The Netherlands Society of Cinematographers (NSC) has released a handy iPhone/iPad application to calculate fair wages in the Television and Film industry worldwide.

Upon startup, the app prompts you to select the nation in which you are working, your specific field (with categories such as Production, Camera Department, SFX, Sound, Post Production, etc), your specific profession (Visual Effects Director within Post Production for example), and finally your skill level. The skill level screen lets you place yourself on an infinitely variable axis from Trainee to Master (the fabled “10 years of practice” level) with a few helpful steps along the way. The calculation gives you the cost of a 5 day work week of variable total hours (50, 60, and 70) but also goes further to give you a detailed breakdown of minimal and recommended fees per hour. The system updates with daily exchange rates to maintain accuracy in foreign conversions.

Herman Verschuur, an NSC board member, elaborated further on some of the details of the application.

“What I like about it, that it does not just give a amount that studio’s decided to pay to people. It really calculates a fee. This is done with mainly social data. There are all kinds of social and economy rules for this. For example the amount of days a freelancer can work in a year, then there are calculations for what the cost is for a freelancer on insurance, pension, office etc.

When you take all these variables in account you come up with a minimum wage, this is the amount that you see in the app. For quite some people it was a shock that they found themselves to be working under the minimum wage. The whole idea is, to give crew members a tool (or a bat if you like) to show that their salary demands are not so outrageous as people would like you to believe.”

It’s important to note that the app is not designed to show how much you can earn, but rather the minimum you should be. The app is updated with new rate information every half year. A video and further information can be found at the NSC Rating Application homepage or on the NSC site (the page is in Dutch). An Android edition may be in the distant future. The app is available from the Apple app store for $8.99 or 6,99 €.