Film and Television Projects Grind to a Halt as Both SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America Go on Strike

[Peter_Brosdahl]

In an epic one-two punch for the film and television industry, SAG-AFTRA went on to join the WGA by going on strike this week. The Writers Guild of America which represents roughly 11,500 screenwriters, has been on strike since May with no end in sight in a dispute over residuals from streaming media and contractual reassurances with the use of AI, pension, and medical care funding. As of midnight Thursday, the Screen Actors Guild also went on strike asking for higher wages and increased residual payments, and protections from the use of AI.

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[Grimlakin]

As OF midnight.

And I don't blame any of them. IF I were an actor I would be creating protected IP's of my likeness and voice TODAY and if an production wants to use it they get a per project license to use it. Not per IP or per series unless that entitles me to healthy rewards for all of them.

Even if I were an online media influencer I would be doing that.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

As OF midnight.

 

[Brian_B]

I always see these news stories talking about residuals. Which is important.

But they ignore that the people got paid up front for their work as well - the imply that the only compensation that these folks get are residuals and nothing else. Not that I think these folks don't have a valid concern here, but I'm just not nearly as sympathetic since I know we are only getting one side of the story.

I sure wish in my line of work I could get residuals when I went and did something.

 

[Ditchinit]

I sure wish in my line of work I could get residuals when I went and did something.

I get residuals. In the form of complaints from the public. It's just the nature of the work. No one wants potholes on their street, but no one also wants their street reconstructed (to remove and prevent further potholes), either. I wish I had a nickle for every complaint. I'd be retired.

 

[Grimlakin]

I always see these news stories talking about residuals. Which is important.

But they ignore that the people got paid up front for their work as well - the imply that the only compensation that these folks get are residuals and nothing else. Not that I think these folks don't have a valid concern here, but I'm just not nearly as sympathetic since I know we are only getting one side of the story.

I sure wish in my line of work I could get residuals when I went and did something.

I work in IT. I get residuals in the form of regular paychecks. You see writers sell something they create. Let's call it art. The studios pay them some money up front. But even if their work is extremely popular they get nothing on the back end. In reality they need to own their work. The same way studios and musicians own the work they create. When their work is used to gain profit. They make money on it. Like when software is used in an enterprise setting. The creators make money on it. And they zealously protect their profit on those products.

Let's imagine that you live in the US. You open a theater where you show movoes or shows from the streaming services to force people s cheaper out of the house movie going experience. But you're not paying the streaming companies a dime other than your subscriptions to the streaming service. Exactly how long do you think it would be before you were slapped with lawsuits for their damages and **** down from future illesgle distribution of their work? Days... Weeks maybe? Could be months. Doubtful it would be years. I'm pretty sure we all agree in the end the legal entity would be sued and shuttered.

So the question is if the product has vslue to be protected why shouldnt the creators be compensated? It's not like most of these people are staff writers. Not every work they make is an immediate windfall. They are just asking for just compensation for their tiny piece of their streaming content.

The studios know they could loose this. Why else would companies like Disney and time warner be pulling content off of streaming services like it is going out of style? The will have to rejigg their back end systems to properly track audience engagement with content so they know how many pennies to distribute to the talent and writers and other guild represented works should make.

In it you have noteworthy programmers who are ingrained into the corporate world and have a lifetime career with income. But just wait . If there is ever a programmers guild or infrastructure guild you will see similar things happen there. Right now corps know they have it good.

Sorry for typos on my phone.

 

[MadMummy76]

I work in IT. I get residuals in the form of regular paychecks. You see writers sell something they create. Let's call it art. The studios pay them some money up front. But even if their work is extremely popular they get nothing on the back end. In reality they need to own their work. The same way studios and musicians own the work they create. When their work is used to gain profit. They make money on it. Like when software is used in an enterprise setting. The creators make money on it. And they zealously protect their profit on those products.

Let's imagine that you live in the US. You open a theater where you show movoes or shows from the streaming services to force people s cheaper out of the house movie going experience. But you're not paying the streaming companies a dime other than your subscriptions to the streaming service. Exactly how long do you think it would be before you were slapped with lawsuits for their damages and **** down from future illesgle distribution of their work? Days... Weeks maybe? Could be months. Doubtful it would be years. I'm pretty sure we all agree in the end the legal entity would be sued and shuttered.

