Article
Your shoot got cancelled. What are you owed?
The call comes on a Wednesday. The Saturday's off. Client pulled it, weather, talent, budget, whatever the reason, and you've now got a hole in your diary you can't fill at three days' notice.
Most crew assume that's just the job. It isn't. Under the APA Recommended Crew Terms there's a cancellation scale, and it's more generous than most people realise, but it drops off a cliff fast.
The scale
Notice given before the engagement, and what you're owed:
| Notice given | You're owed |
|---|---|
| 7 or more days before | Nothing |
| 6 to 4 days before | 50% of the agreed fee |
| 3 to 2 days before | 75% of the agreed fee |
| The day before | 100% of the agreed fee |
Two things jump out.
The first is that seven days' notice pays you nothing at all. Not a reduced rate. Nothing. If they cancel a week out, that's a clean release and you're expected to go and find other work.
The second is how steeply it climbs. Six days out is half your fee. Two days out is three quarters. The day before is the lot. The scale is designed to price the fact that the closer to the shoot you are, the less chance you have of booking anything else.
How the days are counted
This is where people get it wrong, and it's worth being precise because a day either way can move you a whole tier.
Every day of the week counts. All seven. Weekends are not skipped, bank holidays are not skipped. The notice period is calendar days.
The day notice is given counts. The shoot day doesn't.
So: notice on Wednesday, shoot on Saturday. Count Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. That's three days. You're in the 3 to 2 band, so 75% of your fee.
Get the counting wrong by one and you've argued yourself from 75% down to 50%.
One day or the whole job?
This is the part that catches people out on longer bookings, and it cuts both ways.
If the engagement is three days or less, the cancellation fee applies to the whole engagement as a single unit. One notice, one calculation, applied to the lot.
If the engagement is more than three days, every day is treated as its own separate engagement, and the cancellation fee is worked out for each day individually.
That second rule matters enormously. Say you're booked for a four day shoot starting Thursday, and they cancel on the Wednesday before. The Thursday is one day's notice, so 100%. The Friday is two days, so 75%. The Saturday is three days, so 75%. The Sunday is four days, so 50%. Four different percentages on one cancellation, because each day is counted from itself.
You are not owed 100% of the whole four days. You are also not owed 50% of the whole four days. You're owed a different fraction of each day's fee, and the only way to get it right is to do them one at a time.
Build days, recce days, pre-light days, shoot days and strike days all count as engagements. A pre-light on the Friday is not a rounding error attached to the Saturday shoot. It's its own engagement with its own notice period and its own percentage.
The two exceptions worth knowing
Force majeure. The cancellation scale doesn't apply if the production is cancelled by an event of force majeure. In that case you're paid for the work you've actually done up to the point production ceased, and nothing beyond it. The APA terms define force majeure narrowly: acts of terrorism, war, government action, civil commotion, that category of thing. It is not "the client got cold feet" and it is not "it rained."
Crew who've already started. If you've commenced work before the cancellation, you're entitled to be paid for the work already done, plus reasonable compensation, taking into account your obligation to go and look for replacement work. This tends to apply to people booked for longer runs: art directors, production managers, location managers. It's less mechanical than the scale and more of a negotiation, but it exists and it's in the agreement.
Why this gets left on the table
Cancellations arrive as bad news, usually by phone, usually apologetic, and usually with an implication that everyone's in the same boat and there's nothing to be done. The instinct is to say no worries, put the phone down, and start looking for cover work.
By the time you've thought about it, the moment's passed and it feels awkward to go back and ask. So a 75% day quietly becomes a nothing day.
Knowing the scale changes that call. If you know on the phone that Wednesday-for-Saturday is 75%, you can say so while you're still talking to them, which is a very different conversation to raising it a week later.
What we built
TimeMachine has a cancellation calculator. You put in the day that was cancelled, the fee, and the date you were told, and it works out which band you're in and what you're owed. On multi-day bookings it does each day separately, per the more-than-three-days rule, so you get the correct figure per day rather than one blunt percentage across the job.
The maths isn't hard. Remembering the bands, counting the days correctly, and knowing that day four of a four day job is a different percentage to day one, on the phone, at short notice, is the hard part.
And once a cancellation fee is invoiced, it's an invoice like any other: the late payment rules apply if it isn't paid on time.
The short version
- 7+ days' notice: nothing. 6 to 4 days: 50%. 3 to 2 days: 75%. Day before: 100%.
- All seven days of the week count. The day you're told counts, the shoot day doesn't.
- Three days or less: one calculation for the whole engagement.
- More than three days: every day is its own engagement with its own percentage.
- Pre-lights, builds, recces and strikes are engagements too.
- Force majeure is the exception, and it's narrower than most people assume.
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). It references the publicly available APA Recommended Crew Terms as a rate reference only. This article is general information, not legal advice. Always check your own booking terms.