Writer's Guild Going on Strike

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Paul F

Veteran
The Writer's Guild is on strike and that will stop productions. It was a costly strike last time. It's an interesting comparison between the writer's guild and IATSE. I guess writer's write because their basic agreement is 739 pages while the agreement IATSE made recently is 49 pages.
 
The more production there is, the greater writers' power gets. Someone needs to come up with all the dialog. Studios and streamers invested over $200B last year, not including sports. Writers want a fair share. And, if they can't get fair, they want unfair. They're going to flex their muscles until it hurts.
 
As soon as someone creates a successful 100%-AI written show/film that will be the last writers strike there is.

Need human writers, always - but that job is more expendable today than it ever was.
 
NorBro said:
As soon as someone creates a successful 100%-AI written show/film that will be the last writers strike there is.

Need human writers, always - but that job is more expendable today than it ever was.
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if they still need human writers and those writers remain organized, they'll retain the power to resist AI. maybe there will be fewer writers, but they'll still be capable of striking
 
AI can't write creatively and is unlikely to be able to write anything beside the news style programming.

On the other hand, one can make videos with it. Cinematographers, beware. Learn Midjourney while you can.
 
DLD said:
AI can't write creatively and is unlikely to be able to write anything beside the news style programming.

On the other hand, one can make videos with it. Cinematographers, beware. Learn Midjourney while you can.
Click to expand...

I've seen some green shoots of AI writing dialogue in the style of narrative drama or comedy. Wherever there is algorithm/formula, there is potential for the computer to learn to reproduce it.

But it's silly to think the computer will handle the job on its own. Purely as a matter of cost-benefit analysis, the program will be far better off having humans in the mix even if AI plays a role. And there's lots of anecdotal reporting of people using AI and chatgpt as a sort of co-writer, helping them clear writer's block, etc. They ask it for story ideas about a certain topic and maybe find inspiration in something. They ask it to summarize what they've already written to try to get a better sense of what they have and where they're going.

It's not crazy to think that people will ask AI to write a scene between well-established characters where something specific happens. Then they take that as a first draft and run with the ball from there. It could give them a head start in the process.

The problem with learning Midjourney as a cinematographer is that you're probably abandoning what you actually like doing. Anyway, the industry won't be completely destroyed.
 
ahalpert said:
if they still need human writers and those writers remain organized, they'll retain the power to resist AI. maybe there will be fewer writers, but they'll still be capable of striking
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They'll be striking for pride by that point.

DLD said:
AI can't write creatively and is unlikely to be able to write anything beside the news style programming.

On the other hand, one can make videos with it. Cinematographers, beware. Learn Midjourney while you can.
Click to expand...

This is surprising to hear from you, DLD, because writing could be just as "creative" and just as replaceable as any of these other positions. Maybe a specific writing task can't be accomplished right now because AI won't understand the context or situation, but for anything else a few paragraphs of pretty much anything could easily take off in today's world, produced by human or not human.

The beauty of the computer-generated writer is it will produce you hundreds (thousands?) of similar options within minutes (seconds?).
 
NorBro said:
The beauty of the computer-generated writer is it will produce you hundreds (thousands?) of similar options within minutes (seconds?).
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uh yeah, that's the crux of it. and who's going to decide which of those to use? I suppose your theory is that the producer or director will work with the AI and get rid of human writers entirely. but that's going to be a lot of work and it would benefit from having an expert writing handle it...
 
yeah, I thought we've already established that over the last 1-2 years and agreed; several humans at the top of the food chain will coexist with the machines while the rest...won't.

And the studios, executives will make the decisions. Not many directors are left - or will be left - who will hold that yesteryear power & influence. Mostly suits will make choices, no creatives, or rarely.

And the choices will be more corporate than anything else.

If AI is making everything they'll likely make as much as possible to weed out what works.

No experimenting and wasting money, they'll order everything the computer can give them.
 
NorBro said:
And the choices will be more corporate than anything else.
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sounds like a bleak future, even for audiences

If AI is making everything they'll likely make as much as possible to weed out what works.

No experimenting and wasting money, they'll order everything the computer can give them.
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here's where I disagree. there's a finite amount of audience viewing time available. putting out infinite stuff is not going to lead to more hits because it won't have a chance to get seen in the first place.
 
Awhile ago - I am sure there are newer versions - I saw comedy written by a Bot. It sucked. It'd be a target of many a rotten tomato on an open mic night at your local Jiggles and Snort's.

https://www.makeuseof.com/can-ai-make-us-laugh/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/could-an-ai-chatbot-replace-jimmy-fallon-on-the-tonight-show

The question is whether it can write a procedural spec, given the existing - in some cases, for many a year - trove of information, aka dozens of existing episodes.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...t-hollywood-screenwriters-film-tv-1235296724/

https://www.weeklyblitz.net/tech/can-ai-chatbots-such-as-bing-write-a-movie-screenplay/

And I don't think that's happening at this moment.either.

