The Stage

Fee frustration

Published Tuesday 19 October 2004 at 09:40

I write with reference to the Legal Eagle article ‘Up-front fees illegal now’ by D Michael Rose (Forum, October 14, page 7). The DTI had stated “any fee will be chargeable only out of earnings”. However, we are now told that only registration fees have been banned. But book fees are registration fees. So in reality, no up-front fees have actually been banned. What you call the fee is superfluous. It is a fee you must pay an agency before being offered work. If you do not pay, you do not work. And even if you do pay, you still risk not getting any work.

The DTI up-front fee ban is nothing but a sham. We all know this and so do the DTI. And now we have to contend with low cost, but high charging Internet casting directories, premium line calls and text messaging at £1.50 per minute or text. Yes, everybody promises to find you paid work, as long as you pay a fee, but many don’t deliver. It is a criminal’s paradise.

The Internet is certainly the future. Casting Directors can download a casting directory and start printing it out in a matter of minutes. No employment agency should be printing and posting their casting directory. Actors can now send CD-Rom Showreels. The Casting Directors Guild should embrace this technology - they cannot ignore computers and the Internet and neither should actors. We need a vibrant industry, which is forward-looking, not stuck in the past.

Please, clean up our industry - once and for all.

Clive Hurst

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