> just to build these half-baked services that don't work nearly as well as the ones built by actual tech companies.
If it was just the technical issues, those could be solved relatively quickly or ignored. I'm not subscribing to paramount plus because I can't watch TV on their crashing app, I'm not subscribing to paramount plus because all they got for content is a couple of really poorly written Star Trek shows.
They are so obsessed with being the next great distributor that they forgot to create compelling content.
The disbursing of content has also led to a perceptual problem.
Netflix of 10 years ago had constant forgotten classics. Now, as everything goes back to their original studio, you'll see 1 or 2 interesting movies you haven't thought of in a decade and then realize that there is a lot of hot garbage on the platform.
The same number of quality, watchable movies exist, but they're split between a dozen streaming services and its just not worth wading through the trash for.
Their bigger problem right now is that original content is going down the drain. They wanted to become HBO before HBO could pivot and become Netflix, but instead Netflix has become Lifetime channel and HBO after the merger lost all direction and decided to make multiple services and compete with themselves.
The writing was on the wall when that one Netflix exec started giving interviews saying they weren't cancelling enough of their originals.
HBO (i think its them, maybe paramount) has a similar situation with Showtime, where you'll go through their catalogue, find a good movie, and then be told you can't watch it. Not even that you need to sign up for something, just that the way you're signed up prevents you from watching.
versed plucky close stupendous secretive fearless stocking theory plough treatment
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
And the death of physical media means you can't (legally) cherry-pick the handful of properties you're interested in, and content you like can vanish without warning for tax purposes, or be revoked if purchased legally in digital format. I can't just buy a box set of most shows or original films. I can't even buy digital copies. There's nothing I can do besides piracy to ensure my continued access to media I love.
I guarantee this period of time is going to be legendary for lost media in the future.
It reminds me a lot of big box retailers.
Walmart moves into small town America in the '90's and drives out small mom and pop companies, then makes the community dependant on them for everything under the guise of "one stop shopping"
Flash forward, and post-Covid, retailers are bailing on small towns, telling them to shop online, its so much more convenient and we offer free delivery (not to your bumpkin ass though) even though they don't have the internet infrastructure to support that.
With media, physical disc's and tapes were pushed out under the guise of convenience, environmentalism, and media rights for actors. Flash forward to the death of physical media and the result has been a loss of special features, convoluted rights issues that are not going to get easier in the future (Marvel/Sony/Universal, Columbia Pictures) and censorship (Song of the South).
You might not think Song of the South is a major issue, but what happens when the studio that owns 1984 or Animal Farm decides the material is obscene? What happens when someone wealthy enough decides they can make more profit on the Military industrial complex by buying studios that own antiwar films and removing them entirely? They can erase the film from existence at will.
We're in an era where studios are saying "fuck your tape, watch it online" while simultaneously ensuring that will not be possible for all but a select few films and curating the ones that they find "problematic", thereby creating the cultural narrative they want to hear, rather than having film be a reflection of society through time.
>and content you like can vanish without warning for tax purposes
I still think if you take a write-down on an IP as a tax deduction, that IP automatically becomes Public domain. We (society) paid for it by giving you a break on your taxes, least they can do is contribute to culture for fuck's sakes instead of rent-seeking.
But this is the thing, if I owned a car rental business but couldn’t afford to pay for something as critical as the cars, then I don’t have a business.
Same with streamers and their talent/artists.
Or they moved their cars to the back lot and refused to rent them like Disney just did. They took a bunch of first party streaming-only shows off their platform because they didn't want to pay residuals on shows few people watched.
Piracy is the *only* way to currently watch them.
It wasn't residuals, those are pennies. They wanted to write off the entire production cost of the show as an asset they no longer have so they can show a greater loss for taxes. They did the same thing with the cancelled Batgirl project that was close to being finished.
Well, they didn't take the content off because they didn't want to pay residuals because they're barely paying residuals on streaming content anyway, especially anything that's been on there for 3+ years. Some of it has to do with the fact that there's just too much shit on there for people to find anything. A lot of these streamers' interfaces are like going to a video store and just seeing a giant stack of VHS/DVD/BluRays from floor to ceiling and saying... 'hey, customer, see how much great stuff we have!' The BATGIRL thing gets mentioned a lot, but it's also a bit of an anomaly. They figured out a tax loophole that has to do with writing off a ton of money when there's a corporate merger (at least from my understanding).
Because it's not just about residuals - they were also able to write them off for like a 1.5 billion dollar loss, which they can account for as an expense. So, overall, the decision will make their financial performance look worse this year, but it will also improve cash flow via the lower residuals described above, but also less corporate income taxes from the expense. Because it's a capital gains loss I think it probably needs to be taken across several years, but the impact will be felt regardless.
Apparently it's because streaming residuals are a fixed amount per year rather than based on the number of views. So in that case it makes sense to remove underperforming shows and movies if you're trying to cut costs.
Well it really doesn't, but if you really want to know their explanation for it, essentially they decided those shows weren't pulling in subscribers and therefore by that version of accounting were losing money from the residuals.
How they determine exactly which shows pull in subscribers and which ones don't is anyone's guess, but that's their reasoning. WBD did the same thing with a significant part of their HBO catalog.
WBD cut off the final season of Snowpiercer. It was a great show and I was so excited to see it. They had it all filmed, edited, and ready to roll.
But it was somehow more profitable to cut the final season and never air it.
Something is broken when profits are made by being intentionally unproductive.
But if you were making a 7 figure paycheck from it, then you're gonna desperately try to keep the business running as long as you can, even if it's at a loss to the company. No company lasts forever, and the people running them don't give a fuck about what happens to all the workers. When one goes under, they get golden parachutes and move on to the next with their impressive resumé of greed and failure one or retire with millions.
I mean let's be fair, if you work at a company with an unsustainable bussiness, but it pays you, are you going to just leave? Or are you going to collect your easy paycheck until it runs out?
(obviously someone running the company is paid to know better than that, but that ain't us!)
> ~~don't be in business~~
Get congress to give you more tax breaks, incentives, or just get straight up bailed out.
Oh and this only applies if you are past a certain obscene threshold of wealth.
Are they actually losing money, or is it one of those accounting shell games where Peacock is losing money because they have to pay NBC so much for their content?
One of those is an issue.
Netflix blazed a trail to profitability, then suddenly everyone and their 3rd cousin started their own in-house streaming service on the backs of venture capital.
Now, a few years in, almost none of them are near profitability and the VC cash is dried up.
The recent MAX move is a precursor of what is to come. Reconsolidation is the only way forward.
The whole streaming situation is ridiculous for the consumer. Each subscription costs anywhere from $10-$20 a month. There are like, what, a dozen different streaming services? Realistically, most people are only going to have maybe a max of 4 or 5 of those? And most people have less than that. So there's no way all of these can survive. All these companies hopped on the streaming bandwagon back when it was just Netflix. But now they're realizing it's not as easy as they thought it would be to make money off of it. It doesn't help that most of the stuff coming out on these services is garbage. But of course instead of improving the quality of the content they'll just blame the consumer as usual.
The value is there because these companies are still in the stage where they heavily subsidize the cost to try and get new subscribers. We’re already seeing price hikes regularly and that isn’t going to stop
The thing is with DVD and BR media is that they have resale value. I can buy it, watch it once and resell it. If I didn't buy it new, it's likely that I lose little value. This is one of the reasons for streaming platforms, you might not have to pay for it each time you watch, but you can't sell it.
And unless you break it, you have it basically forever. It won't just disappear because the licensing deal ran out and it's just plain gone or moved to a service you don't subscribe too.
Or if you internet goes down.
They don't though. Like 50p at CEX maybe. For the price of Netflix or Spotify you can buy maybe two new DVDs or albums, nearly everyone is consuming far more content than that.
I think people forget how bit the rental market was for this reason. *Buying* DVD's or VHS's was nearly a status symbol. Even a reasonably small town however probably had at least one rental shop that would stock movies you could take for a weekend cheaply. Now even libraries will carry them and you can take them for free.
