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seaborgium posted:It might be the old standard tax write off also. They spend all that on a show, if it's a huge hit and gets them some awards or makes them money, great, but if it loses money (and they can use the cliched Hollywood accounting for this) they get a tax write off. Think of all the Amazon boxes that get branded with their newest show on them, congrats, now they're marketing they had to pay for. Hell, the guy who wrote Men in Black gets yearly reports from the studio saying how they still are in the red on it so they don't have to pay him back end percentages he negotiated in his contract. The tax write off thing never makes sense. You spend $100 million on something, okay sure you lower your taxes owed by 15 million, but you're still down 85 million!
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May 5, 2023 14:02
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Nystral posted:two equally plausible scenarios that come to mind based on my limited recollection of College Finance / Accounting course: Right but even in those two cases you're only "saving" whatever the corporate tax rate you pay is. It's worse to lose money than to not lose money, and making a vague hand-wave about "tax writeoffs" doesn't change that. (There are some weird exceptions like when you cancel something, like the Batgirl movie, you get to "move up" all the costs that would otherwise have been amortized over time, so if you *really* care about getting the ~15% lump-sum today instead of spread out over ten years, you can do that, but you're still only ever getting back a tiny portion of the money spent.)
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May 5, 2023 16:25
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This came up in the last strike too. The DGA has a "no-strike, no stoppage" clause in its contract, and that exposes the guild and its members to legal liability if they breach that clause. The position of both the DGA and the studios at the time was that if you were employed by a studio and not under specifically a writing contract, studios were free to demand that you do what's known as "a-h" work, even if you are a member of the WGA for work you do in other places.quote:For reference, the MBA defines (a)-(h) writing services as follows: The WGA's position was that members of the guild shouldn't perform those services, but WGA members employed as non-writers on their current job wouldn't be disciplined for performing that work. IDK if or how that's changed. Notably, last time around, the DGA publicly issued a reminder to their members that they were legally obligated to keep working. They haven't done that this time around. There's a link to "Information for DGA Members Regarding the WGA Strike" on their website that may very well contain that guidance, but it's locked behind a log-in page. Pinterest Mom fucked around with this message at 22:45 on May 6, 2023 |
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May 6, 2023 22:41
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This is a really odd bit of info isn't itquote:In addition to the executives discussing efforts to bring in a federal mediator, talent agency chieftains including Ari Emanuel of WME , Bryan Lourd of CAA and UTA’s Jeremy Zimmer have reached out to SAG-AFTRA leaders in recent days to offer assistance that could stave off a second Hollywood work stoppage this summer. The heads of *agencies* have reached out to SAG-AFTRA? Are they acting on behalf of the AMPTP? On behalf of themselves? They're in a really weird conflict of interest space here
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Jul 12, 2023 01:11
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Timby posted:If the unions are on strike, then contracts aren't getting signed for new jobs. If contracts aren't getting signed, then the agents aren't getting their sweet, sweet commissions.
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Jul 12, 2023 15:07
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howe_sam posted:IIRC, the big kefuffle in the last round of WGA negotiations was over the agencies getting entirely too chummy with the studios. So there's precedent for the big talent agencies siding with the studios over their clients. That wasn't WGA negos with the AMPTP, it was a separate issue altogether, writers negotiating with agencies. But yeah, you're right, and it had slipped my mind that the WGA went to war with the big agencies recently.
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Jul 12, 2023 15:23
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Dawgstar posted:From Twitter: "TIL that when SAG went on strike in 1960, the writers had already been on strike for five weeks and the studios brought in a federal mediator to find resolution. From the NYT on March 8, 1960: 
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Jul 13, 2023 16:50
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You don't need a psyop to explain "Americans not showing class solidarity".
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Jul 13, 2023 18:39
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LividLiquid posted:I really don't understand why IATSE don't just fold in vfx artists. They're set builders, makeup artists, and countless other things that are already in the union. Doing that poo poo digitally shouldn't exempt you, and they'd get a huge influx of dues-paying members and would be huge fuckin' heroes. IATSE is already fairly unwieldy and has trouble representing all of its members well. It's really awkward to write a deal that covers writer's room assistants and script supervisors, but also grips and lighting technicians. You like... need to have make up artists willing to strike over assistants not getting writing credits they might deserve, or editors being willing to strike over on-set hours, and that's just very hard to do! You can't just say "solidarity" is great as a concept, you need the people bargaining to have similar interests in order to really hold together during negos. Adding VFX artists under the same agreement would make it even harder to represent members well, because everybody's specific concerns would get further diluted. VFX artists have a lot to gain from unionisation, but just jumping into the IATSE fold seems like the wrong approach to me.
