hr |
| 2x: | 59.09 x 2 | = 118.18/hr |
Then we’ll figure out how much we made:
| Straight Time: | 59.09 * 8 | = 472.72 |
| 1.5x: | 88.63 * 4 | = 354.52 |
| 2x: | 118.18 * 1 | = 118.18 |
| Total | 945.42 |
As another note for all of this, what if your rate was 500/10 and you only work 5 hours? Unless otherwise mentioned, the rates are always expressed as a guarantee. You’re guaranteed to get 500 for the 10 hours of work even if you only work a few hours.
Now some will just say skip all of this and just divide 500 by 10. While this is technically incorrect, it’s often times done on invoice jobs to help offset the fact that being misclassified as a 1099 contractor will increase your tax burden. Getting a little bit more on your overtime helps the fact that you will be hit with a tax bill at the end of the year. The one thing to mention with this method is you could actually end up working for less than minimum wage if it is a low paying job. If the job is low paying, be sure to check using the above method to be sure you are being paid at or above the city or states minimum wage.
No matter how you decide to do it, it’s helpful to know the correct way to do it. Gotta know the rules to break ’em!
We hope this helps. It’s a confusing subject for a lot of technicians starting out, but you should be a pro now. Let us know if you have any questions in the comments!
Bolt Lighting Rental Inc is a lighting rental house located in the San Francisco Bay Area. We’re committed to training the next generation of technicians everywhere. Check out our instagram for daily educational content.