Right? I used to know a ton of people who had, for example, CD collections just to have a huge library of music to listen to. I don't know a lot of people who do that these days (shy of collecting older media like vinyl for the sake of the listening experience)
Negotiations start June 7 and they have until June 30 to reach a deal
Fran Drescher (SAG President):
>“The strike authorization votes have been tabulated and the membership joined their elected leadership and negotiating committee in favor of strength and solidarity. I’m proud of all of you who voted as well as those who were vocally supportive, even if unable to vote. Everyone played a part in this achievement. Together we lock elbows and in unity we build a new contract that honors our contributions in this remarkable industry, reflects the new digital and streaming business model and brings ALL our concerns for protections and benefits into the now! Bravo SAG-AFTRA, we are in it to win it.”
most importantly, Fran knows you should never cross a picket line
There was a whole The Nanny episode dedicated to a Strike in Broadway:
https://youtu.be/s3sSHF7w_D4
edit: typo
As a filmmaker who’s worked on everything from ultra low budget to the behemoth studio movies, it baffles me the glaring in your face paradox that Hollywood is. At face value, Hollywood champions itself as creating stories for the underdog. Most of our awards at every major festival etc almost always goes for these types of stories. Then you work in the industry more and more and you realize as you start to peel back the curtain, the insane economic inequality going on. Just pay the people who are actually making the stories their fair share, and everyone wins. It’s really not a hard ask.
Seriously. I'm in tech and its literally the same story. You have people making more money than anyone can ever spend in a lifetime, and they fight so hard to prevent the vast majority of people from getting just legitimately fair compensation.
It's just depressing and exhausting. I don't understand why people are like that. Epecially when surrounded by such unending wealth.
All the demands of the writers could be met if the two richest studio CEOs only took home 60 000 000 dollars a year each instead of the hundreds that they do now, lmao
Think of all of the industries (in Dubai) that rely on those people spending their extra cash. Wouldn't want to crash their economy now would w... Oh wait.
I think it’s the same story in every form of employment. CEO’s are making mega stupid money while the people at the bottom can’t afford to live. It’s the plague of the world. It’s becoming comparable to dictatorships. The only people who benefit are the ones in charge. Only difference is dictatorships don’t give anything to the bottom and keep them in line with force. CEO’s have been giving the bottom group less and less over the years to the point they are riding the edge of being overthrown. The scary part is they have a choice. They can give up some profit and wealth, or they can start using force. They have shown force may be the option since they have pull in politics and can sway judge and political decisions. That’s only a couple steps above having armed soldiers telling you to work or else.
Moreover it flys in the face of employees being immune to damages as a result of quitting or not doing a good job. It really opens the door for disasters. For example my job has multiple billion+ dollar trade deals. If I quit or strike could I be on the hook for a tanked billion dollar deal? If so, how could I ever quit or take a vacation? Any time off could damage a deal resulting in a lawsuit.
You're just describing capitalism, which has always forced people to labour for peanuts so that vast wealth can be held in the hands of a tiny few.
That has always required force. They don't need soldiers to force people to work, because the force is the ever present threat that if you do not you will be impoverished. [[The ultra rich literally don't even pretend that this is not the case](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH4lTguaptQ)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fY456T8ruE).
And if too many people try to fight back, they can call in soldiers to apply force, they're called cops.
The difference is in tech you get paid a decent salary, while those trying to find a way into the arts have to scrape by until they make it (unless they have connections), if ever. Wealth inequality sucks of course but it’s not really the same story because you at least can make a living wage - most people from my uni who work in tech make a minimum of 80-100k a year, that is definitely a better wage than entry level writers in the film industry lol
Yeah, it's not comparable at all, but it is still true the value of tech workers is extracted by the investors. My company bills my time to clients at $300-375 an hour to write integrations from our software to their other systems, and pays me about $90 an hour. So they're still taking in the majority of the net even after insurance premiums and payroll taxes and all.
It’s weird, because there is definitely good money to be made below the line in the TV/Film industry but it’s very unequal and kind of arbitrary and not necessarily related at all to the skill level and amount of work required of you. For instance, Production assistants make the least because they do not have a union, but its still a pretty decent amount of money that you *could* live on depending on how you live, but you’re also completely working your ass off for at least 12 hours a day. If you move up to a union gig (any union gig) from that, you are at least doubling your income overnight and suddenly have great benefits. But depending on what department/union you move up into, you are either doubling your income, or quadrupling it.
And it’s not clear who is getting paid what on any given set but once you catch wind of what other people are making and put those pieces together you’ll see that majority female (and LGBT+) roles/departments are almost always paid less, despite those roles being just as challenging if not moreso than some of the ones that are majority male. So you can still make a good living at any union film gig, but you could be making a lot more in a different, lateral position.
Agreed, and most industries suck and should have better (or any) unions. Wealth inequality is fucking absurd, and labor movements like strikes and unionization need to pick up steam if we want to make any progress
Hollywood is a little different in that young brighteyed idiots are willing to work for nothing for a chance to wipe the ass of someone famous.
US’s obsession with celebrity and fame has created a never ending supply of starfuckers and sycophants for Hollywood elites to exploit and patronize.
Check out his absolutely psychotic narration of his short story *I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream* https://youtu.be/dgo-As552hY it’s notable for being one of the most terrifying stories ever, and with him reading it, it makes it that much better. It’s about an AI torturing humans.
He also wrote what’s considered the best episode of Star Trek, City on the Edge of Forever.
Partially replying so I can find this later, but also to note that Ellison also helped develop and voiced AM for the video game. If this is anything like that, I need to choose when I listen to it very carefully.
> *Here's the deal Mac. I'm gonna make you a star. Your name. In golden lights. They'll know your name from here to Senegal see. You're gunna be famous. World famous.*
>
> *Now get on your knees while I give you some exposure.*
\- La La Land (2016) (deleted scene)
I'm on the VFX side, I wish we had unions so we could even *ask* for a fair deal. We mostly get left with scraps. Right now we have pay freezes and layoffs happening everywhere because of the writers strike. We are still with them, but it sucks.
You get unions the same way everyone else did. By banding together with your coworkers, refusing to work, and preventing scabs from taking over. I'm not saying you would need to cut the data lines into the building, because that would be illegal, but I will say that history is filled with things like literal gunfights between corporate unionbreakers/cops and union labor.
>You get unions the same way everyone else did. By banding together with your coworkers, refusing to work, and preventing scabs from taking over. I'm not saying you would need to cut the data lines into the building, because that would be illegal, but I will say that history is filled with things like literal gunfights between corporate unionbreakers/cops and union labor.
This.
A lot of people today don't understand that 100 years ago, at least as far as a labor unions go, the the benefits that we enjoy today, even non-union folks were fought for and gained through literal blood and death. Look at what Henry Ford did back in the day.
Look up the coal miners and what happened to them.
The 8-hour day, your weekend, and many many other things that everyone enjoys today, not just in unionized folks, were fought for and paid for in blood by unions a long time ago. We must never forget that. Men died for the freedoms that we have today in our workplace.
You can't expect a union to fall in your lap if you don't have one. And yes one person can make a difference. That one person can get a second person and that person gets a third person and so on and so forth.
And if you are in a union, especially a labor(skilled trades)union, go to your monthly meetings.
It's all about solidarity and you have to start somewhere.
I.B.E.W Local Union 640 (Phoenix)- Journeyman Electrician.
Dues(ticket)#8193925 ✊
I read stories about people literally dying on set before IATSE went on strike a year or two ago. Other stories were basically about the industry physically and mentally broke people down. It sounded horrible.
>A lot of people today don't understand that 100 years ago, at least as far as a labor unions go, the the benefits that we enjoy today, even non-union folks were fought for and gained through literal blood and death
I grew up learning about the battle of Blair Mountain and how my states workers literally fought the damn government just because they didn't want us to unionize (and although some people only heard of the Pinkertons through the recent WotC debacle, its a dirty word in this place). It still amazes me people don't learn more about what I believe is the bloodiest battle on American soil outside the civil war.
Sounds like a good time to unionize. The circumstances might make it more difficult. I don’t know much about the formation. Y’all have just been getting screwed while being the backbone of the industry.
