Writer's Guild Going on Strike

You are taking things too literally. Ms. Drescher is taking the opportunity to be on a show that will get lots of public attention to make a posturing statement. It means nothing. For all we know, she is ready to cave at any moment.

It's what you do when you represent a group. Make bold statements. Get the people on your side. Let the opposition know they are the ones that will have to cave, etc. etc..
 
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Tom Roper said:
Was the strike called by a union vote?

So coming back to SAG-AFTRA, did the union vote this strike and agree to put themselves out of work for up to six months while the leadership negotiated residuals for the elite members at the top?
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My understanding is that is the only way it can happen. The members have to vote to authorize a strike. Leadership can't just make the decision on their own.
 
Run&Gun said:
My understanding is that is the only way it can happen. The members have to vote to authorize a strike. Leadership can't just make the decision on their own.
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A SAG member agrees to work only for companies that have agreements with SAG. So what happens when SAG comes to an agreement with Disney but not Paramount? Assume member #1 works for Disney and member #2 works for Paramount. Is it only member #2 that goes on strike? Or does member #1 have solidarity and also goes on strike? If I was a SAG writer with a family and a mortgage, I would have to be weighing the pros and cons of potentially up to six months without income against supporting Jennifer Lawrence's demand for streaming residuals that she doesn't need to maintain her financial solvency. Just using her as an example because she was one who spoke up loudly in support of the strike.
 
I don't think it works that way. I'm no expert, but SAG has contracts by type of work (TV, commercial, etc). A production company has to sign up with SAG to be a signatory company, meaning that they will comply with the contract for the type of work they are doing. So all TV producers work by the rules of the TV contract. SAG members can only work with SAG signatory production companies.

Disney and Paramount are represented in the negotiations by AMPTP, who works out the details of the contracts with SAG and so the contract conditions are the same for both companies.
 
Ms. Drescher's campaign tactics are working. Good on her. Nothing like a New Yorker attitude to shove it in the face of executives and get them to start moving.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/business/media/writers-guild-hollywood-strike.html

"The actors’ guild has historically been more willing to negotiate with the studios, while the writers have taken a much harder line. .... Over the past week and a half, however, the companies reconsidered that thinking,....The primary reason: Fran Drescher, the president of SAG-AFTRA.

Ms. Drescher ... has launched broadsides at studio executives, including Disney’s chief, Robert A. Iger. Her sharp criticism of studios started at a news conference on July 13 and continued on picket lines over the next week. On Tuesday, she revved up the SAG-AFTRA membership anew, appearing at a New York City Council meeting and nearby rally. She called studio executives “greed-driven and disrespectful people.”"
 
While that could be true, and her cheerleading excites her followers, I doubt her figurehead role is taken seriously in meaningful discussions. Being insulting and hateful is seldom a winning formula, for either side.
 
Paul F said:
Nothing like a New Yorker attitude to shove it in the face of executives and get them to start moving.
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Damn straight.

This will be big if it happens -- VFX artists are looking to unionize: https://nofilmschool.com/marvel-vfx-artist

From what I've heard, they could benefit a lot from improved working conditions and averting the race to the bottom of inter-agency bidding wars. I also think that the movies themselves will benefit because Marvel VFX have been trending sharply downward in quality. Audiences have taken notice and it's depressing their grosses. Basically, Disney productions have been a victim of their own negotiating success. They've secured tons of VFX work for peanuts and on tight schedules, but the result is not worth watching. If they're forced to pony up more and allow a more reasonable post-production schedule, they may end up making more profit anyway.

On a related note, supposedly Seth Rogen insisted that the animators of TMNT: Mutant Mayhem not be worked into the ground: https://variety.com/2023/film/news/...es-animators-overworked-suffering-1235689726/
 
Studio revenues are down but cash flows are up. Stocks are holding. We shall see who is under greater pressure, the execs or the out of work actors who are seeing exceptions made, not all are out of work. Factory automation replaced factory labor. If AI has the same potential, it won't be stopped by a labor agreement. Nobody has job security anymore, just the ways of progress.
 
There is a difference between a factory worker and Harrison Ford.

Actors are trying to retain the copyright of their unique likeness and voice. The product actors manufacture is themselves.

Sure AI can generate a character, but if they are replicating someone that is known then that is a genuine copyright infringement.
 