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Jul 13, 2023 20:53
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Tragicomic posted:Edit: oof, eating my words already .. here she is kind of saying the actors would negotiate better than the writers, not very solidarity like: This is all boilerplate stuff, come on. She doesn't deserve poo poo for this. Yeah, it's true that actors aren't negotiating over the same sets of issues as writers are! Her job as union president is to negotiate for her members. quote:Deadline that the SAG-AFTRA negotiations with AMPTP would be “very different” from those with the WGA. “It’s a very big, complicated conversation, and I don’t think what’s very important to writers—and I’m a writer, too, in the WGA—is the kind of stuff that [SAG-AFTRA] is going after,” Drescher said. “I feel like our conversation is going to be very different, and I feel very hopeful that we won’t get to this point.”
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Jul 13, 2023 20:56
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Looten Plunder posted:Who are the unions negotiating with? I know it's "the studios" but who exactly? I can't imagine the old school movie studios being on the same page as the Streamers. Wouldn't they all have differing interests? And then there is TV, wouldn't those studios have differing interests again? They're negotiating with the AMPTP, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. That's all the studios, negotiating as a block. That means that they have to negotiate between themselves on what their position is where their interests differ before they can propose something to the union. You can see a list of producers represented by the AMPTP in 2020 on page 3 of the WGA's last agreement, and since then Netflix has also joined. It turns out there's power in a union: the AMPTP didn't always negotiate jointly, and in 1960, the unions exploited that by making separate deals with different studios. For a while, only Universal had a deal, so they were able to make movies while actors and writers were on strike against the others. That weakened the other studios' bargaining position! Pinterest Mom posted:From the NYT on March 8, 1960: Looten Plunder posted:Also, what happens if a writer/actor continues to work when they should be striking? Do you get fined or disbarred from the union/guild or something? Yes, if you scab and the strike ends with an agreement, the unions will make sure you never work a union job again. Pinterest Mom fucked around with this message at 13:09 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Jul 15, 2023 13:00
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https://twitter.com/EricHaywood/status/1680201703461888002
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Jul 15, 2023 23:54
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Looten Plunder posted:I'm interested to see the details of the actors/writers requests on residuals based on viewership numbers. Like, Lord of the Rings might become a hit on Amazon, but when the budget is like $700m, it's never gonna become profitable. But then you'd have something like Louie or Master of None that is zero budget and became super popular. Royalties and residuals are separate things! Residuals are usually something like "each time you air this TV episode as a re-run, or sell a DVD, or sell this on iTunes, I get X¢". They don't depend on profits, and are guaranteed by contract. It's typically structured as a "you get to air this episode once, or put this movie in theatres, but once you start making secondary revenue streams, I get compensated for those too." They're also pretty much never a pay-per-stream for streaming services, currently, because that's just never been negotiated for. Royalties are things like "I get x% of profits from this movie", or "x% of merch sales that bear my likeness", etc. They're not necessarily tied to airing or reproducing the movie, and they're not guaranteed by the collective agreement contracts. They're ad-hoc things that writers and actors can negotiate for, individually, as part of their compensation.
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Jul 16, 2023 02:01
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Vegetable posted:I thought the sticking point of negotiations was AI-generated content, not residual for actual work done. Are they stuck on both? From the outside, we're just seeing PR campaigns from both sides. We don't know what the actual sticking points are, because everybody has incentives to make a lot of noise about issues that they may or may not care about. Basically, nobody is seeing any residuals from streaming. Your show or movie can be sold to Netflix as a writer or actor, and it can be the biggest hit in history or a complete flop, and either way you're not getting paid. That's a huge departure from compensation as it's traditionally worked, and if things stay that way it's a huge hit to writers and actors' wallets. That's probably the real sticking point: are we moving to a new paradigm where because everything is on streaming, residuals basically stop existing? I suspect that the AI stuff is mostly a smokescreen that writers and actors will drop substantially if the AMPTP comes to the table with money for streaming. I don't know. But you can't really take what either side is saying at face value, they're negotiating and trying to dig in on multiple issues so they can strategically give stuff up when they negotiate later.