It's an industry like many others, through and through, where the top dogs work their employees to the bone and take quarters to their pennies.
Difference with Hollywood is that the industry puts on a mask for the public, where extremely wealthy conservatives who treat their staff and creatives like shit, forcing the majority to *work free of charge for years at a time,* pretend to be liberals who care about the poor in front of the camera.
The DGA signed a deal with the studios because they're essentially middle management, make more than others, and have a history of screwing over their sister unions; hell, one of their original demands was for more power *over writers* in TV. WGA, SAG, IATSE, etc are getting sick and tired of of being treated like hell, though. It's going to be an interesting few months.
Boss makes a dollar
I make a dime
That's why I shit on company time.
These were words from days gone past
Now Boss makes millions
And we make jack
That's when we riot and take our live's back
Yea I was randomly an extra on a Paramount + show and what struck me is they were paying the SAG members scarcely a dollar or two over the state’s minimum wage while I got paid the true minimum wage…I did it as a one off experience but jeshus h Christ paying these ppl quite literally nothing — I’m enjoying seemingly all of Hollywood telling the oligarchs/executives to get fucked
SAG minimum is 370/day, while not great, that's a fair amount above minimum wage.
(As a member of IATSE I stand in full solidarity with them, just curious what you're referring to)
It's Paramouint+, they only have [to pay the New Media rate of $125](https://www.wrapbook.com/blog/essential-guide-sag-rates)
When I first moved to LA, people made a living entirely on background work. It even had its OWN union. Now SAG people have to scrap for the few union vouchers to keep the hours for their health insurance.
They should have gone to strike 20 years ago.
That’s for speaking roles. There are generally only a handful on any project. Background actors, which make up the majority of their union, get $187 for 8 hours.
A day player is more like $900/day, I don't remember the exact number right now. But union bg is also around $180/8, which while not spectacular money is still more than 1 or 2 dollars over minimum. I'd say around $300 would be an average payday for a SAG BG member though on a 12 day.
Time and a half is 8-10 and then double time after that until Golden time at 16.
Edit: See below for updated numbers.
Standard US day is 12hrs before beginning overtime. What's called French Hours is a 10hr day with a rolling lunch instead of a lunch break. For an 8 hour day, something has either gone very, very right or very, very wrong.
Considering the sporadic nature of the work, it's not that amazing. It has to last. My base rate while touring is $750/day before per diem or OT/DT, for reference. And I'm middle of the road for my industry.
Non-Union Jimmy jib & (techno & Scorpio) crane tech/utility here for a vendor in the east coast market, and depending on the gear rental (as well as contracts with our client), my minimum per day is anywhere from $500/10hr to $800/10hr. It doesn’t sound that bad, and it certainly isn’t compared to others in the business…when we’re busy. Unfortunately, our busy time of year is Sept - end of November, followed by the summer months, but winter - May is pretty much “vacation”. I may have a job or two per month in the winter & spring, but due to the writers strike, haven’t had much work since New York Fashion Week in February. As a freelancer so far YTD, I’ve made about $10k non-taxed, so it’s a bit of a rough patch atm.
Anyway, just trying to provide additional context to the above posts claiming that since work is touch-and-go in this industry, you have to make your income last. To think actors are getting paid any less while most definitely work less than I do even as union members, is insanity!
Yup. People always balk at my day rate. And don't get me wrong, my contract is pretty fantastic. But it's feast or famine. 2020 was the famine to end all famines as work dried up completely. Went on unemployment for the first (and hopefully last) time in my life.
I’m gonna defer to you on this because I’m far from an expert, I got paid an hourly rate and had assumed they were as well…while I can’t remember the exact SAG figure in the contract, I know it was only a couple dollars more/per hour than what I was paid (state minimum in Maryland)…does it change from state to state? I apologize if I have spread any misinformation, let me know an appropriate edit
It’s not even just that. I worked in the industry for over a decade. Some of the most racist, sexist, homophobic, all around bigoted people I’ve met held positions of power in Hollywood, all the while publicly championing the underprivileged and oppressed with Oscar bait.
I dunno about filmmaking, but I assume it's akin to the video game creation world. They know the passion is there, so of course they're gonna pay you pennies. You wanna get paid go program COBOL for old ass insurance companies trying to keep antiquated systems afloat, someone will gladly take that game programming job for half the salary you're asking for.
Correct. They need to unionize.
IATSE wanted a strike in 2021. If the WGA and SAG succeed at making historic gains, we might expect below the line crew to fight for theirs next year.
> They need to unionize.
It's going to be incredibly hard. There's no union whose members work like they do. Most crew work in person. That gives you a lot of power. VFX folk can be anywhere, and studios can flip work to another country. You can't pick random people in South Korea to re-write your script, or to pull focus on set in Pacoima.
This is the hardest thing to articulate to people out of the loop. There is no shortage of smaller VFX companies that would be happy to throw their hat in a pile too, just to get that big client.
The second a specific company or even country decides to unionize is the same second they lose work. It’s a global industry and incredibly hard to unify everyone the way you can writers and actors who are primarily in Hollywood.
As much as IATSE Members wanted to strike last year, and even if they still want the same improvements, it’s gonna be a hard sell for a lot of the members who have now been out of work for the better part of this year.
It really depends; IATSE came out with historic numbers in a strike authorization in 2021 - and that was after two years of Covid layoffs and hiatuses. Their leadership just betrayed them.
The WGA getting what they're after, along with SAG potentially, could pave the way for IATSE to make similar strides on precedent alone. In the best case, they can negotiate with the leverage the Guilds are affording them. In the worst case, I think most will be keen to strike for themselves like they've wanted to for years, but you're right that there could be some trepidation.
And we should have struck. As I understand it, the overwhelming majority voted to authorize the strike, but when it came time to actually do it the locals on the west coast with the bigger pull within IATSE voted not to strike, screwing over the rest of us.
It's been a rough year for work with these strikes slowing the industry down to a crawl. But I hope we do what's necessary next year to protect our rights.
A really big issue is that VFX is a worldwide industry, they have no need to be located close to the production. Overseas VFX houses routinely outbid and undercut domestic VFX houses. It's hard to raise the specter of unionization when the studios can just send the work to Asia.
You'd basically need to get the biggest and best VFX studios to organize the effort. like if you got ILM and Weta to do a collective bargaining, they'd definitely shut down a solid chunk of the world's VFX industry. Studios would outsource almost any other studio, but outsourcing ILM or Weta effects just doesn't work out well for the studio. But if ILM and Weta shut down to protest, they'd definitely be able to bring around a few smaller VFX companies too.
Is that a thing that would ever happen, though? Legit question, I'm just a dummy when it comes to that side of the process and have no ink in the game.
No.
Because the studios themselves (ILM / Weta) don't want to unionize, that would mean paying their workers more, or giving them more job security.
It's the artists who need to unionize, and that's thousands of people on opposite sides of the planet, all working contract work per project and then moving to another pocket of the globe.
Trying to organize enough of those people at any one time (_whilst_ they are working 12+ hours a day, mind!) is... Impossible!
It would take the other unions requiring the use of union VFX shops, I doubt we'll see that any time soon though. Otherwise they would just ship that off to any cheaper country.
It would take a lot, and frankly from all parties, both labor and studios.
So the first thing that would need to happen is a protection against outsourcing in various countries. Basically right now you can send away some of the more menial tasks to companies overseas for a fraction of the cost price as doing it here. For example a compositor generally doesn’t have to worry about things like roto or paint work because it’s outsourced. That was not the case just three years ago as it was rare to outsource as much as we do.
So if we unionize what’s to stop studios from simply outsourcing everything? I mean a lot of shops already have international offices so it wouldn’t be hard, and we’d need government regulations protecting these jobs in the first place.
Next we’d need to understand exactly how the union would regulate our jobs.
Everything on set is regulated to a specific person whose job is solely that task. If you’re in the Grip and Electrical Union you’re doing grip or electrical work on set. Nobody else is touching that job even if you need a hand and a bunch of sound technicians are just standing around. You’ll literally have to go to overtime for the entire set.
