cinemasetfreeYour first memo
Pick a crew member, set the rate and dates, add whatever kit and credit terms apply, send it for signature, then countersign. The result is a PDF both sides keep.
A worked example: hiring a gaffer
Say you’re bringing on Nadia Okafor as Gaffer for a 12-day shoot at £450/day, she’s bringing her own lighting kit, and she’s agreed a credit. Here’s the whole path.
Start from the roster
Press New Deal Memo, or use the memo action on Nadia’s row in Team. Her name and position come across; you don’t retype them. If she isn’t on the roster yet, add her there first. A memo needs somebody to be with.
Set the money
Rate £450, rate type Daily. Add the overtime rate if you’ve agreed one. Leaving it blank means the memo is silent on overtime, which is a choice rather than a default.
Set the dates
Start and end dates bound the engagement. For a 12-day shoot with a two-day prep, the start is the prep day. The memo covers the whole engagement, prep included.
Add the kit
Kit rental £75/day, kit description “2x 2K HMI, distro, stands”, and a replacement value. That last one is the field people skip and regret: it is what the production is on the hook for if her kit is damaged, and agreeing it now is far easier than after.
Add the credit
Credit “Gaffer”, with a position if you’ve agreed where in the crawl it falls. A credit promised verbally and not written down is the single most common deal-memo dispute.
Send and countersign
Send it for signature. Nadia signs digitally; you countersign on behalf of the production, and the memo becomes executed. Export the PDF for your files. She gets one too.
Signed on paper instead? Upload scan attaches a photo or PDF of the signed copy to the memo, so a production that does half its deals on set still has all of them in one place.
The states a memo moves through
Draft while you’re writing it, when nothing is visible to the crew member. Sent once it’s out for signature. Signed when they’ve signed and it’s waiting on you. Executed once countersigned, at which point the PDF is final.
The list shows state at a glance. On a 40-person crew the question you ask daily is “whose deals aren’t done”.