So the question is if the product has vslue to be protected why shouldnt the creators be compensated? It's not like most of these people are staff writers. Not every work they make is an immediate windfall. They are just asking for just compensation for their tiny piece of their streaming content.

The studios know they could loose this. Why else would companies like Disney and time warner be pulling content off of streaming services like it is going out of style? The will have to rejigg their back end systems to properly track audience engagement with content so they know how many pennies to distribute to the talent and writers and other guild represented works should make.

In it you have noteworthy programmers who are ingrained into the corporate world and have a lifetime career with income. But just wait . If there is ever a programmers guild or infrastructure guild you will see similar things happen there. Right now corps know they have it good.

Sorry for typos on my phone.

Writers are privileged if they get residual payments. It is literally getting paid for nothing, unless the contract was designed so they get paid less than market value upfront and compensated by residuals.

I do not see why writers employed by studios should get any preferential treatment. The construction workers who build a bridge don't get residuals each time someone crosses the bridge they built. Nor does the engineer who designed it. And you can't say that being a fiction writer is a more important job than being an engineer. On the contrary, the engineer is responsible for the bridge until the end of his life, if design flaws surface later he will be dragged to court possibly even criminal court. And they still don't get any residuals. So it would be highly unfair if uneducated flying monkeys with zero care and responsibility would get residual payments for the rest of their days because they co-wrote one episode on some terrible TV show.

The equal for your streaming analogy for writers would be if a studio made a movie out of a novel and they didn't compensate the author. Or in the engineering world if someone used a design without paying the engineer who designed it.

 

[Brian_B]

I work in IT. I get residuals in the form of regular paychecks.
...
So the question is if the product has vslue to be protected why shouldnt the creators be compensated?

No. You are providing hours and support for paychecks - your time spent is what those paychecks are for.

Residuals would be where you install a server, and you get paid in perpetuity thereafter without having to perform any more services, and you can go on to other, completely unrelated work, or retire, or whatever - it's done, and you just get money afterwards because you did the work the first time. It isn't even the same as a lease - where you would still have to provide support and fixes.

I don't disagree with your statement about writers owning the work. Part of the price of getting their work published is signing over the ownership - so it's not like they are entering into this blindly. If you don't want to sign over copyright, then find a way to publish it yourself - plenty of indie filmmakers (and musicians) out there do all the time.

But if I think about it, take architects and painters and sculptors and other artists - they don't get residuals each time their piece of art resells. It seems to be pretty unique to music and film.... maybe the entire residual system should go away.

To your second point - my first post here is I believe that they are getting compensated, up front, but they just aren't talking about that half of the story.

 

[Brian_B]

Why else would companies like Disney and time warner be pulling content off of streaming services like it is going out of style?

Residuals aren't the big reason there - sure, if they do so, they don't have to pay those out... but as you see in the strike, those are mere pennies. It probably costs as much or more in administration just to figure out who gets how much every month as they end up paying out.

The real reason is if they pull it, they can write down the loss as a tax break and treat it as a failed investment or lost asset. If it's still out there earning clicks or revenue, they can't claim the loss because it's still an asset.

 

[Uvilla]

I don't know how pay structure is done, but I can see reason for royalties for original work, ' residuals' for like a staff writer, I don't see that too much, i can see how " staff writer " can be a 9-5 job paycheck job. Salaries for writers can and may go up with talent like any other job. For actors as I understand it, their salary can be super low, and then residuals might help with that, but in so many ways, its almost like an investment. Then again this is for them to work out, and who cares.

 

[Grimlakin]

Writers have always made money based on sales of their product. IN the case of television it was on syndication and such. It's an established process. Movies the same.

The problem is, and the shady thing is studio's shifted existing content into online digitial distribution, for stuff that has been around a long while. And declared that the writers and actors contracts don't cover online distribution so they simply don't get paid for it.

I'm trying to think about how this would work ... Ah I got it.

Imagine you write a book. You have milestone rewards for publication/distribution/and sell through and so on of your books. You make MILLIONS because everyone loves your material. The publishers make millions, everyone gets a piece of that pie. IT's good.