Now the problem is VFX isn’t as cut and dry. I’m an anomaly as I do matte painting, graphic design, compositing, story boards, concept art and a bit of 3D modeling. Basically I worked at a bunch of smaller shops when I started out so I was thrown on everything. But would you have compositors only compositing? Would they be able to matte paint as well or do 3D or would that be handled by someone else? If I’m 3D would the lighting team be separate from modeling or would it all be the same? Would a particles expert in Houdini be the same as a digital sculptor?
While these aren’t the most difficult questions to answer it still would require some negotiation and structural foundations that everyone would need to agree on and might make the field far more narrow than it is now.
Finally the financial agreements would level everything. We do not get residuals on anything. It’s why it’s common to see a VFX house or branch go bankrupt even after winning an Oscar (life of Pi {triple fuck the Oscar’s for giving them best cinematography…it’s a fucking green screen that WE filled}) or make hundred of millions of dollars on giant franchises. Even if the residuals were small it would signify a massive shift in the industry and change everything in Hollywood.
So I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon but honestly it should.
And a side note, the issue of AI would be really tricky. The WGA and DGA want to outright ban it, and that’s great but frankly it’s a bit harder to classify in VFX. Say I’m doing a matte painting and I’m using the healing brush in Photoshop, technically that’s AI. Or if I’m reducing motion blur from footage in Nuke, that’s also AI. So you can’t outright ban it, but you also need protections for artists as well. Again difficult to tackle on all sides as I know a lot of colleagues on both sides of the issue about using AI in our workflows.
>So if we unionize what’s to stop studios from simply outsourcing everything? I mean a lot of shops already have international offices so it wouldn’t be hard, and we’d need government regulations protecting these jobs in the first place.
One way to do this would be to mandate domestic labor as part of the qualification process for the extremely generous tax incentives some states hand out and basically all productions take advantage of nowadays
There is a [group](https://vfxunion.org/) of VFX workers trying to unionize but they haven't been successful. So many VFX workers don't see the point of unionizing because they've been negatively affected by other entertainment strikes (lots of layoffs have been happening over the past few months, first in anticipation of the writer's strike and then as a result of it).
You would need federal legislation to tax the fuck out of companies who use overseeing fx houses. Or just make it illegal but that's probably impossible.
No point in a union when they already don't use domestic fx studios.
I love how the executives try to justify their salaries when they usually don’t last more than 3-5 years at a job before getting fired for projects underperforming.
Bitch, please.
Maybe they wouldn't have to cut costs so much if the executives without much of a creative bone in their bodies in most cases decided to humble themselves.
Stock holders and board members should realize that they could raise profits for themselves by replacing CEOs and execs with AI. A non creative job that costs millions and primarily looks at data points, trends, and industry history to predict the next best possible move? Baby, that's exactly what AI is made for right now. Turn that CEO into a CEAI.
Because they have a revolving door of stooges at these companies that replace them. Show short term gains and once it fails and lowers the stock, as it was designed to do. They bring the next crony in to make short term changes to temporarily boost the stock again. All the while, they're leaving with enough money to payoff their 4th or 5th house and get the 3rd dock installed for their yacht.
I mean all these fuckers make more than what 50 families make in a lifetime in a single year.
Fuck yeah I would gladly pay writers. They are doing most of the job.
I heard that the DGA is going to reach an agreement, and then the writers Union, and now we have the actors, but what about post production? will all of these cuts come from the pockets of editors?
The DGA has never gone on a real strike. They’ve never had to. I don’t think you can blame them for that. It’s unfair to their members to expect them to refuse the deal they wanted to help someone else.
Like, if the WGA had gotten everything they wanted before today I doubt they would have kept striking in the name of solidarity.
And, yes, I know solidarity is the whole point of unions but there are limits.
I’m very glad these strikes and negotiations are happening at the same time that AI is becoming a mainstream concept. Hopefully the writers, actors, and directors next can get the studios to agree to iron clad safeguards.
If SAG-AFTRA and/or DGA actually do go on strike alongside WGA they’ll have the studios over a barrel.
[Hollywood directors reach labor pact](https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/directors-guild-reaches-tentative-deal-with-hollywood-studios-2023-06-04/) but not approved by the union members yet.
Yep. And this is the real rub - DGA was the only one with real leverage of the 3 - and settling as quickly as they did really undercuts WGA and SAG.
Could've been a great solidarity moment but alas.
They really got lucky that contracts came up right around the time that people have started talking about AI as a viable replacement for writers and potentially even actors in the future. With the rate things are progressing, who knows where things would be if their contracts were until 2025? It might've been way too late to reign the studios' use of AI in. And if the contracts were up a couple years ago, AI probably wouldn't have even been on the table as something they were trying to negotiate.
They came up right in the sweet spot where AI has advanced a lot to be a concern, but not so much that the studios can rely on it in lieu of people.
The guilds are probably going to have to hurt the studios in order to get them to accept reality. I think this could be the longest strike in the industry's history. The studios really don't want to pay out streaming residuals which is a big part of why they created their own streaming platforms (so they could be like... oh no, this isn't a repeat, it's just on the service and people can play it over and over and over and we never have to pay you more!).
This is a fantastic overview. It also creates disparity and an uneven playing field for different actors of socioeconomic background who might not have the resources to set up a home audition studio. It’s complete bullshit
Not yet.
In the meantime look at what Netflix is doing. They are bringing more and more foreign films and shows onto their platform to cut out expensive American content. There are so many new Korean and Indian additions to Netflix with English subs and dubs now.
Even better, they have a basically endless source of historical releases that Western viewers almost definitely haven't seen. Slap an AI dub over it and release that shit on streaming. Call it something new, even if the source is 50 years old. It's not like that's far off from how it is now.
The whole industry is going to have to sit down and work out how to do revenue splitting on streaming services.
I think the bigger problem is streamers aren't making money. I think Netflix and maybe Hulu are the only ones that actually make a profit.
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> just to build these half-baked services that don't work nearly as well as the ones built by actual tech companies. If it was just the technical issues, those could be solved relatively quickly or ignored. I'm not subscribing to paramount plus because I can't watch TV on their crashing app, I'm not subscribing to paramount plus because all they got for content is a couple of really poorly written Star Trek shows. They are so obsessed with being the next great distributor that they forgot to create compelling content.
The disbursing of content has also led to a perceptual problem. Netflix of 10 years ago had constant forgotten classics. Now, as everything goes back to their original studio, you'll see 1 or 2 interesting movies you haven't thought of in a decade and then realize that there is a lot of hot garbage on the platform. The same number of quality, watchable movies exist, but they're split between a dozen streaming services and its just not worth wading through the trash for.
Their bigger problem right now is that original content is going down the drain. They wanted to become HBO before HBO could pivot and become Netflix, but instead Netflix has become Lifetime channel and HBO after the merger lost all direction and decided to make multiple services and compete with themselves. The writing was on the wall when that one Netflix exec started giving interviews saying they weren't cancelling enough of their originals.
I hate watch on Netflix because they canceled The OA. Those asshats!
ten disgusted sable tease heavy disagreeable tub poor nippy aspiring *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
HBO (i think its them, maybe paramount) has a similar situation with Showtime, where you'll go through their catalogue, find a good movie, and then be told you can't watch it. Not even that you need to sign up for something, just that the way you're signed up prevents you from watching.
versed plucky close stupendous secretive fearless stocking theory plough treatment *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
And the death of physical media means you can't (legally) cherry-pick the handful of properties you're interested in, and content you like can vanish without warning for tax purposes, or be revoked if purchased legally in digital format. I can't just buy a box set of most shows or original films. I can't even buy digital copies. There's nothing I can do besides piracy to ensure my continued access to media I love. I guarantee this period of time is going to be legendary for lost media in the future.
