The Directors Guild of America (DGA) is an entertainment guild that represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry and abroad. Founded as the Screen Directors Guild in 1936, the group merged with the Radio and Television Directors Guild in 1960 to become the modern Directors Guild of America.
Overview
As a union that seeks to organize an individual profession, rather than multiple professions across an industry, the DGA is a craft union. It represents directors and members of the directorial team (assistant directors, unit production managers, stage managers, associate directors, production associates, and location managers (in New York and Chicago)); that representation includes all sorts of media, such as film, television, documentaries, news, sports, commercials and new media.
The guild has various training programs whereby successful applicants are placed in various productions and can gain experience working in the film or television industry.
, the guild had more than 18,000 members. The DGA headquarters are on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, with satellite offices in New York and Chicago and coordinating committees in San Francisco, Chicago, and London.
Composition
According to DGA's Department of Labor records, the guild's reported membership classifications currently account for 1,532 "retirees" (about 10% of total membership), 323 "suspended" members (2%), and 5 "life" members (<1%), compared to 13,577 "active" members. "Suspended" members pay dues but are ineligible to vote in the union. DGA contracts also cover some non-members, known as agency fee payers. These non-members currently number 172, or about 1% of the size of the union's membership.
Membership
The DGA site lists the following for membership:
Membership categories are: Director: Feature/Television Director: Commercial, Documentary, Low Budget Feature, Staff, Segment Unit Production Manager 1st Assistant Director 2nd Assistant Director AD/UPM Low Budget Associate Director Stage Manager AD/SM Low Budget Production Associate (West) Program Production Assistant (East)
Membership initiation fees in 2022 ranged from $200 for a Production Associate to $13,416 for a feature director.
The DGA site listed the following for dues in 2022:
Labor agreements
The agreements signed between the guild and film and television production companies make various stipulations covering pay and working conditions for guild members and require that all those employed in the relevant fields on a film made by that company are guild members. Guild members are generally prevented from working for companies that have not signed an agreement with the DGA. This sometimes leads production companies that have no such agreement to form new companies, purely for the purpose of making a particular film, which do then sign an agreement with the DGA.
The Guild enters into negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the organization that represents the studios, networks and production companies, approximately every three years to update and renew the Basic Agreement and the Freelance Live and Tape Television Agreement, the DGA's two major agreements. The DGA negotiates minimum compensation levels that must be paid by the companies. Many DGA members have agents who may negotiate rates above the minimums for their clients. The DGA agreements also secure residual payments for the reuse of members' work in film, television and new media.
Other than wages and basic working conditions, the DGA has a particular role in protecting the creative rights of film and TV directors. Such protections that the guild provides include defining the director's role, ensuring, with examples, the principle of "one director to a picture" and the right to prepare a director's cut or edit. Generally, each of these protections is to help offset the power that producers can have over a director during the film-making process.
DGA Awards
The DGA hosts the annual DGA Awards, an important precursor to the Academy Awards. In its 69-year history, the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film has been a near perfect barometer for both the Best Director, and in some cases, the Best Picture Academy Award. Only seven times has the DGA Award winner not won the corresponding Best Director Academy Award. Honorees are awarded with a statue manufactured by Society Awards.