But basic cinematography is both programmable and adjustable on the go.
 
ahalpert said:
here's where I disagree. there's a finite amount of audience viewing time available. putting out infinite stuff is not going to lead to more hits because it won't have a chance to get seen in the first place.
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There's limited time but, it's spent more efficiently now, with streaming. You don't have to watch Caroline in the City if you just want to watch Friends and Seinfeld. (and, yes, I know, that's what VCR's were for ... but only after the fact)
 
Here's the first step to the AI screenwriting relevance - if given a classic screenplay, can it rewrite it for the modern era, with the same outline but different dialog?
 
ahalpert said:
here's where I disagree. there's a finite amount of audience viewing time available. putting out infinite stuff is not going to lead to more hits because it won't have a chance to get seen in the first place.
Click to expand...

I definitely agree with that, but I think the models will change. It won't be a lot of the same thing, but different bits and pieces here and there.

I always felt like it was a risk for a studio/company to commit to the production of many episodes for one type of show, even if a season was successful. That has changed a bit but I think we'll see even more changes...different types of content produced by AI and they'll see what the data is.
 
DLD said:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/no...=pocket-newtab

The New Yorker article on the writer strike. Never heard so much whining in my life. Or entitlement. Makes me want to watch sports even more.
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Right. Athletes are famously selfless and never try to extract exorbitant pay.

From the article you linked:

For people outside the industry, the woes of TV writers can elicit a boo-hoo response: it is, after all, a more lucrative form of writing than most, right? But the economics of streaming have chipped away at what was previously a route to a middle-class life, as the cost of living in Los Angeles has crept upward. “It feels like the studios have gone through our contracts and figured out how to Frankenstein every loophole into every deal, which means that, at the very best, you can keep your head above water,” Jacqmin said. “You can maybe maintain the amount of money you made the year before, but more than likely you will be asked to cut your quote. It just feels really grim.” She added, “I’m on Twitter every other day, and I’m seeing writers who are, like, ‘Please Venmo me some grocery money. I am desperate, and I have not worked in three months. Help!’ ”

Aly Monroe, a thirty-year-old writer who’d worked up from production assistant to story editor on Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” told me that she makes about ten thousand dollars a year in residuals, “and that’s certainly not reflective of what the studio is making.” In the long breaks between seasons, she relies on her wife’s more regular income while stretching out the money from “Handmaid.” Some of her friends are getting copywriting jobs or moving back in with their parents. “Before the strike demands came out, a lot of my friends were feeling really hopeless and essentially ready to give up, because it had just been such a hard road,” she said. “And they think that what the W.G.A. is asking for makes us all feel really good and like we’re working toward something that can make it back into a livable career for all of us. That’s certainly how I feel.” ...

Alex O’Keefe, who is twenty-eight, grew up poor in Florida and worked as a speechwriter for the senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and as Green New Deal campaign director before getting staffed on FX’s “The Bear.” “It should be this beautiful rags-to-riches story, right?” he told me. “Unfortunately, I realized not all that glitters is gold.” During his nine weeks working in the writers’ room for “The Bear,” over Zoom, he was living in a tiny Brooklyn apartment with no heat; sometimes his space heater would blow the power out, and he’d bring his laptop to a public library. (He was never flown to set.) He thought that he was making a lot of money, but, after reps’ fees and taxes, it didn’t add up to much. “It’s a very regular-degular, working-class existence,” he said. “And the only future I’m seeking financially is to enter that middle class, which has always been rarified for someone who comes from poverty.”

Last month, “The Bear” won the W.G.A. Award for Comedy Series. O’Keefe went to the ceremony with a negative bank account and a bow tie that he’d bought on credit. He’s now applying for jobs at movie theatres to prepare for the potential strike. “A lot of people assume that, when you’re in a TV writers’ room, you sit around a table, and you just dream together,” he said. “With ‘The Bear,’ I learned from these masters that, if you are given a **** sandwich, you can dress that up and make it a Michelin-star-level dish. And they were consistently given **** sandwich after **** sandwich.” He recalled one of the executive producers apologizing to him. “She said, ‘I’m so sorry this is your first writers’-room experience, because it’s not usually like this. It shouldn’t be like this.’ I don’t even know the alternative. I thought we would be treated more like collaborators on a product. It’s like an assembly line now.”
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It's the same old story. If given the opportunity, management will pay you starvation wages and completely dehumanize your job. This has nothing to do with AI. This is all pre-AI. And if they want to write shows without human writers now, then good luck to them.

By the way, there was this bleak little nugget in there as well:

“What the streamers want most right now is ‘second-screen content,’ where you can be on your phone while it’s on."
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If you don't like the offer on the table, don't take it. The producers, Alec Baldwin aside, aren't holding a gun to your head. A working TV writer is not living at a poverty level. As JB pointed out here a couple of years ago, most staff writers on a full year contract begin at around $300,000. And experienced writer can make upward of $500,000. Showrunners can make above $5,000,000, stars over $50,000,000. So, all this "horrible producers" shtuff is a pile of dung. As is the New Yorker playing to its readers sympathies without informing them of how this business really works and what it entails.
 
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