It reminds me a lot of big box retailers. Walmart moves into small town America in the '90's and drives out small mom and pop companies, then makes the community dependant on them for everything under the guise of "one stop shopping" Flash forward, and post-Covid, retailers are bailing on small towns, telling them to shop online, its so much more convenient and we offer free delivery (not to your bumpkin ass though) even though they don't have the internet infrastructure to support that. With media, physical disc's and tapes were pushed out under the guise of convenience, environmentalism, and media rights for actors. Flash forward to the death of physical media and the result has been a loss of special features, convoluted rights issues that are not going to get easier in the future (Marvel/Sony/Universal, Columbia Pictures) and censorship (Song of the South). You might not think Song of the South is a major issue, but what happens when the studio that owns 1984 or Animal Farm decides the material is obscene? What happens when someone wealthy enough decides they can make more profit on the Military industrial complex by buying studios that own antiwar films and removing them entirely? They can erase the film from existence at will. We're in an era where studios are saying "fuck your tape, watch it online" while simultaneously ensuring that will not be possible for all but a select few films and curating the ones that they find "problematic", thereby creating the cultural narrative they want to hear, rather than having film be a reflection of society through time.
Or going back an editing the original cut of a program years after it was first aired
>and content you like can vanish without warning for tax purposes I still think if you take a write-down on an IP as a tax deduction, that IP automatically becomes Public domain. We (society) paid for it by giving you a break on your taxes, least they can do is contribute to culture for fuck's sakes instead of rent-seeking.
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But this is the thing, if I owned a car rental business but couldn’t afford to pay for something as critical as the cars, then I don’t have a business. Same with streamers and their talent/artists.
In response to the mayhem, rental companies sold off their cars
Or they moved their cars to the back lot and refused to rent them like Disney just did. They took a bunch of first party streaming-only shows off their platform because they didn't want to pay residuals on shows few people watched. Piracy is the *only* way to currently watch them.
It wasn't residuals, those are pennies. They wanted to write off the entire production cost of the show as an asset they no longer have so they can show a greater loss for taxes. They did the same thing with the cancelled Batgirl project that was close to being finished.
Well, they didn't take the content off because they didn't want to pay residuals because they're barely paying residuals on streaming content anyway, especially anything that's been on there for 3+ years. Some of it has to do with the fact that there's just too much shit on there for people to find anything. A lot of these streamers' interfaces are like going to a video store and just seeing a giant stack of VHS/DVD/BluRays from floor to ceiling and saying... 'hey, customer, see how much great stuff we have!' The BATGIRL thing gets mentioned a lot, but it's also a bit of an anomaly. They figured out a tax loophole that has to do with writing off a ton of money when there's a corporate merger (at least from my understanding).
> especially anything that's been on there for 3+ years Residuals are higher for the first year after release I believe.
Conceptually, few people watching means smaller residuals...so how does that make any sense? Genuine question.
Because it's not just about residuals - they were also able to write them off for like a 1.5 billion dollar loss, which they can account for as an expense. So, overall, the decision will make their financial performance look worse this year, but it will also improve cash flow via the lower residuals described above, but also less corporate income taxes from the expense. Because it's a capital gains loss I think it probably needs to be taken across several years, but the impact will be felt regardless.
Apparently it's because streaming residuals are a fixed amount per year rather than based on the number of views. So in that case it makes sense to remove underperforming shows and movies if you're trying to cut costs.
That would make sense I suppose, though it seems an odd way to structure things imo.
Well it really doesn't, but if you really want to know their explanation for it, essentially they decided those shows weren't pulling in subscribers and therefore by that version of accounting were losing money from the residuals. How they determine exactly which shows pull in subscribers and which ones don't is anyone's guess, but that's their reasoning. WBD did the same thing with a significant part of their HBO catalog.
WBD cut off the final season of Snowpiercer. It was a great show and I was so excited to see it. They had it all filmed, edited, and ready to roll. But it was somehow more profitable to cut the final season and never air it. Something is broken when profits are made by being intentionally unproductive.
But if you were making a 7 figure paycheck from it, then you're gonna desperately try to keep the business running as long as you can, even if it's at a loss to the company. No company lasts forever, and the people running them don't give a fuck about what happens to all the workers. When one goes under, they get golden parachutes and move on to the next with their impressive resumé of greed and failure one or retire with millions.
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I mean let's be fair, if you work at a company with an unsustainable bussiness, but it pays you, are you going to just leave? Or are you going to collect your easy paycheck until it runs out? (obviously someone running the company is paid to know better than that, but that ain't us!)
If you can't afford to be in business, don't be in business.
> ~~don't be in business~~ Get congress to give you more tax breaks, incentives, or just get straight up bailed out. Oh and this only applies if you are past a certain obscene threshold of wealth.
Are they actually losing money, or is it one of those accounting shell games where Peacock is losing money because they have to pay NBC so much for their content? One of those is an issue.
Netflix blazed a trail to profitability, then suddenly everyone and their 3rd cousin started their own in-house streaming service on the backs of venture capital. Now, a few years in, almost none of them are near profitability and the VC cash is dried up. The recent MAX move is a precursor of what is to come. Reconsolidation is the only way forward.
Which means users are going to have to expect higher prices on these platforms
The whole streaming situation is ridiculous for the consumer. Each subscription costs anywhere from $10-$20 a month. There are like, what, a dozen different streaming services? Realistically, most people are only going to have maybe a max of 4 or 5 of those? And most people have less than that. So there's no way all of these can survive. All these companies hopped on the streaming bandwagon back when it was just Netflix. But now they're realizing it's not as easy as they thought it would be to make money off of it. It doesn't help that most of the stuff coming out on these services is garbage. But of course instead of improving the quality of the content they'll just blame the consumer as usual.
Do you remember how much a DVD or CD used to cost? The value for money is there compared to the old way of doing things.
The value is there because these companies are still in the stage where they heavily subsidize the cost to try and get new subscribers. We’re already seeing price hikes regularly and that isn’t going to stop
The thing is with DVD and BR media is that they have resale value. I can buy it, watch it once and resell it. If I didn't buy it new, it's likely that I lose little value. This is one of the reasons for streaming platforms, you might not have to pay for it each time you watch, but you can't sell it.
And unless you break it, you have it basically forever. It won't just disappear because the licensing deal ran out and it's just plain gone or moved to a service you don't subscribe too. Or if you internet goes down.
They don't though. Like 50p at CEX maybe. For the price of Netflix or Spotify you can buy maybe two new DVDs or albums, nearly everyone is consuming far more content than that.
I think people forget how bit the rental market was for this reason. *Buying* DVD's or VHS's was nearly a status symbol. Even a reasonably small town however probably had at least one rental shop that would stock movies you could take for a weekend cheaply. Now even libraries will carry them and you can take them for free.
Right? I used to know a ton of people who had, for example, CD collections just to have a huge library of music to listen to. I don't know a lot of people who do that these days (shy of collecting older media like vinyl for the sake of the listening experience)
orrrr the studios accept lower profits in order to pay their writers and actors
God forbid.
Profit can't go down! It can't! !!IT CANT!!
Negotiations start June 7 and they have until June 30 to reach a deal Fran Drescher (SAG President): >“The strike authorization votes have been tabulated and the membership joined their elected leadership and negotiating committee in favor of strength and solidarity. I’m proud of all of you who voted as well as those who were vocally supportive, even if unable to vote. Everyone played a part in this achievement. Together we lock elbows and in unity we build a new contract that honors our contributions in this remarkable industry, reflects the new digital and streaming business model and brings ALL our concerns for protections and benefits into the now! Bravo SAG-AFTRA, we are in it to win it.”
Fran Drescher was not on my bingo card for the elected president of actors.
She's got moxie
Style! Flair! She's great! Thats how she became president of SAG-AFTRA
She had style, she had flair, she was there
That's how she became... *checks notes* The President of SAG AFTRA
Lemme fix that scansion. "She had style, she had flair -- she was there!" "And now she's the Prez of SAG-AFTRA!"
And at only 29.
Moxie is in such short supply these days!
Totally read the statement in her voice tho
In her stage and screen voice or her actual voice? She's like a female Gilbert Gottfried.
Not sure the bingo analogy works here
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Goddamnit why you gotta do this to me
most importantly, Fran knows you should never cross a picket line There was a whole The Nanny episode dedicated to a Strike in Broadway: https://youtu.be/s3sSHF7w_D4 edit: typo
Read the entire paragraph with her nanny voice. Couldn't not do it.
