zenosanalytic reblogged
Seen flying over Sony studios today
zenosanalytic reblogged
Anonymous asked:
Nobody is making anyone go into scriptwriting. No one is born in a Netflix company town where their dad takes them into the script mines at age 12. Fuck writers who want to get paid more than once for the same job. They should only get residuals AFTER all the people who do REAL WORK, like construction, grips, costume, makeup & animators etc. Most of them are much better at their jobs than writers especially for streaming services, and they are what screenwriters can lean on & novelists can't.
People need to realize that the unions for white collar people like WGA or SIEU or NEA (public sector unions are why cops who kill the people they were supposed to serve & protect remain employed get pensions) is not the AFL-CIO or any other historical union fighting for the lives of the people who built the country's industry and made it run, any more than the NRA are the Minutemen of 1775 New England.
First, go fuck yourself, you fucking scab. No, seriously - you don't come to my blog and spout off about what workers deserve unions and decent pay and what ones don't, like it's your fucking decision. The intellectual labor that writers perform is just as real as any other work done on a film set - "all who labor by hand or brain" is the inherent logic of industrial unionism for a reason.
Second, writers aren't asking to get paid more than once: residuals are deferred pay, you absolute moron. In Hollywood, whether it's writers or actors or voice talent or whatever, you get a small fraction up front - it's usually an ok check, depending on the union's day rates and so forth, but you can't make a living off stitching these together - and then most of your pay comes from monthly royalty checks that provide you with the income you need to live off when you're between jobs.
The problem is that, historically in Hollywood, residuals have been structured with a very long "tail" - the payments start out relatively low and then get more generous over time as the show has more seasons and (presumably) goes into syndication. This doesn't work with streaming's new business model, where increasingly shows are getting 2-3 seasons max and streaming services have become increasingly quick to not just cancel shows but yank them off their servers in order to avoid paying residuals.
So what WGA writers are fighting for is a system that ensures writers (but also actors and other creative workers, because the unions pattern bargain) get a fair share of the show's revenue, even if the show is only given 2-3 seasons.
Third, the U.S labor movement would not exist today if it wasn't for white collar workers and public sector workers. About half of the U.S labor movement - 7 million workers - is public sector, and those workers are overwhelmingly women of color, mostly working as either teachers or postal workers. Likewise, about half the U.S labor movement is made up of white collar workers, and we're graduate students and adjuncts and lab researchers, teachers and social workers, administrators and IT departments.
I'm both public sector and white collar, and I'm a member of an NEA union. I'm an adjunct professor who earns $6,000 a course and it's my job to get working adults with jobs and families who've never gone to college or who've been out of higher ed for a decade to graduate with a bachelor's or a master's. If you don't think that's real work, you're free to research and write all the lectures and powerpoints, deliver those in an entertaining and educational fashion, answer a flood of questions from students who need help navigating academia, and then grade all the midterms and finals and research papers.
...FYI.
One other data point to add: at any given point in time, 95% of the WGA is unemployed.* So what money you do manage to make needs to be enough to last you a while. (A five-figure script minimum may look like a lot, viewed from the outside... until state and Federal taxes have had their bite of it, and you realize that whatever's left may be the only writing money that person makes for a year. Or two. Or five.) This is where residuals become vital.
*I refuse to use the anodyne old theatrical-arts euphemism for not being engaged in paid work, "resting". If you're about to be broke (again!), trust me, rest is the last thing on your mind.
Real effective union if they can’t keep ninety five percent of their members gainfully employed.
That’s one reason why we’re on strike. Because we want to keep more writers in work longer.
But missing from your snark is the understanding that different kinds of jobs exist. Some jobs exist to allow the workers to work every day, or every weekday. Some jobs the workers work intensively for days or weeks or months and then may not work for a long time.
That’s where the concept of residuals comes from.
Actors on film or TV will only work for short periods, most of them. But you will enjoy their work for decades. Their unions have worked hard to make sure they got paid when films or shows they were in get repeated. That’s a feature, not a bug. There are only so many shows being shot, only so many movies being made.
The problem with a streaming world is actors and writers aren't being properly paid when things are available streaming all the time, because in the beginning these services were starting out and the producers asked us to cut them some slack as they weren't even profitable yet.
I’ve got friends who are members. I don’t broadly disagree with the stated goals of the union. I agree that residuals as they are are pathetic and they should definitely take streaming into account (if for no other reason than that those industries would be forced to publicize streaming statistics).
My point, such as it was, was more that they don’t seem very good at achieving those goals.
But they do.
Here. Perhaps this will help:
it’s also a good thing for white collar creative and academic workers to strike because they have the training and education to make their demands clear and accessible to the public, and to create and promote materials to people who haven’t had their educational opportunities. there’s plenty of dignity and smarts in blue collar labor, but not a lot of time to take a class on writing. or business. or financial literacy. but they can read a pamphlet, a newsletter, a well-composed twitter thread. the kind that educated writers are good at producing.
im so sick of the anti-intellectualism involved in assuming everyone with a college degree is some ivory tower snob who will pull the ladder up after themselves as soon as they get the barest crumb of power or respect. it’s pathetic, short-sighted, defiant snobbery, and it actively works against everyone’s interests.
creative work is work. academic work is work. all power to the people.
What roach said and ask yourself: where do these ideas about academics, and, writers, and other "white collar workers" whose jobs AREN'T bossing other ppl around and talking on the phone all day, come from? Are they maybe coming from Republicans and Republican organs like Fox News? Are they maybe coming from the same damn elites who ALWAYS attack labor actions as pointless, or likely to fail, or "spoiled"? Why are you letting people who performatively hate labor tell you what to think about a labor dispute?
#The Writers' Guild of America#Diane Duane#Neil Gaiman#roach works#WGA Strikes#Politics#Republicans#Republican Propaganda#Antiintellectualism#appreciative reblogs#honestly it's a BIT ridic calling academics and tv writers white collar workers when that has colloquially meant 'Bosses' since the 80s#the time when that meant 'someone who works in an office' is long since passed#zA Opinions
zenosanalytic reblogged
Hey y'all. With the Writer's Guild of America on strike, you might be hearing a lot more about something called "residuals," which are payments that the writers get for the studios continuing to air their work on reruns and such. Already I'm seeing people trying to frame the union trying to bargain for better residuals as greedy and unreasonable, so I just wanted to give you guys a peek into my dad's full, 100% real residual payments for writing some of the most watched episodes of American late night television.
Yeah lol. If u hear anyone trying to frame the conversation around residuals as writers being greedy, please do me a favor and punch them straight in the face ❤️🙃🙃
zenosanalytic reblogged
Something I find kinda jarring about this here 21st century is that the average person with an internet connection and an ounce of pirating know-how has access to more movies and tv shows than anyone has ever had in the history of forever and yet there are still people trying to argue that the screenwriter strike is bad because it means we might experience a temporary lack of new television
zenosanalytic reblogged
trot on writers guild. trot on
zenosanalytic reblogged
A discussion of what’s been going on, and what it’s led to.