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Jul 16, 2023 03:34
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Yeah, I agree that AI will eventually, and maybe fairly soon, become existential for writers, but it's really hard to know what a regulatory structure even *looks* like. The tech didn't substantially publicly exist like two weeks ago, and we don't really know what it'll look like in a month. It might be hard to agree to anything substantial in an environment where the sides are uncertain to what they'd even be agreeing to. I suspect that the structure of a deal for writers might look something like "movement on residuals for streaming shows, and a side agreement to have a joint WGA/AMPTP working group studying the use of AI technology plus with a X year moratorium", without committing anything on AI to the actual contract language? I'm talking out of my rear end here and don't know anything, but I think the AMPTP will have a red line on putting any rules on AI inside the actual contract, but also isn't particularly married to "we will be using AI to write scripts in 2025". They need to resolve streaming residuals now, but they can push the big fight on AI to the next contract cycle once everyone actually understands what's at stake better. Pinterest Mom fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Jul 16, 2023 |
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Jul 16, 2023 03:54
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Jerusalem posted:Didn't the US Copyright Office come to a (temporary?) conclusion that material created by AI, even with a human "co-creator", can't be copyrighted in the standard way? I see that (sadly) probably having more of a chilling effect on use of AI than the concerns/arguments around fair payment for writers/artists if a studio can't maintain an iron grip on sole commercial use of a "creation". Mostly not. They've issued guidance on the easy stuff: "if you tell an AI 'give me a picture of Céline Dion in a spacesuit', the resulting image is not copyrightable". But some of the things that the WGA is worried about, like rewrites, that remains almost certainly covered by copyright. Right now, a writer turns in a draft of a script and gets paid. Execs read it, and might have notes. If they want substantial changes, they have to hire a writer, maybe the same one as the original draft, and there are minimum rates established for how much the writer gets paid (and it depends on if you're doing a "rewrite" or a "polish"). The WGA wants to put in the contract "no rewrites or polishes by AI" to make sure that writers are never bypassed by execs. If a human writer hands in a script, and then a producer feeds it through an LLM and says, idk, "modify this character's gender from male to female", that's fine, copyright-wise. The script as a whole is still largely human-authored, and all you've done is use a tool to modify it. The copyright office doesn't see a problem with that. It's not too different, copyright-wise, from taking a photo and then hitting the magic wand "make it look better" button, really. Yeah, you're replacing a human who would normally be adjusting the colour balance and exposure and so on, but the main thrust of the work is the photo you took, it's just been modified a bit. Similarly, the writers want a ban on "generate a script or outline from AI, and bring in a human writer to do rewrites". Doing a rewrite from base material pays less than writing a full draft of a script, so this could be a way for the studios to pay writers much less than they currently are, and maybe even deny credit. The copyright office explicitly considers this and says "yeah, if the modifications are substantial enough, you can copyright the work as a whole. The AI generated parts aren't really protected, but the human ones are." Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence posted:As the agency overseeing the copyright registration system, the Office has extensive experience in evaluating works submitted for registration that contain human authorship combined with uncopyrightable material, including material generated by or with the assistance of technology. It begins by asking “whether the `work' is basically one of human authorship, with the computer [or other device] merely being an assisting instrument, or whether the traditional elements of authorship in the work (literary, artistic, or musical expression or elements of selection, arrangement, etc.) were actually conceived and executed not by man but by a machine.” [23]
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Jul 16, 2023 04:22
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I do think it's true that it's harder with streaming to figure out "why are we making money". With broadcast TV, it's simple: eyeballs sell ads, so the viewer-to-revenue relationship is very direct. With streaming, it's a lot more muddled! I think the studios are right that there's no obvious rule that's fair. The streamers do have great data, and I think they probably have figured out something like "the things that keep people subscribed aren't the same as the things that get most eyeballs". Maybe people subscribe to Netflix because there's one original series every three months that they're really into. In the months that new stuff doesn't drop, people might throw on an episode of whatever evergreen sitcom Netflix currently has the rights to, The Office or Friends or Seinfeld, but *that's not why they subscribe to Netflix*. But you don't have real hard objective measures to show that, just statistical modeling where you might have made 300 different choices that get you different results, so you can't even give an objective breakdown of "here are the reasons we got this user's $10 this month". The stats modeling is really good, it just also can't be objective. So you're got a situation where, idk, maybe 1% of the money you're coming into revenues is due to The Office, but 15% of your streaming time is The Office. If you're paying out a per-eyeball-minute royalty structure, that means you're overindexing on "bland safe stuff that goes on in the background", and underpaying "the people who make the series that keep people subscribed to Netflix". That feels unfair? But, also, that's probably the only real objective way that you can do this at all, so "a per-eyeball residual structure doesn't adequately reflect our value proposition to our users" is just an excuse to say "hey let's not pay".
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Jul 17, 2023 03:49
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Tree Reformat posted:If streaming is a bad deal for the people who create the shows (it is), then the only sustainable path is killing streaming as financially viable and morally acceptable. I'm quite fond of being able to watch a television program at a time that's different from when it airs.
