Swiss set crews are paid on a 50-hour week, post crews on 40. Here's how to read, calculate, and budget the SSFV Richtlöhne correctly.

Under Switzerland's AAB Tagesengagement 2014, still the binding standard for day-rate freelance crew as of September 2026, what you owe a cancelled or postponed crew member depends on how many hours of notice you gave and whether the cancellation had a genuine "schwerwiegender Grund" (serious reason) behind it, not on how sorry the production is.

Contingency is a dedicated financial reserve, calculated as a percentage of your total direct production costs — set aside exclusively to absorb unavoidable, unexpected overruns. The industry standard is 10% of your total direct production costs. Completion bond companies treat it as a hard floor: no 10% contingency, no bond.

In German advertising, talent compensation is split into two separate fees: the Day Rate (Tagesgage) for time on set, and the Buyout (Nutzungshonorar) for the right to use the footage. The Buyout is almost always calculated as a percentage of the Day Rate, multiplied by the media channel, territory, and duration. The industry standard for this calculation is the VELMA list, published by the association of licensed German model agencies.