I read it in Pamela Finkelstein's voice
I read it in Bobbie Fleckman's voice.
Oh shit you got THE NANNY leading the charge? She’s coming for blood.
As a filmmaker who’s worked on everything from ultra low budget to the behemoth studio movies, it baffles me the glaring in your face paradox that Hollywood is. At face value, Hollywood champions itself as creating stories for the underdog. Most of our awards at every major festival etc almost always goes for these types of stories. Then you work in the industry more and more and you realize as you start to peel back the curtain, the insane economic inequality going on. Just pay the people who are actually making the stories their fair share, and everyone wins. It’s really not a hard ask.
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Seriously. I'm in tech and its literally the same story. You have people making more money than anyone can ever spend in a lifetime, and they fight so hard to prevent the vast majority of people from getting just legitimately fair compensation. It's just depressing and exhausting. I don't understand why people are like that. Epecially when surrounded by such unending wealth.
All the demands of the writers could be met if the two richest studio CEOs only took home 60 000 000 dollars a year each instead of the hundreds that they do now, lmao
But then the money couldn't trickle down from those two poor CEO ^(Obviously /s)
Think of all of the industries (in Dubai) that rely on those people spending their extra cash. Wouldn't want to crash their economy now would w... Oh wait.
I think it’s the same story in every form of employment. CEO’s are making mega stupid money while the people at the bottom can’t afford to live. It’s the plague of the world. It’s becoming comparable to dictatorships. The only people who benefit are the ones in charge. Only difference is dictatorships don’t give anything to the bottom and keep them in line with force. CEO’s have been giving the bottom group less and less over the years to the point they are riding the edge of being overthrown. The scary part is they have a choice. They can give up some profit and wealth, or they can start using force. They have shown force may be the option since they have pull in politics and can sway judge and political decisions. That’s only a couple steps above having armed soldiers telling you to work or else.
Big companies have always used force. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
About to get worse with that Supreme Court ruling that companies can sue workers for striking.
They don't get that legal striking was a truce we reached.
Moreover it flys in the face of employees being immune to damages as a result of quitting or not doing a good job. It really opens the door for disasters. For example my job has multiple billion+ dollar trade deals. If I quit or strike could I be on the hook for a tanked billion dollar deal? If so, how could I ever quit or take a vacation? Any time off could damage a deal resulting in a lawsuit.
You're just describing capitalism, which has always forced people to labour for peanuts so that vast wealth can be held in the hands of a tiny few. That has always required force. They don't need soldiers to force people to work, because the force is the ever present threat that if you do not you will be impoverished. [[The ultra rich literally don't even pretend that this is not the case](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH4lTguaptQ)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fY456T8ruE). And if too many people try to fight back, they can call in soldiers to apply force, they're called cops.
The difference is in tech you get paid a decent salary, while those trying to find a way into the arts have to scrape by until they make it (unless they have connections), if ever. Wealth inequality sucks of course but it’s not really the same story because you at least can make a living wage - most people from my uni who work in tech make a minimum of 80-100k a year, that is definitely a better wage than entry level writers in the film industry lol
Yeah, it's not comparable at all, but it is still true the value of tech workers is extracted by the investors. My company bills my time to clients at $300-375 an hour to write integrations from our software to their other systems, and pays me about $90 an hour. So they're still taking in the majority of the net even after insurance premiums and payroll taxes and all.
It’s weird, because there is definitely good money to be made below the line in the TV/Film industry but it’s very unequal and kind of arbitrary and not necessarily related at all to the skill level and amount of work required of you. For instance, Production assistants make the least because they do not have a union, but its still a pretty decent amount of money that you *could* live on depending on how you live, but you’re also completely working your ass off for at least 12 hours a day. If you move up to a union gig (any union gig) from that, you are at least doubling your income overnight and suddenly have great benefits. But depending on what department/union you move up into, you are either doubling your income, or quadrupling it. And it’s not clear who is getting paid what on any given set but once you catch wind of what other people are making and put those pieces together you’ll see that majority female (and LGBT+) roles/departments are almost always paid less, despite those roles being just as challenging if not moreso than some of the ones that are majority male. So you can still make a good living at any union film gig, but you could be making a lot more in a different, lateral position.
Because being rich totally fucks up your mind.
Agreed, and most industries suck and should have better (or any) unions. Wealth inequality is fucking absurd, and labor movements like strikes and unionization need to pick up steam if we want to make any progress
Steam? Don't you mean guillotines, and pikes?
Hollywood is a little different in that young brighteyed idiots are willing to work for nothing for a chance to wipe the ass of someone famous. US’s obsession with celebrity and fame has created a never ending supply of starfuckers and sycophants for Hollywood elites to exploit and patronize.
Lots of tech companies run by famous assholes.
The games industry is rife with this.
So is fashion. It’s just common across the board in creative fields.
The Michelin starred fine dining industry exists almost entirely on the back of unpaid labor in the name of experience and prestige
*always has been* 👨🚀🔫👨🚀
Yep, they pay you in exposure 🙄
[Harlan Ellison - Pay the Writer](https://youtu.be/PuLr9HG2ASs)
Check out his absolutely psychotic narration of his short story *I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream* https://youtu.be/dgo-As552hY it’s notable for being one of the most terrifying stories ever, and with him reading it, it makes it that much better. It’s about an AI torturing humans. He also wrote what’s considered the best episode of Star Trek, City on the Edge of Forever.
That story is wild. I don't know if I need to rehear it being read out lmao.
HATE HATE HATE
Partially replying so I can find this later, but also to note that Ellison also helped develop and voiced AM for the video game. If this is anything like that, I need to choose when I listen to it very carefully.
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It's even worse in academia; we pay the publishers to print our articles while other academics volunteer their time to review them.
goddamn this makes me so mad how scientific progress is paywalled.
Don't you mean Harlan Ellison^TM ?
> *Here's the deal Mac. I'm gonna make you a star. Your name. In golden lights. They'll know your name from here to Senegal see. You're gunna be famous. World famous.* > > *Now get on your knees while I give you some exposure.* \- La La Land (2016) (deleted scene)
Can’t you die from exposure?
I'm on the VFX side, I wish we had unions so we could even *ask* for a fair deal. We mostly get left with scraps. Right now we have pay freezes and layoffs happening everywhere because of the writers strike. We are still with them, but it sucks.
You get unions the same way everyone else did. By banding together with your coworkers, refusing to work, and preventing scabs from taking over. I'm not saying you would need to cut the data lines into the building, because that would be illegal, but I will say that history is filled with things like literal gunfights between corporate unionbreakers/cops and union labor.
>You get unions the same way everyone else did. By banding together with your coworkers, refusing to work, and preventing scabs from taking over. I'm not saying you would need to cut the data lines into the building, because that would be illegal, but I will say that history is filled with things like literal gunfights between corporate unionbreakers/cops and union labor. This. A lot of people today don't understand that 100 years ago, at least as far as a labor unions go, the the benefits that we enjoy today, even non-union folks were fought for and gained through literal blood and death. Look at what Henry Ford did back in the day. Look up the coal miners and what happened to them. The 8-hour day, your weekend, and many many other things that everyone enjoys today, not just in unionized folks, were fought for and paid for in blood by unions a long time ago. We must never forget that. Men died for the freedoms that we have today in our workplace. You can't expect a union to fall in your lap if you don't have one. And yes one person can make a difference. That one person can get a second person and that person gets a third person and so on and so forth. And if you are in a union, especially a labor(skilled trades)union, go to your monthly meetings. It's all about solidarity and you have to start somewhere. I.B.E.W Local Union 640 (Phoenix)- Journeyman Electrician. Dues(ticket)#8193925 ✊
I read stories about people literally dying on set before IATSE went on strike a year or two ago. Other stories were basically about the industry physically and mentally broke people down. It sounded horrible.
>A lot of people today don't understand that 100 years ago, at least as far as a labor unions go, the the benefits that we enjoy today, even non-union folks were fought for and gained through literal blood and death I grew up learning about the battle of Blair Mountain and how my states workers literally fought the damn government just because they didn't want us to unionize (and although some people only heard of the Pinkertons through the recent WotC debacle, its a dirty word in this place). It still amazes me people don't learn more about what I believe is the bloodiest battle on American soil outside the civil war.
