New minimun cachets from the Argentina Actors Association.

Since 17/9/2007 the new minimums established by the Argentina Actors Association for advertising actors cachets are the following:

Protagonist: $452 + Image rights depending on the country.
Co protagonist: $376 + Image rights depending on the country.
Secondary roll: $245 + Image rights depending on the country.
Minor character: $220 + Image rights depending on the country.
Groupal character: $100 + Image rights depending on the country.

(The values are expressed in US Dolars and may vary according the exchange rate.)

This numbers correspond to one working day, plus the corresponding for image rights according to the country. For example for Argentina is 50% for the image rights.
The benefits are obvious: a higher minimum and a higher cost for one working day.
However, as I see it, this means a good salary composition that favours the actors but there are many holes and flaws.
At first it’s the same cachet for a TV commercial for 12 months for the hole country and a commercial for a single province for 3 months. The production cost for both commercials are very different. In this case the option that are using the small announcers is not using actors for their higher cost. I don’t think this wage rises affects Coca Cola but the truly affect the small announcer. And this way the actor losses too, because the job opportunities are less.

On the other hand there are no benefits for the actors in the international commercials. The actors' cachet is the same as if it is for Argentina or for France, the image rights is 50% in both cases.

In the case of graphic advertising the client is starting to make their contracts trough AMA (Argentina Models Association) rather than AAA (Argentina Actors Association).

I think that at the end of the way the market is going to be ok with this new cachets, but I also think that there is a lot to do.

Resuming… there is no direct benefit to the actor because the international cachets are lower than before and there are few job opportunities. The small film companies are also not beneficiated because of their low budget. Maybe the only benefactors of this are the big filming companies when budgeting for international movies.

What do you think?
Marcela Villanueva