Doug Bee said:
There is a difference between a factory worker and Harrison Ford.
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Yes, but with AI you might not need a Harrison Ford at all. Maybe you can generate a Harrison Chevy from CGI that is a totally different character, looks nothing like Harrson Ford, but might be more popular, easier to work with, less expensive, able to work 24/7, and never ages . . . unless the script calls for it. A lot of movies look like videos games already, so at some point they'll just eliminate the human performer completely. As a viewer, i don't care one way or the other. Just make the content enteraining. If I was a celebrity actor who pulls down millions of dollars for a single gig, I'd be concerned about AI too. But you can't stop progress.
 
SAG are not worried about 100% cg actors.

They are worried about the rights to their existing members.

CG actors have been around a long time already, albeit they tend to be voiced by actual actors.

Theres already been a few AI influencers that have thousands of followers. SAG covers influencers FYI.

There is also an argument that Harrison Ford and Chevy Chase should also be entitled to copyright clearance if their traits are used by the AI to generate Harrison Chevy.

Yes I know you made a car analogy but fords are not actors either.

We all know AI is coming or already here.
 
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Doug Bee said:
Actors are trying to retain the copyright of their unique likeness and voice. The product actors manufacture is themselves.
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And they should. But at some point they will be eclipsed by completely fake "actors" who are so good, and with their own fans, that nobody will want to pay the price or jump thorugh the hoops to work with "real" actors. If I was a talented CGI artist I'd already be building a stable of characters that I controlled and could rent out to productions.

What is better? To be an actor who only controls their own likeness, or a CGI artist who controls 20 in-demand characters that they created from scratch? Unless I'm a big name celebrity like Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks or Harrison Ford, I'd rather be the CGI guy who has stable of CGI actors that I own and control 100%.

Similarly, if money matter most (not creative expression) would you rather be a best selling novelist who bangs away one word at a time for months, or would you rather have an AI mechanism that could spit out excellent, successful, novels in a few minutes? As reader, i don't care who wrote if the AI is just as good as the human writing. We aren't there yet, but it's coming. I'll bet AI could already spit out better books than ghost writers are currently doing for deceased/retired authors such as Tom Clancy.
 
Doug Jensen said:
And they should. But at some point they will be eclipsed by completely fake "actors" who are so good, and with their own fans, that nobody will want to pay the price or jump thorugh the hoops to work with "real" actors. If I was a talented CGI artist I'd already be building a stable of characters that I controlled and could rent out to productions.

What is better? To be an actor who only controls their own likeness, or a CGI artist who controls 20 in-demand characters that they created from scratch? Unless I'm a big name celebrity like Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks or Harrison Ford, I'd rather be the CGI guy who has stable of CGI actors that I own and control 100%.

Similarly, if money matter most (not creative expression) would you rather be a best selling novelist who bangs away one word at a time for months, or would you rather have an AI mechanism that could spit out excellent, successful, novels in a few minutes? As reader, i don't care who wrote if the AI is just as good as the human writing. We aren't there yet, but it's coming. I'll bet AI could already spit out better books than ghost writers are currently doing for deceased/retired authors such as Tom Clancy.
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I'm not sure any of that will come to pass, but if it does it won't happen as soon as people think.

I also don't think that CGI actors will be as valuable as real actors because, just like in sports, if you can't fantasize about ****ing the flesh and blood people you see on screen, you're gonna lose half your audience.

Furthermore, what I see from AI-generated films is exactly what I expected: the human performances are the weak link in the chain. Humans are literally born with the ability to interpret emotions. It will be the most difficult area to fool us. AI is a natural fit for special effects, backgrounds, etc. If you can generate compelling and believable humans from whole cloth, I'm sure it will be like self-driving cars -- just around the corner for way longer than one expects.

That being said, I think the path of least resistance will be for directors to steal performances from old movies and remap the expressions onto their AI frankensteins. Like, "I love the way Harrison Ford reacted to that gunshot in Blade Runner -- let's have the AI map that series of expressions from his face onto our character." And that's kind of the basis for all the innovations we've seen in the internet era since Napster -- thinly-veiled theft.
 
