Freelancer Contract

What this is about

Most German crews are booked as freelancers, and most bookings still start with a phone call. The contract turns that call into something readable: role, day rate, shoot dates, overtime, travel, cancellation windows and the usage rights the client will need later. Two clauses cause the most trouble, because both only matter once something goes wrong — the cancellation terms and the scope of rights granted. Whether a booking counts as genuine self-employment depends on how the work is really performed, not on the wording, so a template deserves one binding review by your own lawyer.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• Role, day rate, dates, overtime and cancellation windows belong in writing before anyone treats the booking as confirmed
• The rights clause decides what the client may do with the footage later: which channels, which territory, for how long
• Downloaded templates rarely match German practice — have the version you actually send reviewed once by a lawyer

With TillyGen

TillyGen pins down scope, shoot days and crew needs early, so freelancer bookings rest on a plan rather than a guess.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.