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Jul 17, 2023 21:54
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https://twitter.com/JalbyMD/status/1681079337825751041
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Jul 18, 2023 01:07
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Universal has fessed up, it was them. https://deadline.com/2023/07/universal-pruned-ficus-trees-wga-picket-line-barham-boulevard-1235440896/
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Jul 18, 2023 21:34
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Fighting Trousers posted:And advertisers will turn quick. Even though hardly any goons watch broadcast TV, lots of people still do, and the fall upfronts for the networks are DIRE. What, do people not have confidence that The 71-year Old Bachelor is going to be a hit? https://twitter.com/BachelorABC/status/1680919720663588865
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Jul 20, 2023 19:57
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Gordon Shumway posted:To what extent are they doing this? Is it just one or two shows or are networks importing several shows from streaming to broadcast tv? Cause if it's a lot of shows, you'd have to figure that would bite them in the rear end with people canceling their streaming subscriptions and just watching on tv. They're airing Yellowstone (from Peacock!) starting with S1, SEAL team, FBI True, and probably something like Evil all from Paramount+.
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Jul 21, 2023 14:50
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Maxwell Lord posted:I imagine they have to report the overall revenue from the service, though Hollywood Accounting is a thing. What they don’t have to report is how much people are actually using the service they pay for. They have to report the revenue from the service somewhere in their financial statements, but they don't have to report it out as a separate line item. I'm not familiar with the streamers' financial statements, but for example it's impossible to know how much money Apple is making from Apple Watch. They report the revenue from iPhone, iPad, and Mac separately, so you can tell how much money they're making on each of those. But for Apple Watch, they have a category called "Wearables, home, and accessories", so that the revenue from Apple Watch is mixed up with the revenue from speakers and AirPods and cases and cables etc etc. The only direct measure we have to measure the Watch's success is whatever stats Apple selectively releases.
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Jul 22, 2023 14:13
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Open Source Idiom posted:https://deadline.com/2023/07/alien-alex-lawther-samuel-blenkin-cast-fx-series-production-no-sag-aftra-actors-strike-1235443713/ The DGA and the British actor's union will both have "no strike" clause in their contract, meaning that they are not allowed to back out of work in solidarity with SAG-AFTRA and WGA. The article makes this point: quote:Equity performers have been told that they risk being sued for breach of contract if they walk off set in solidarity with American colleagues. This is on the producers.
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Jul 23, 2023 22:11
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Open Source Idiom posted:Aren't they scabbing just by virtue of applying for the job, particularly when you've got actors like Alex Lawther and Essie Davis, neither of whom would have much difficulty getting work based on their CVs and awards history. Perhaps not quite as prestigious a role, but ho hum. The article you linked to talks about this in the third paragraph? quote:The deals for the actors were made well before the SAG-AFTRA strike started July 14, It's not scabbing to apply for a job "well before" there's a strike.
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Jul 23, 2023 22:56
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I don't see an actual "promise" in that article.
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Jul 27, 2023 23:59
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From the link above:quote:WGA is the dominant writers’ union and its contracts cover many high-profile (usually adult) animated shows like The Simpsons, Rick and Morty, and Family Guy.
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Jul 28, 2023 14:48
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Timby posted:By negotiating with the WGA and very specifically not SAG-AFTRA, the AMPTP is explicitly trying to drive a wedge between the unions' solidarity. The unions will have to negotiate separately and reach separate deals, and one of the two is going to reach a deal before the other. That's just unavoidable! I think it's unclear that the AMPTP has bandwidth to negotiate with both groups simultaneously, anyway.
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Aug 2, 2023 15:51
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Losing 1.8 million subs is good, right? There were 4 million people who were subscribed to both HBO Max and Discovery+. When you merge the two services, you start out 4 million in the hole, so if they lost only 1.8 million that means they gained 2.2 million new people elsewhere.
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Aug 3, 2023 15:52
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Vegetable posted:Do writers truly down pens during the strike? Obviously they can’t submit work to the studio. But I’m wondering if they take the time to punch up scripts for their existing shows and develop new projects. It seems like a really long period of time to be doing nothing professionally. They're not allowed to punch up script for existing shows or movie projects that are underway, that's work for a struck company. They're allowed to start or continue writing scripts for movies or pilots they hope to sell later. That's work for themselves, not for a struck company. Now, if you've had the script for Live Die Repeat And Repeat The Edge of the Day After Tomorrow in your drawer for a decade, and WB has an option on that script, and you have an idea for a character moment, and you go into your script and edit a line, is anybody two years from now going to go in the script and ask "did you make this line change while you were on strike"? Probably not. But it's against the strike rules. Pinterest Mom fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Aug 6, 2023 |
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Aug 6, 2023 19:17
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Yep! Paramount can in principle benefit from publicity for Voyager, for example by striking syndication deals in the US or selling international streaming rights. The strike guidelines specifically say members shouldn't be doing publicity including conventions and fan expos.