Doug Jensen said:
A lot of movies look like videos games already, so at some point they'll just eliminate the human performer completely.
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To be honest, I think that economic forces and tools designed to ease production have rapidly degraded the art of our civilization. I've been listening to a lot of music from the 40s/50s lately, and it occurs to me that we never actually hear any real human voices anymore. For a long time now, everything has been autotuned to Hell. People don't even remember what a real singer sounds like and they don't even know what they're missing. Same goes for plastic surgery. Same goes for CGI/VFX. And now AI. Everything is turning to digital mush. Sad.
 
Tom Roper said:
Studio revenues are down but cash flows are up. Stocks are holding. We shall see who is under greater pressure, the execs or the out of work actors who are seeing exceptions made, not all are out of work. Factory automation replaced factory labor. If AI has the same potential, it won't be stopped by a labor agreement. Nobody has job security anymore, just the ways of progress.
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Most stocks took a noticeable hit in May. Either way, studios can't afford to sit on their hands forever. They're going to run out of things to show.

Technology is changing regardless of what gets hashed out in this agreement. It would be silly to roll over and die because they're facing headwinds.

But anyway, contracts play a big role in restricting the use of technology and protecting people's intellectual and natural property rights. Copyright itself is an artificial construct that is expensive for the state to maintain, yet without it the studios would not exist in the first place.

It reminds me of the meme I've seen going around that says that now that McDonald's workers have finally gotten a $15 minimum wage, they're being replaced with machines as a result. The only problem is that they haven't actually gotten a $15 minimum wage. The technological change is happening totally independently and probably just as soon as was technologically possible. If there's a labor-oriented impetus here, it's probably that available workers are scarce in the Biden labor market because unemployment is so low. My local Walmart used to be open all night. Now they close at 10pm. I used to use a diner that was open until 2AM but they told me last year that they have to close earlier because they can't get a cook that work that late anymore. Same goes for delivery at my favorite pizzeria, which is no longer available during lunch on weekdays.
 
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Doug Bee said:
Sure AI can generate a character, but if they are replicating someone that is known then that is a genuine copyright infringement.
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Right, this is the only reason why Ford's likeness is valuable -- it's because he's already famous from having been in all this great stuff. There's nothing magical about his appearance. And the reason he was such a good actor was intellectual. Ask any actor or singer -- the juice is in their interpretation and execution. Aretha Franklin wouldn't even tell people how she though about planning her rendition of a song, calling it "trade secrets."
 
With SAG-AFTRA suspending new interim agreements with independents for the productions that have WGA contracts; the line from CARNIVAL ROW, "Chaos creates opportunity."

The suspension of interim agreements was a decision made to address solidarity concerns about the inequity of picketers on the line versus working actors on independent productions that made agreements with SAG for an 11% increase in minimum wage and other benefits.

What would happen if AMPTP settled with SAG-AFTRA for less than the Independents gave to get interim agreements? The expectation is that the strikers would not settle for less but the current action seems intended to placate them for their patience. But the studios continue to show profitability. Revenue losses could be ahead but for now, they are accumulating cost savings from not having to pay wages while the strikers are not earning income.

The independent studios that already agreed to the union demand are not able to proceed with upcoming productions until a final agreement is made with AMPTP, yet the appearance of working actors has caused dissent among some faction of strikers. Others remain strident in their support and seem willing to picket in lieu of other temporary work. The independent productions may end up owned by the studios at some point. Foreign partnerships not subject to SAG-AFTRA agreements could be ahead.
 
Yes, independently produced projects made under interim agreements will likely end up on AMPTP member distribution, but they will be BUYING these productions with a contract that agrees to the WGA / SAG terms that they have previously rejected.

The Interim agreement is ONLY GRANTED if the terms are favourable to WGA / SAG members.

It actually undermines the AMPTP position because the AMPTP members will be effectively agreeing to the last negotiating position of the WGA before talks broke off if they want to buy these interim agreement productions.

It also allows work to continue with studios and producers that want to agree to the proposed terms of the WGA and SAG.

Reality TV is already surging in response.

Studios are also exploring ramping up production in other markets not as affected by the strike like Korea, the UK and India to try and fill in some looming holes.

One exec I know said when it comes back, the per episode costs will be halved and they are putting in place mechanisms for production of US content in other jurisdictions. Still have US HOD's and cast but try to reduce the cost of labour by going to other production markets.

I'm not sure the studios are showing profitability. The tech companies / streamers are OK sure as a piece of a whole. But Disney isn't doing well. And neither are the old guard studios. (FOX, WB, SONY)
 
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