Four things can push a TVC shoot day past its base fee: overtime after hour 10, a missed meal window, a short turnaround to the next day, and work performed after the night-loading threshold. All four can hit on the same day. Getting them right matters — performers notice, agents invoice, and the difference between a clean wrap and an expensive one is usually measured in the last two hours of the day. Here's how each rule works, which document it lives in, and how to model them before you lock the schedule.

The 10-hour day and $150/hr flat overtime

The CGA Recommended Guideline 24 September 2024 sets the shoot day at 10 hours from call to wrap, inclusive of the meal break. Any hour worked beyond the 10th triggers overtime. CGA pays that overtime as a flat dollar figure rather than a time-and-a-half multiplier.

CGA 24 September 2024: 10-hour day, $150 per hour flat after hour 10 — not time-and-a-half, not pro-rata off base, a flat $150/hr.

The flat rate is the part producers budgeting from a feature-film background tend to get wrong. On a TVC, you don't calculate overtime as 1.5× a derived hourly rate from the base day fee. You add $150 for every hour — or part hour, per the contract's increment — past the 10th (CGA 24 September 2024). It's cleaner to budget, easier to explain to a client, and what the industry actually invoices.

The MEAA meal-break rule

The MEAA TVC Standard Contract 2024 requires a meal break to be provided within a specified window measured from call. If the break isn't provided inside that window, a meal penalty accrues. The penalty continues to accrue in increments until the break is actually taken — so a meal break that starts two 15-minute increments late is worth two increments of penalty, per performer.

On a large cast day that number moves fast. The mitigation is operational, not contractual: AD department calls the meal on time even if camera wants one more take. The meal window is not elastic. If the schedule is genuinely too tight for the brief, that's a conversation with production before the call sheet goes out, not a problem to solve at hour seven.

Turnaround breach

The MEAA TVC 2024 sets a minimum turnaround — a minimum number of hours between wrap on day one and call on day two. Breach that minimum and a turnaround-breach penalty applies. The classic trigger is a studio day that runs an hour late into a location call sheet that needs talent at a 05:30 first light. Wrap at 21:30, call at 05:30, and the turnaround is short — penalty applies.

The fix, again, is at schedule lock: build the turnaround into the next day's call time before you distribute the sheet. If you can't, budget the breach and tell the agent at booking. Finding out at wrap that the next day's call was short all along is the worst version of this conversation.

Night loading after 22:00

The CGA 24 September 2024 provides the industry-standard flat-dollar figures for night-loading on work performed after 22:00. This is a separate mechanic from overtime — you can be inside your 10-hour day and still trigger night loading if the back half of the day falls after the threshold. A 13:00 call that wraps clean at 23:00 is a 10-hour day with night loading on the last hour.

Night loading and overtime can stack. Hours worked after 22:00 andafter hour 10 accrue both. On a compressed brief — say, a night exterior with a tight schedule — this is the combination that makes the difference between a clean budget and a blown one.

How the calculator resolves all four

The overtime calculator takes four inputs from your call sheet: call time, meal start, meal end, wrap time, and next-day call. From those four timestamps it resolves every rule above in a single pass:

  • Overtime — hours worked past the 10th from call to wrap, at $150/hr flat (CGA 24 September 2024).
  • Meal penalty — increments accrued if the meal break fell outside the MEAA TVC 2024 window measured from call.
  • Turnaround breach — penalty triggered if the gap between wrap and next-day call falls below the MEAA TVC 2024 minimum rest period.
  • Night loading — CGA flat-dollar loading on hours worked after 22:00 (CGA 24 September 2024).

You get one total, with each component broken out so you can see which rule fired. Run it before you finalise the call sheet and you'll catch the short turnaround or the tight meal window while there's still time to move the schedule. Run it after wrap and it's your invoice basis.

What to put on the call sheet

The four numbers that matter on every TVC call sheet: call time, meal window (and don't let it drift), wrap target, and next-day call. If any of those four is wrong, one of the four penalties above triggers. The CGA and MEAA figures don't change whether you hit the number or not — they just sit on top and accrue. Model them early, build them into the schedule, and the day pays what you planned.

Open the overtime calculator and drop your call-sheet times in. Two minutes, four results, source cell cited on every one.