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Aug 6, 2023 23:50
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SAG-AFTRA members can't promote work they did under a SAG-AFTRA contract. Fans are free to go and say the word V*lcan as much as they want. Ideally, performers wouldn't appear at the convention at all during the strike.
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Aug 6, 2023 23:57
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Keep in mind that "Netflix Original" might mean "produced by Netflix", or it might mean "Netflix is the first company to have bought the rights to this foreign-produced thing in your market". Better Call Saul, for example, was marketed as a Netflix Original in Canada. But, yeah, Netflix has had a long-running strategy of leaning heavily on international diversification as a way to differentiate itself from other streaming services and just better penetrate foreign markets. It's probably a happy coincidence from their point of view that that also makes them more resilient to a US strike, but it's really cool for Korean creators that this is the first time they really have leverage over Netflix and can bargain for more.
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Aug 8, 2023 14:12
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ashpanash posted:Again, I'm only making assumptions here, but based on the idea that companies that are allowed to continue production are doing so because they have acceded to all the guild's demands, they must be providing residuals somehow. So on some level, there must be data that they get, as a production company, from the streamers themselves, that they can show to the guild and justify what they are providing - in a way that the guild is satisfied with. I know there's been some talk of the guild working with some sort of social media analysis consulting firm and hyping their system, so it's probably some version of that. The companies getting waivers are not AMPTP. It seems like they're agreeing to the wage increases the unions are demanding, but for things like data sharing and changing the residual structure, they're not really empowered to agree to that. The unions are using the independent companies to keep workers hired and put pressure on the AMPTP studios, but I wouldn't take this as indicative that A24 has agreed to anything re: residuals and data sharing.
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Aug 11, 2023 03:48
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https://twitter.com/robhoegee/status/1690405037930078208
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Aug 12, 2023 18:31
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WGA writers can work on productions that get filmed abroad with foreign actors, too.
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Aug 13, 2023 16:09
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Argyle posted:AI-Created Art Isn’t Copyrightable, Judge Says in Ruling That Could Give Hollywood Studios Pause The Copyright Office's guidance document on this is fairly readable (and makes a lot of sense to me). Section III is the most relevant part.
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Aug 19, 2023 20:13
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I always got the sense that that was one of the WGA's lower-priority demands this time around. You look at their proposals document from earlier this year, and you have all this very detailed stuff on pay, room sizes, foreign streaming. For viewership-based residuals, it's essentially "uh, idk, some kind of viewership-based residuals tbd later?". I don't think they were going to ever get viewership-based residuals as part of this contract, especially with DGA signing without them.
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Aug 24, 2023 16:05
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MagusDraco posted:So. I have a question. Did Zack Snyder get a pass or something to advertise Rebel Moon? I'm surprised there's been no visible blowback for that. He's part of the WGA right? He's not just the director, he's a writer on it too. The DGA has a contract, and that contract states that DGA members are not allowed to assist any strike against the employer. This isn't unique to the DGA, all the guilds have that clause in their contract, it just happens that the DGA's clause is relevant right now. Publicity is part of Snyder's duties as a director, so studios can ask him to do it regardless of the "writer" side of him being on strike. (He still isn't allowed to perform duties as a writer, though there are some grey areas that the DGA considers directorial and the WGA considers writing.) He also has the right to refuse to cross a picket line if there's one present. quote:17-101 No Strike, No Lockout Provisions Pinterest Mom fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Aug 26, 2023 |
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Aug 26, 2023 15:34
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Vegetable posted:I don’t get what an interim deal for a specific show would even look like. Surely they’re not gonna concede on streaming residuals or AI rights just for that show. Maybe it’s a lump-sum payment to the actors involved. But why would SAG-AFTRA be okay with it? Other striking actors must be pissed. I expect that on streaming residuals etc, the interim agreement has some language that says "AMC will abide by terms X, or by the terms of the eventual contract once that gets signed". Since AMC will be bound by the terms of the eventual contract but won't one of the parties at the table negotiating it, they're not really giving anything up here. ("AMC Networks is what’s known as an authorized company with regards to the AMPTP but is not among the studios involved in the negotiations.")
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Sep 1, 2023 01:12
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