Crew, Cast & Unions

Finding crew in Central Ohio

The honest answer is that Central Ohio crew is found through people, not databases. In rough order of how well each actually works here:

  1. MOFA meetings. Per MOFA's About page, networking events are held at 8pm on the second Wednesday of each month. Showing up twice gets you a crew; posting once in a Facebook group does not. See Community & Networking.
  2. Film Columbus production directory — filmcolumbus.com/production-directory. The regional commission's registry of local crew and vendors.
  3. Crewing off other people's sets. Work a day as a grip on someone else's short and you will leave with four numbers.
  4. Film schools. Students at OSU, CCAD, and Columbus State are hungry for real credits and often better prepared than their year suggests.

Hire in this order when the budget is small

If you can only pay a few people, pay these first:

  1. Sound recordist. Bad audio destroys a film. Nothing else you cut corners on does that.
  2. First AD. The difference between finishing the day and losing a scene.
  3. Gaffer. Light is what makes cheap footage stop looking cheap.
  4. Producer / production manager. The person who makes sure the location is actually confirmed.

Camera operator is fifth, not first, more often than most directors expect.

Casting

Local talent agencies and casting

Where actors actually look for work

For a no-budget short in Columbus, a well-written post to the local theatre community will outperform a paid national listing. The city has a deep stage-acting pool, and stage actors are frequently keen to build screen reels.

Running a casting session that works

  • Send the sides at least 48 hours out. A cold read tells you who improvises well, not who acts well.
  • Record every audition, with permission, and put the slate on camera. You will not remember day one by day three.
  • Have someone read opposite them who is not you. You cannot direct and read at once.
  • Chemistry-read your leads before you cast either. Individually excellent actors can be inert together.
  • Say the pay, the dates, and the nudity or intimacy content in the audition notice, not after. Anything undisclosed at the audition stage will cost you the actor later, and rightly.

Contract templates — performer agreements, nudity riders, crew agreements — live in this repository under productionLegal/contracts/.

Unions

SAG-AFTRA Ohio-Pittsburgh Local covers Ohio, western Pennsylvania, the northern panhandle of West Virginia, and broadcast units in western New York and Louisville. sagaftra.org — see the Ohio-Pittsburgh local pages.

If you want union actors on a low-budget project, do not assume it is out of reach. SAGindie exists specifically to walk independent producers through the low-budget agreements: sagindie.org Ohio resources. Read this before deciding you must shoot non-union; the ultra-low-budget agreements are more accessible than their reputation.

IATSE Local 209 is the one to know for film and television crew: it represents entertainment crews throughout Ohio and northern Kentucky across twenty craft classifications — grip, electric, construction, props, set dressing, wardrobe, hair and makeup, sound, special effects. Cleveland-based, statewide jurisdiction: iatse209.com, (216) 331-0299 (verified 2026-09-15).

IATSE Local 12 represents event technicians, stagehands, and tradeshow employees in Central Ohio, headquartered in Columbus: iatse12.org. It is a stage local — right for a venue, a load-in or a tradeshow, not for crewing a picture. The other Ohio stage locals are 27 (Cleveland), 5 (Cincinnati) and 24 (north-west Ohio). The national body is iatse.net.

Musicians are AFM, which has thirteen locals across Ohio — Local 103 in Columbus, Local 4 in Cleveland, Local 1 in Cincinnati. Note that AFM Local 24 is Akron while IATSE Local 24 is Toledo: always write the union's name, never the number alone.

Full detail on every Ohio union and guild — jurisdictions, contacts, the SAG-AFTRA budget tiers and the signatory timeline — is in Ohio Unions & Guilds.

Writers Guild of America, East — Ohio is east of the Mississippi, so Ohio writers are WGA East jurisdiction, not West: wgaeast.org (verified 2026-09-15). wga.org is the West. Registration of a script is available to non-members and is worth doing alongside, not instead of, copyright registration. See Business, Legal & Insurance.

Directors Guild of America — dga.org.

Paying people properly

Whether someone is a volunteer, an independent contractor, or an employee is not up to what you call them in the call sheet. If you direct how, when, and where the work is done, Ohio and federal law will generally treat that person as an employee, which triggers workers' compensation and wage obligations.

Minors have their own rules under Ohio law, including restrictions on hours; see ORC 4109.06 and get counsel before putting a child on a set.

This is a summary, not legal advice. See Business, Legal & Insurance.

Related

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