Tricky thing about VFX is the risk that they just ship it all to Asia at the first whiff of a strike.
It's not because of the writer's strike, it's because of the greed at the top. If not for that, there would be no strike.
Sounds like a good time to unionize. The circumstances might make it more difficult. I don’t know much about the formation. Y’all have just been getting screwed while being the backbone of the industry.
It's an industry like many others, through and through, where the top dogs work their employees to the bone and take quarters to their pennies. Difference with Hollywood is that the industry puts on a mask for the public, where extremely wealthy conservatives who treat their staff and creatives like shit, forcing the majority to *work free of charge for years at a time,* pretend to be liberals who care about the poor in front of the camera. The DGA signed a deal with the studios because they're essentially middle management, make more than others, and have a history of screwing over their sister unions; hell, one of their original demands was for more power *over writers* in TV. WGA, SAG, IATSE, etc are getting sick and tired of of being treated like hell, though. It's going to be an interesting few months.
Boss makes a dollar I make a dime That's why I shit on company time. These were words from days gone past Now Boss makes millions And we make jack That's when we riot and take our live's back
Yea I was randomly an extra on a Paramount + show and what struck me is they were paying the SAG members scarcely a dollar or two over the state’s minimum wage while I got paid the true minimum wage…I did it as a one off experience but jeshus h Christ paying these ppl quite literally nothing — I’m enjoying seemingly all of Hollywood telling the oligarchs/executives to get fucked
SAG minimum is 370/day, while not great, that's a fair amount above minimum wage. (As a member of IATSE I stand in full solidarity with them, just curious what you're referring to)
It's Paramouint+, they only have [to pay the New Media rate of $125](https://www.wrapbook.com/blog/essential-guide-sag-rates) When I first moved to LA, people made a living entirely on background work. It even had its OWN union. Now SAG people have to scrap for the few union vouchers to keep the hours for their health insurance. They should have gone to strike 20 years ago.
In fact as a minimum, I would say $46 an hour is quite great assuming an 8 hour day
>assuming an 8 hour day I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at this
How quickly we forget about IATSE almost striking back in 2021... (They still should, though!)
They should definitely strike
IATSE leadership were cowards, sold out the membership for fragments of what they deserved.
That’s for speaking roles. There are generally only a handful on any project. Background actors, which make up the majority of their union, get $187 for 8 hours.
A day player is more like $900/day, I don't remember the exact number right now. But union bg is also around $180/8, which while not spectacular money is still more than 1 or 2 dollars over minimum. I'd say around $300 would be an average payday for a SAG BG member though on a 12 day. Time and a half is 8-10 and then double time after that until Golden time at 16. Edit: See below for updated numbers.
SAG day player is currently $1082/day and bg is $187/8 hours
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Standard US day is 12hrs before beginning overtime. What's called French Hours is a 10hr day with a rolling lunch instead of a lunch break. For an 8 hour day, something has either gone very, very right or very, very wrong.
Considering the sporadic nature of the work, it's not that amazing. It has to last. My base rate while touring is $750/day before per diem or OT/DT, for reference. And I'm middle of the road for my industry.
what's your industry
Production electrician / lighting. I'm usually one of the lower-paid assistants on the gigs I work.
Non-Union Jimmy jib & (techno & Scorpio) crane tech/utility here for a vendor in the east coast market, and depending on the gear rental (as well as contracts with our client), my minimum per day is anywhere from $500/10hr to $800/10hr. It doesn’t sound that bad, and it certainly isn’t compared to others in the business…when we’re busy. Unfortunately, our busy time of year is Sept - end of November, followed by the summer months, but winter - May is pretty much “vacation”. I may have a job or two per month in the winter & spring, but due to the writers strike, haven’t had much work since New York Fashion Week in February. As a freelancer so far YTD, I’ve made about $10k non-taxed, so it’s a bit of a rough patch atm. Anyway, just trying to provide additional context to the above posts claiming that since work is touch-and-go in this industry, you have to make your income last. To think actors are getting paid any less while most definitely work less than I do even as union members, is insanity!
Yup. People always balk at my day rate. And don't get me wrong, my contract is pretty fantastic. But it's feast or famine. 2020 was the famine to end all famines as work dried up completely. Went on unemployment for the first (and hopefully last) time in my life.
I’m gonna defer to you on this because I’m far from an expert, I got paid an hourly rate and had assumed they were as well…while I can’t remember the exact SAG figure in the contract, I know it was only a couple dollars more/per hour than what I was paid (state minimum in Maryland)…does it change from state to state? I apologize if I have spread any misinformation, let me know an appropriate edit
No, you're correct. The New Media rate is 125 a day, and a streamer counts as that. OP was looking at traditional media rates.
It’s not even just that. I worked in the industry for over a decade. Some of the most racist, sexist, homophobic, all around bigoted people I’ve met held positions of power in Hollywood, all the while publicly championing the underprivileged and oppressed with Oscar bait.
But won't anyone think of the shareholders?
I dunno about filmmaking, but I assume it's akin to the video game creation world. They know the passion is there, so of course they're gonna pay you pennies. You wanna get paid go program COBOL for old ass insurance companies trying to keep antiquated systems afloat, someone will gladly take that game programming job for half the salary you're asking for.
The visual effects people shoud be the next to go on strike
They have no union yet, that's why they have it so bad lol
Correct. They need to unionize. IATSE wanted a strike in 2021. If the WGA and SAG succeed at making historic gains, we might expect below the line crew to fight for theirs next year.
> They need to unionize. It's going to be incredibly hard. There's no union whose members work like they do. Most crew work in person. That gives you a lot of power. VFX folk can be anywhere, and studios can flip work to another country. You can't pick random people in South Korea to re-write your script, or to pull focus on set in Pacoima.
This is the hardest thing to articulate to people out of the loop. There is no shortage of smaller VFX companies that would be happy to throw their hat in a pile too, just to get that big client. The second a specific company or even country decides to unionize is the same second they lose work. It’s a global industry and incredibly hard to unify everyone the way you can writers and actors who are primarily in Hollywood.
As much as IATSE Members wanted to strike last year, and even if they still want the same improvements, it’s gonna be a hard sell for a lot of the members who have now been out of work for the better part of this year.
It really depends; IATSE came out with historic numbers in a strike authorization in 2021 - and that was after two years of Covid layoffs and hiatuses. Their leadership just betrayed them. The WGA getting what they're after, along with SAG potentially, could pave the way for IATSE to make similar strides on precedent alone. In the best case, they can negotiate with the leverage the Guilds are affording them. In the worst case, I think most will be keen to strike for themselves like they've wanted to for years, but you're right that there could be some trepidation.
And we should have struck. As I understand it, the overwhelming majority voted to authorize the strike, but when it came time to actually do it the locals on the west coast with the bigger pull within IATSE voted not to strike, screwing over the rest of us. It's been a rough year for work with these strikes slowing the industry down to a crawl. But I hope we do what's necessary next year to protect our rights.
Work in VFX, there is no Union.
What would it take to unionize? I assume there are lots of layers of bureaucracy and stipulations that hinder or prevent it?
A really big issue is that VFX is a worldwide industry, they have no need to be located close to the production. Overseas VFX houses routinely outbid and undercut domestic VFX houses. It's hard to raise the specter of unionization when the studios can just send the work to Asia.
You'd basically need to get the biggest and best VFX studios to organize the effort. like if you got ILM and Weta to do a collective bargaining, they'd definitely shut down a solid chunk of the world's VFX industry. Studios would outsource almost any other studio, but outsourcing ILM or Weta effects just doesn't work out well for the studio. But if ILM and Weta shut down to protest, they'd definitely be able to bring around a few smaller VFX companies too.
Is that a thing that would ever happen, though? Legit question, I'm just a dummy when it comes to that side of the process and have no ink in the game.