Now the publisher discovers something called E-books. They check their contract and your contract says 'physical' in the sell through. So the publisher confirms they 'own' the rights to distribute your work and starts selling it online. They rake in ALL of the money for the digital distribution of the work. There is a resurgence in popularity and you make a few more grand in residuals.... but the publisher makes ALL of the profit on the digital work.

And lets take it further... you the author do NOT have rights to self publish your work the publishing house licensed or purchased from you. What do you do?

Is that fair because the knowledge of E-Books still exist? Is it LEGAL yes. No one is questioning if it is legal. The writers are on strike because they want their future and previous work to be properly compensated. Sure they can self publish as mentioned in the thread for anything new they create that doesn't reference existing IP. But their creations that they WOULD have received money for based on what I will call traditional distribution is non existent for digital or streaming distribution.

And I'm willing to bet that those streamers know EXACTLY how popular and consumed their digitally distributed content is (or isn't) and they want to protect that income.

 

[MadMummy76]

Books are very different from writing for TV or a movie. Screenplays aren't published. The movie is. Why should the writer get residuals, but the costume designers, set builders, location scouts etc. don't?

 

[Grimlakin]

Books are very different from writing for TV or a movie. Screenplays aren't published. The movie is. Why should the writer get residuals, but the costume designers, set builders, location scouts etc. don't

Who says they don't?

 

[Brian_B]

And lets take it further... you the author do NOT have rights to self publish your work the publishing house licensed or purchased from you. What do you do?

The next book you write you get a better contract. Learn from the fact that the marketplace shifted after your contract was executed. I don't necessarily blame the author or the publisher for including the word "physical" in there at all - after all, someone publishing a book in the 1970's or so - it would be hard to even imagine something like e-books being a thing and you can't cover all unknown bases in a contract (or, if you can figure that out, you will make millions as a legal consultant)

So all you can do is say "Well, that contract sucked" and do better on the next one.

 

[Grimlakin]

The next book you write you get a better contract. Learn from the fact that the marketplace shifted after your contract was executed. I don't necessarily blame the author or the publisher for including the word "physical" in there at all - after all, someone publishing a book in the 1970's or so - it would be hard to even imagine something like e-books being a thing and you can't cover all unknown bases in a contract (or, if you can figure that out, you will make millions as a legal consultant)

So all you can do is say "Well, that contract sucked" and do better on the next one.

You shouldn't need a contract lawyer to write something for you to not be raked over the coals. But the contract negotiation phase is downright criminal.

 

[MadMummy76]

Who says they don't?

A screen writer can't self publish. Unless they make a self financed movie. So I don't understand why did you bring up book writing?
"Compensated for past work" sounds ridiculous to me. They were already compensated for past work when their screenplay was bought off of them. Or by getting a salary if they were staff writers. I still don't get it why do they think they deserve additional payments for past work?!

 

[Grimlakin]

A screen writer can't self publish. Unless they make a self financed movie. So I don't understand why did you bring up book writing?
"Compensated for past work" sounds ridiculous to me. They were already compensated for past work when their screenplay was bought off of them. Or by getting a salary if they were staff writers. I still don't get it why do they think they deserve additional payments for past work?!

I don't KNOW than they do think that. Just postulating. I'm trying to make that point that writers (and screen writers) should be compensated if their work is being published on another medium. Unless of course these publishing companies and Studios would be ok with the writers just reselling their scripts to be completely re done for another medium where they get no financial benefit.

And a writer CAN NOT self publish existing work. Even if it's not licensed for the medium in question.

 

[MadMummy76]

And a writer CAN NOT self publish existing work. Even if it's not licensed for the medium in question.

Of course they can't since no publisher will agree to publish your book unless you sign away your rights to it. Imagine a publisher paying you money for a book, then you suddenly turn around and self publish it for cheaper, or through another publisher. Things are the way they are for a reason.

The screen writer strike is partly about residuals, so obviously they do think they deserve it.

 

[Grimlakin]

Of course they can't since no publisher will agree to publish your book unless you sign away your rights to it. Imagine a publisher paying you money for a book, then you suddenly turn around and self publish it for cheaper, or through another publisher. Things are the way they are for a reason.

The screen writer strike is partly about residuals, so obviously they do think they deserve it.

And the strike will prove of the studios think they deserve it too. Otherwise they will pull in scabs to do the work and let the writers eff off. Same with the actors. End product will tell.