What Are We Doing? Moving Around Furniture on the Titanic?
The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists is on strike.
WHAT IS SAG-AFTRA?
SAG-AFTRA brings together two great American labor unions: Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. SAG-AFTRA represents approximately 160,000 actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, dancers, DJs, news writers, news editors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists and other media professionals.
WHAT IS THE AMPTP?
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is a trade association based in Sherman Oaks, California, that represents over 350 American television and film production companies in collective bargaining negotiations with entertainment industry trade unions.
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?
SAG-AFTRA on their decision to strike:
SAG-AFTRA negotiated in good faith with the AMPTP. We said we need a modern contract that addresses modern issues. They countered with business as usual: Income erosion. AI exploitation. Abusive self-tape demands. Our careers as performers are now in jeopardy. This is why we’re striking.
WHAT IS SAG-AFTRA FIGHTING FOR?
Like the Writers Guild, SAG-AFTRA made their proposals and counteroffers public.
The companies represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) — which include Amazon/MGM, Apple, Disney/ABC/Fox, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount/CBS, Sony, Warner Bros. Discovery (HBO), and others — are committed to prioritizing shareholders and Wall Street. Detailed below are some of the key issues of the negotiation and where things stand. We moved on some things, but from day one they wouldn’t meaningfully engage on the most critical issues.
There are overlaps between the two industry unions, including AI protections.
Performers need the protection of our images and performances to prevent replacement of human performances by artificial intelligence technology.
Us: Here’s a comprehensive set of provisions to grant informed consent and fair compensation when a “digital replica” is made or our performance is changed using AI.
Them: We want to be able to scan a background performer’s image, pay them for a half a day’s labor, and then use an individual’s likeness for any purpose forever without their consent. We also want to be able to make changes to principal performers’ dialogue, and even create new scenes, without informed consent. And we want to be able to use someone’s images, likenesses, and performances to train new generative AI systems without consent or compensation.
Other standout issues include revenue sharing, which would allow casts to participate in the financial success of their own shows.
Performers need compensation to reflect the value we bring to the streamers who profit from our labor.
Us: Consider this comprehensive plan for actors to participate in streaming revenue, since the current business model has eroded our residuals income.
Them: No.
WHAT DOES THAT ALL MEAN?
People keep saying there was a natural progression in the industry and that the contracts need to match in modernity. Fair. Netflix 1.0 could not have anticipated their own success nor the copy-cat pivot to streaming that followed.
Tech predictably promised “democratization” and “disruption” to an industry that was doing fine. Television and film were doing okay. The way cabs or hotels or offices were doing okay. So the promise, was to the consumer – we will make this better for you, watch all the TV and film you want, for free basically. Ignoring the labor it takes to make the product. As we know, once you get used to free, it’s hard to go back. (Like the news, for example.)
Movies are ideas. It takes enormous effort to get a thought onto a page. Then, writers fold in their peers to get the page onto a screen – to finance, produce, cast, act, dress, style, shoot, edit, color, score. It takes hundreds of people and months or years to finish anything. It’s a miracle when it works.
Hollywood is uniquely expensive and risky. It doesn’t always scale. You cannot guarantee a hit just as you cannot predict a bomb. You cannot use an algorithm to forecast artistic development or success or mood. To ‘hack’ an industry with the singular goal of scaling is a trick mirror. Like WeWork. Like Airbnb. Like Buzzfeed.
WHAT NOW?
SAG-AFTRA will continue to strike until the AMPTP is ready to negotiate for real. 2 months, 2 weeks and 2 days (at the time of writing this) into the writers strike, in the depths of mid July heat, as people may have been tiring, SAG-AFTRA injected a new and profound enthusiasm into the strike.