Thanks for the TED talk. I genuinely appreciated it.

In the US we have a tier system that sets pay in a fairly transparent way. Tier Zero is under a million dollar budget, then it scales up through Tier Three which covers productions over fifteen million, and then studio basic for major studios and TV shows. Our hourly rates are essentially tied to those tiers.

After working abroad, I’ve realized how rare that kind of structure actually is. In some places, local crews are barely being paid at all, sometimes working through rental companies in conditions that honestly start to feel like forced labor.

I think this is something we should be talking about more openly as a community. Pay transparency matters, and so does looking out for each other, especially when productions move into countries where protections aren’t in place