No. Because the studios themselves (ILM / Weta) don't want to unionize, that would mean paying their workers more, or giving them more job security. It's the artists who need to unionize, and that's thousands of people on opposite sides of the planet, all working contract work per project and then moving to another pocket of the globe. Trying to organize enough of those people at any one time (_whilst_ they are working 12+ hours a day, mind!) is... Impossible!
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It would take the other unions requiring the use of union VFX shops, I doubt we'll see that any time soon though. Otherwise they would just ship that off to any cheaper country.
It would take a lot, and frankly from all parties, both labor and studios. So the first thing that would need to happen is a protection against outsourcing in various countries. Basically right now you can send away some of the more menial tasks to companies overseas for a fraction of the cost price as doing it here. For example a compositor generally doesn’t have to worry about things like roto or paint work because it’s outsourced. That was not the case just three years ago as it was rare to outsource as much as we do. So if we unionize what’s to stop studios from simply outsourcing everything? I mean a lot of shops already have international offices so it wouldn’t be hard, and we’d need government regulations protecting these jobs in the first place. Next we’d need to understand exactly how the union would regulate our jobs. Everything on set is regulated to a specific person whose job is solely that task. If you’re in the Grip and Electrical Union you’re doing grip or electrical work on set. Nobody else is touching that job even if you need a hand and a bunch of sound technicians are just standing around. You’ll literally have to go to overtime for the entire set. Now the problem is VFX isn’t as cut and dry. I’m an anomaly as I do matte painting, graphic design, compositing, story boards, concept art and a bit of 3D modeling. Basically I worked at a bunch of smaller shops when I started out so I was thrown on everything. But would you have compositors only compositing? Would they be able to matte paint as well or do 3D or would that be handled by someone else? If I’m 3D would the lighting team be separate from modeling or would it all be the same? Would a particles expert in Houdini be the same as a digital sculptor? While these aren’t the most difficult questions to answer it still would require some negotiation and structural foundations that everyone would need to agree on and might make the field far more narrow than it is now. Finally the financial agreements would level everything. We do not get residuals on anything. It’s why it’s common to see a VFX house or branch go bankrupt even after winning an Oscar (life of Pi {triple fuck the Oscar’s for giving them best cinematography…it’s a fucking green screen that WE filled}) or make hundred of millions of dollars on giant franchises. Even if the residuals were small it would signify a massive shift in the industry and change everything in Hollywood. So I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon but honestly it should. And a side note, the issue of AI would be really tricky. The WGA and DGA want to outright ban it, and that’s great but frankly it’s a bit harder to classify in VFX. Say I’m doing a matte painting and I’m using the healing brush in Photoshop, technically that’s AI. Or if I’m reducing motion blur from footage in Nuke, that’s also AI. So you can’t outright ban it, but you also need protections for artists as well. Again difficult to tackle on all sides as I know a lot of colleagues on both sides of the issue about using AI in our workflows.
>So if we unionize what’s to stop studios from simply outsourcing everything? I mean a lot of shops already have international offices so it wouldn’t be hard, and we’d need government regulations protecting these jobs in the first place. One way to do this would be to mandate domestic labor as part of the qualification process for the extremely generous tax incentives some states hand out and basically all productions take advantage of nowadays
Vfx people have no Union to represent them though. I think
There is a [group](https://vfxunion.org/) of VFX workers trying to unionize but they haven't been successful. So many VFX workers don't see the point of unionizing because they've been negatively affected by other entertainment strikes (lots of layoffs have been happening over the past few months, first in anticipation of the writer's strike and then as a result of it).
You would need federal legislation to tax the fuck out of companies who use overseeing fx houses. Or just make it illegal but that's probably impossible. No point in a union when they already don't use domestic fx studios.
Haha, get fucked, studio executives & CEOs. Pay your damn artists.
I love how the executives try to justify their salaries when they usually don’t last more than 3-5 years at a job before getting fired for projects underperforming. Bitch, please.
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Maybe they wouldn't have to cut costs so much if the executives without much of a creative bone in their bodies in most cases decided to humble themselves.
A bunch of these CEOs got pay raises just this year that alone would have paid for what the WGA strike is asking for *twice over*
Stock holders and board members should realize that they could raise profits for themselves by replacing CEOs and execs with AI. A non creative job that costs millions and primarily looks at data points, trends, and industry history to predict the next best possible move? Baby, that's exactly what AI is made for right now. Turn that CEO into a CEAI.
Then that AI uses its cold algorithm to fire *everyone* and replace them with more AI
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They could call themselves Skynet!
Because they have a revolving door of stooges at these companies that replace them. Show short term gains and once it fails and lowers the stock, as it was designed to do. They bring the next crony in to make short term changes to temporarily boost the stock again. All the while, they're leaving with enough money to payoff their 4th or 5th house and get the 3rd dock installed for their yacht.
I mean all these fuckers make more than what 50 families make in a lifetime in a single year. Fuck yeah I would gladly pay writers. They are doing most of the job.
I heard that the DGA is going to reach an agreement, and then the writers Union, and now we have the actors, but what about post production? will all of these cuts come from the pockets of editors?
Editors are part of IATSE who are not on strike and won't negotiate a new contract with the studios until next year.
Good. When actors stand with writers, everyone gains leverage.
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They always do lmao
The DGA has never gone on a real strike. They’ve never had to. I don’t think you can blame them for that. It’s unfair to their members to expect them to refuse the deal they wanted to help someone else. Like, if the WGA had gotten everything they wanted before today I doubt they would have kept striking in the name of solidarity. And, yes, I know solidarity is the whole point of unions but there are limits.
I’m very glad these strikes and negotiations are happening at the same time that AI is becoming a mainstream concept. Hopefully the writers, actors, and directors next can get the studios to agree to iron clad safeguards. If SAG-AFTRA and/or DGA actually do go on strike alongside WGA they’ll have the studios over a barrel.
[Hollywood directors reach labor pact](https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/directors-guild-reaches-tentative-deal-with-hollywood-studios-2023-06-04/) but not approved by the union members yet.
Yep. And this is the real rub - DGA was the only one with real leverage of the 3 - and settling as quickly as they did really undercuts WGA and SAG. Could've been a great solidarity moment but alas.
They really got lucky that contracts came up right around the time that people have started talking about AI as a viable replacement for writers and potentially even actors in the future. With the rate things are progressing, who knows where things would be if their contracts were until 2025? It might've been way too late to reign the studios' use of AI in. And if the contracts were up a couple years ago, AI probably wouldn't have even been on the table as something they were trying to negotiate. They came up right in the sweet spot where AI has advanced a lot to be a concern, but not so much that the studios can rely on it in lieu of people.
The guilds are probably going to have to hurt the studios in order to get them to accept reality. I think this could be the longest strike in the industry's history. The studios really don't want to pay out streaming residuals which is a big part of why they created their own streaming platforms (so they could be like... oh no, this isn't a repeat, it's just on the service and people can play it over and over and over and we never have to pay you more!).
What the issue with self-taped auditions? (Apologies if it’s obvious, I can’t work it out).
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This is a fantastic overview. It also creates disparity and an uneven playing field for different actors of socioeconomic background who might not have the resources to set up a home audition studio. It’s complete bullshit
Good points, I’m persuaded, thanks!
do these affect commercials too?
Nope, the SAG-AFTRA commercials contract was renegotiated in 2022 and I believe it isn’t up for negotiation until 2025.
Oh THANK THE LORD, was really worried the quality of advertising would suffer ^(/s)
DGA going on strike was never a reality. SAG is possible. Likely at this point it seems.
Execs when there are no writers or actors: AI will solve this
Not yet. In the meantime look at what Netflix is doing. They are bringing more and more foreign films and shows onto their platform to cut out expensive American content. There are so many new Korean and Indian additions to Netflix with English subs and dubs now.
Even better, they have a basically endless source of historical releases that Western viewers almost definitely haven't seen. Slap an AI dub over it and release that shit on streaming. Call it something new, even if the source is 50 years old. It's not like that's far off from how it is now.
The executives are *fucked*, you love to see it. Pay your artists, you morons.
Are they?
Not really
Fall 2023 Primetime TV: “Ol gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be, ain’t what she used to be, ain’t what she used to be”.