Interactive Low Budget Agreement

As an actor who began her games career in indies, Sarah has always held that indie games provide precious, significant creative contributions to the medium, as well as particularly artistically nourishing performance opportunities. She believes such ambitious projects deserve access to world-class, experienced actor collaborators, and for that collaboration to respect both parties’ professional baselines.

So when actor Crispin Freeman proposed a Low Budget Interactive Agreement (or LBA), the first in SAG-AFTRA (actor’s union) history, Sarah leapt at the opportunity to help shape and proselytize it. If independent films - even student films - could have a tailored contract for union actors, and utilize it to impactful effect, so too could indie games.

She solicited extensive feedback from the indie developer community to help guide the contract toward the best possible fit for their needs and capacities, while educating about actor protections and standards in return: conveying written feedback from a survey of devs and organizing an in-house union talkback session, sitting in on countless one-on-one meetings with union staff and devs, training union organizers on the games space to better serve outreach efforts (several of which she has suggested or spearheaded), and connecting many, many developers with staff for further information and assistance.

She has sat on panels explaining the contract in detail, touched on its features in interviews, and offers her own independent explainer to help make the contract process as clear and widely accessible as possible.

Through this contract Sarah has also had the great pleasure of performing in multiple unique and delightful titles as an actor, and connecting exciting projects with talented union actors as a consultant.