A Thread for the Writers Guild of America Strike

Ag3ma

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The "offer" SAG was given for AI reproduction
So, "Joan Is Awful" from Black Mirror, then.

Granted, when we consider that a major role of technology to increase productivity is to reduce the requirement for the inefficiency of high labour costs, this makes sense from a business perspective. Computer-generated actors to do away with salaries and AI written scripts to do away with scriptwriters.
 

Gordon_4

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So, "Joan Is Awful" from Black Mirror, then.

Granted, when we consider that a major role of technology to increase productivity is to reduce the requirement for the inefficiency of high labour costs, this makes sense from a business perspective. Computer-generated actors to do away with salaries and AI written scripts to do away with scriptwriters.
Squaresoft tried to make the whole digital actress thing take off with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within back in like 2000 or something and they were derided as totally bonkers for thinking it would work. Yet it is increasingly looking like they were just WAY ahead of the curve.
 
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thebobmaster

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Here's an example of the kind of "pay" a writer could expect working for Marvel.

 

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Squaresoft tried to make the whole digital actress thing take off with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within back in like 2000 or something and they were derided as totally bonkers for thinking it would work. Yet it is increasingly looking like they were just WAY ahead of the curve.
Well it worked with The Gorillaz and Hatsune Miku. The only difference is both didn't suck. The former has actual singers and voice actors, and Miku is a digital computer that can sing. The same applies to Lumi from Genki Rockets. Sorta. Apparently, her singing voice is the combination of two women. One who is white and can sing in English, and the other who is and can sing in Japanese.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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Computer-generated actors to do away with salaries and AI written scripts to do away with scriptwriters.
How about computer-generated audiences because nobody's going to have money to watch movies when we all lose our jobs to AI?

Squaresoft tried to make the whole digital actress thing take off with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within back in like 2000 or something and they were derided as totally bonkers for thinking it would work. Yet it is increasingly looking like they were just WAY ahead of the curve.
The thing is that they wanted to turn Aki Ross into a kind of Lara Croft, and the problem was that Lara Croft at that point had a number of good games under her belt, whereas Aki Ross had one pretty bad movie.
 

Cicada 5

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Here's an example of the kind of "pay" a writer could expect working for Marvel.

But I thought everyone who worked in Hollywood was a spoiled city billionaire. That's what the get woke, go broke crowd said and they've never been wrong about anything!
 

Gordon_4

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Here's an example of the kind of "pay" a writer could expect working for Marvel.

Hang on, a residual is an extra payment after the original. Usually actors get them as part of repeat broadcasts of work with their likeness in it; although how that works in the streaming era is an interesting question. But what we’re they actually paid to write the episode in the first place?
 
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Cicada 5

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thebobmaster

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Hang on, a residual is an extra payment after the original. Usually actors get them as part of repeat broadcasts of work with their likeness in it; although how that works in the streaming era is an interesting question. But what we’re they actually paid to write the episode in the first place?
Can't find anything about the original pay. But even if it was a fair amount...I'm pretty sure I, a janitor at a casino, shouldn't be making more per week than a writer's residual payment.
 

Ag3ma

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Squaresoft tried to make the whole digital actress thing take off with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within back in like 2000 or something and they were derided as totally bonkers for thinking it would work. Yet it is increasingly looking like they were just WAY ahead of the curve.
Firstly, I think to a large extent it might not fully take root because to a large extent people want to see other people. They like knowing there's a real person and a real life, real achievements and stunts, and the background gossip, the excitement of seeing them, etc.

I also think AI are (currently) poor at innovation. So where countless derivative product could be churned out with AI, I think people would ultimately tire and need a fresh perspective or creation which would require a human. Similarly with actors, I think there's an element of charisma, interpretation and their own unique qualities to a role that code may find very hard to replicate. Sure, coders can make characters and those characters will show the right emotions, but there will likely be something drably uniform or routine about them. I think this barrier might be very hard to overcome. An intermediate might be a scriptwriter-AI hybrid model where the AI can do a load of the work but it has human input / oversight, and potentially in place of actors there are digital character specialists who can wring some sort of "factor X" out of their creations.
 

Gordon_4

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Can't find anything about the original pay. But even if it was a fair amount...I'm pretty sure I, a janitor at a casino, shouldn't be making more per week than a writer's residual payment.
Well yeah you should, mainly because your weekly pay is dependant on your ongoing active labour. And staff who clean should be well paid because Jesus Tap-dancing Christ were filthy animals when the mood strikes us. The residual is a royalty that they will receive passively even if they never wrote again and instead pursued a career in selling fruit and veg. Or sat at home jerking off to OnlyFans.
 

Baffle

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Well yeah you should, mainly because your weekly pay is dependant on your ongoing active labour. And staff who clean should be well paid because Jesus Tap-dancing Christ were filthy animals when the mood strikes us. The residual is a royalty that they will receive passively even if they never wrote again and instead pursued a career in selling fruit and veg. Or sat at home jerking off to OnlyFans.
Yeah, I generally agree though obviously it's going to depend on the agreement at the time of writing (i.e. if the flat rate was shit I'd expect good residuals). There's a similar royalties system in my line of work, but everything I do is effectively work for hire so it doesn't matter how successful the product is, I get paid the same (which is fine, it's what I expect to happen).

I say this not to denigrate the efforts of writers et al., but because I feel like jobs that can't be one-and-done deserve more recompense because they're consuming your time, which you can never replace, on an ongoing basis. It doesn't matter how clean you get that place, it'll need to be cleaned again.

I do not, on the other hand, think the writers' loss should be the corporations' gain.
 
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Gordon_4

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Yeah, I generally agree though obviously it's going to depend on the agreement at the time of writing (i.e. if the flat rate was shit I'd expect good residuals).
And that's entirely fair. Maybe even put in a nice clause that says if the show overall wins an emmy or something, the residuals go up 20%

But again the interesting question is, since those royalties as I understand them were probably negotiated during the days of syndication and repeats, how do they apply now to the on-demand market television has largely become?
 

TheMysteriousGX

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It's worth pointing out that that residual check is probably the ripest i's ever gonna be. Views drop off over time, after all. I've seen single cent residual checks for relatively new series's
 
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