The multipliers in the 2024 agreement
The 2024 IATSE Basic Agreement memorandum rewrote the golden hour paragraph for the West Coast studio locals and added a triple time step for motion pictures and new seasons starting principal photography on or after August 4, 2024 (or the first Sunday after ratification, if later). All rates are multiples of the scheduled regular basic hourly rate.
| Day worked | After 12 hrs (studio) or 14 hrs (studio zone location) | After 15 hrs |
|---|---|---|
| Regular day | 2x | 3x |
| Sixth day in the workweek | 3x | 4.5x |
| Seventh day or holiday | 4x | 6x |
Low budget and local area agreements can differ, so check the agreement your show signed.
A worked example
A grip at a studio zone location has a scheduled rate of $50 an hour. Call is 6:00 AM, the one-hour lunch counts toward elapsed time, and the grip is released at 10:00 PM, which is 16 consecutive hours. The golden hours are the last two:
- Hour 15 (8:00 to 9:00 PM): 1 x $50 x 2 = $100
- Hour 16 (9:00 to 10:00 PM): 1 x $50 x 3 = $150
That's $250 for the last two hours alone, before the fringes that ride on it. The same two hours on a sixth day would be 1 x $50 x 3 + 1 x $50 x 4.5 = $375. Multiply by a crew of 40 and a single extra hour at 3x is 40 x $150 = $6,000.
What it does to the rest of the week
Golden time stacks with meal penalties, a shorter turnaround into the next call, and sometimes a forced call. A day that goes past 14 hours often pushes the next morning's call, which slides the whole week. The hot costs report lists golden hours on their own line so they don't disappear into general overtime.
Payroll errors on long days
Payroll errors usually come from measuring hours worked instead of elapsed hours (or the reverse, for TV on-production crew), from applying weekday multipliers on a sixth day, and from forgetting that the triple time step depends on when principal photography started. Non-union deal memos sometimes borrow the phrase "golden time" without defining it; write the threshold and multiplier into the deal. The overtime calculator handles the tiers for a crew list.