Article
Night work on scripted TV and film
The short answer. The two long form agreements define night work differently and pay it differently. On scripted TV it is scheduled shooting past 11pm, added up over the week, capped at one working day, and settled either as compensatory rest or as an extra 1T for that time. On film it is shooting that carries on past midnight, or a unit call between midnight and 3am, and it pays £20 a night, with a turnaround day at your daily rate when a scheduled run of nights ends.
On a commercial, a night is decided by the call time, and a basic night is paid at a flat double rate from call to wrap. The night shoots article covers that. Long form works from the other end of the day: what matters is how far past 11pm or midnight the shooting runs.
What follows is from the Pact and Bectu agreement for scripted TV, effective 1 January 2023, including its schedule of worked examples, and the Pact and Bectu terms for major motion pictures, as amended on 5 April 2021.
What counts as night work on scripted TV?
Scheduled shooting hours worked past 11pm. Night work is rounded up to the nearest 15 minutes.
Overtime after 11pm is not night work. It is overtime at double time, the enhanced rate in the TV overtime rules. The agreement's own example: a week of 3pm to 2am shooting days, with an hour of de-rig to 3am on two of them. The shooting past 11pm is night work, three hours a day. The two de-rig hours are overtime at double time, and they do not feed into the night work total. The two payments run side by side.
How is night work paid on scripted TV?
Not day by day. Night work is added up across the week and settled at the end of it, capped at one working day. The week's total is then either:
- given back as compensatory rest, by the end of that week or on the first day of the following working week; or
- paid at 1T on top of the rate otherwise due, so 2T in all for that time.
The agreement speaks of the producer electing to give the rest back. Four more rules sit around it:
- Compensatory rest must be given on a working day, not on a designated rest day.
- A paid compensatory rest day does not count as a working day.
- After four or more consecutive weeks of night work, a full compensatory rest day due at the end of the last week must be given as the first day of the following working week.
- If your contract ends on a night working pattern, you are automatically entitled to a paid rest day instead of the weekly settlement, dailies included, but never more than one such day in a working week.
The agreement's worked example runs four weeks of nights. Weeks of 15 and 12 hours of night work each settle as one full paid rest day, because of the cap. A week of 7 hours is given back as 7 hours. The fourth week, exactly 10 hours, is the last of four, so its rest day falls on the Monday of the week after. In a second example, four nights produce 5 hours of night work, and the Friday is cut short by 5 hours to give it back.
The cap of "one working day" is not defined for this clause. The example treats 15, 12 and 10 hours alike as one day, which implies ten hours, and that is the figure TimeMachine uses. On a basic daily rate of £300, a week of 15 hours of night work settled as pay is ten hours at an extra £30: £300 on top of the week's pay.
What about finishing between 9pm and 11pm?
That is a split day, not night work: a filming day with a camera finish between 9pm and 11pm. You have worked one if you work any part of the shooting hours in that window. For crew engaged on up to seven weeks of a shooting schedule there is no cap. Past seven weeks the cap is 40% of the filming days in your overall schedule, and each split day beyond it carries a £30 premium, reconciled and paid at the end of the contract.
What counts as night work on film?
Shooting hours that continue after midnight, or any unit call between midnight and 3am. Two clarifications in the agreement:
- If the camera has wrapped by midnight, crew wrapping out after midnight is not night work.
- A department asked to work overnight for a reason other than shooting still gets the night work premium.
A pre-dawn call, before 5am, is not night work. A unit call between midnight and 3am meets both definitions, and the terms do not say which applies. The pre-dawn rate is covered in the early and pre-dawn calls article and the film working week article.
How is night work paid on film?
Two ways, neither of them an hourly uplift:
- A night work premium of £20 for each night actually worked, dailies included.
- A turnaround day, paid at your standard contractual daily rate, at the end of a scheduled period of night work. Dailies get one at the end of any scheduled period, whether a run of nights or a single stand-alone night. One is also paid if a week's schedule starts on nights and ends on days or split days.
The agreement also sets how runs of nights are scheduled. Nights usually come in blocks of five, with 48 hours plus 11 hours of rest between weeks. Blocks of six may run only twice in a row, after which five and six night blocks must alternate; blocks of five can follow each other without limit.
| Moving from | To | Minimum rest |
|---|---|---|
| 5 nights | 5 or 6 nights | 48 + 11 hours |
| 6 nights | 5 or 6 nights | 24 + 11 hours |
| 6 nights | Day work | 24 + 11 hours, plus the turnaround day |
| 5 nights | Day work | 48 hours, plus the turnaround day |
Consecutive nights also count towards sixth and seventh days on film: the sixth day rule covers a sixth consecutive day or night.
What does TimeMachine do?
Since version 2026.11 the app has a long form mode, in beta, built from these agreements. On night work it does some of this, and it is worth being plain about the rest.
On scripted TV, the app works out each day's night work: your contracted time past 11pm, rounded up to 15 minutes, with anything past your contracted hours going to overtime at double time instead, as in the agreement's example. It shows each day's night work on the day, counted against the ten hour weekly cap, and says when the week has reached it. It does not yet let you record how the week was settled, so it pays neither the extra 1T nor a paid rest day for night work. It does not apply the four week rule or the paid rest day at the end of a contract on nights. It also counts contracted time past 11pm on prep and pre-light days, where the agreement's definition is scheduled shooting hours. It flags a day whose wrap falls between 9pm and 11pm as a split day, but it does not track the split day cap or work out the £30.
On film, the app adds the £20 premium to a shooting day that wraps after midnight. It goes by your wrap time, so it does not apply the exception for crew wrapping after the camera wrapped by midnight. It does not add the premium for a unit call between midnight and 3am that wraps the same morning, or for a non-shooting department working overnight. It does not offer or pay the turnaround day, and it does not check the rest between blocks of nights.
It is a beta because a few readings of the agreements are still unconfirmed. The app flags them wherever they affect your money, so check your figures against your payslip, and send anything that looks wrong to the feedback address below. Nothing about the beta appears on your invoices or timesheets.
Are these agreements still current?
The scripted TV agreement took effect on 1 January 2023 for a minimum of three years, to 1 January 2026, after which either side can end it on six months' written notice. We have not been able to confirm its status since 1 January 2026, and TimeMachine's scripted TV mode is built on the 2023 agreement.
The film figures, including the £20 night premium, date from the 5 April 2021 amendment, and we have not been able to confirm whether a later amendment has changed them. Your deal memo or contract is the document that says which terms your production is using.
TimeMachine is an independent tool for UK film and television crew. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Advertising Producers Association (APA), Pact or Bectu. It references the publicly available APA Recommended Crew Terms and the Pact and Bectu agreements as a reference only. TimeMachine's long form mode is in beta. This article is general information, not legal or financial advice.