John August

Follow Up

PayUpHollywood progress, an update from ‘Christian’

Film Industry, First Person, Follow Up, Television

Three years ago — October 8, 2019 — a writer who went by “Christian” emailed about [their experience as a writer’s PA](https://johnaugust.com/2019/hollywood-assistants-have-always-been-underpaid-but-this-is-different), explaining how they were expected to do the jobs of multiple support staff on a tiny salary. We discussed their email on the show, including the issue of [needing to have a car](https://johnaugust.com/2019/scriptnotes-ep-422-assistants-arent-paid-nearly-enough-transcript).

Last week at the premiere event for The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror XXXIII (delightful, btw), I met “Christian” in person. They filled me in on what had happened in the past three years.

Some legitimate progress had been made, which Christian felt could be traced to the #PayUpHollywood movement. Their pay had gone up from minimum wage — but not necessarily to a living wage — and conversations about pay were becoming more open. That’s the good news.

Frustratingly, studios were still balking at reimbursing staff for things like assistants’ use of their own cell phones. Showrunners weren’t willing to engage on getting assistant and support staff properly compensated for their hours. It felt like the same grind for a few dollars more.

Christian ended up quitting work as a writer’s PA to focus on their writing, which had gone neglected for two years due to stress and overwork. I asked what advice they’d give to a writer who was looking at taking a coveted showrunner’s assistant job.

> Honestly, do it for one show, one season. Learn everything you possibly can. Make contacts. Then get a job as a receptionist at a law firm so you can have the time to write.

This week, Christian wrote in with some follow-up thoughts.

—

first personI wanted to thank you for not only graciously listening to me ramble last night, but asking me how things were going. As you could probably assume from what I said, it’s been a lot of ups and downs.

I won’t bug you further with the details behind my experiences, but just want to make it known that my toxic boss and the refusal to provide pay parity or stipends for what we were legally owed was happening on essentially both the studio’s and network’s biggest drama cash cow. So there really isn’t any excuse for nickel and dime-ing the assistants, other than the fact that they can.

But really, it doesn’t matter what the budget is, there’s no excuse for screwing the lowest paid workers out of fair wages when these corporations are making billions of dollars a year. The money is there. They just don’t care.

It doesn’t help that there’s a huge line of people willing to accept things as they are because they believe getting an assistant job is a ticket to staffing. (The person who took over my desk when I left was a previously staffed writer, who had left the industry for personal reasons, and was so hell-bent on getting a foot “back inside” that they accepted the demotion to Showrunner’s Assistant on a desk that doesn’t promote up and isn’t particularly kind. So there were really no consequences to my toxic former boss or the show for behaving so poorly.)

And I’m not sure that there’s an easy solution, because even though my boss was not supportive, I know countless assistants who *do* have supportive bosses, and even their bosses have gotten stonewalled when trying to help their assistants get paid what they’re owed. One example: a friend’s boss actually carved out the show budget so that there would be enough to pay each assistant $20/hr (this is back in 2019 I believe, well before union negotiations), and the studio refused to allow the Showrunner to pay the assistants that because it would “start a precedent.”

Even today, I have a friend who got promoted to manager at her POD, but is still getting paid at the assistant rate AND having to cover her former boss’s desk because the studio won’t give the POD the budget for a managerial wage and a new assistant until the POD has “more projects in development.” Currently, this POD has the #1 show on its network, a spinoff in the works, and several other projects being pitched around town.

I feel as though ultimately the only solution seems to be to unionize every assistant position at every level, but that is a hefty, years-long goal filled with complications and extra financial barriers for those who are already struggling to make ends meet, or even just to break in.

And in the meantime, I think the only other thing to do is to make it really, REALLY clear that being an assistant isn’t a gateway to becoming a writer anymore. It’s purely a networking tool at this point, and you should use it to build up connections with supportive writers, then get out and find something that pays better with less hours so you can hone your craft (unless, of course, you are lucky enough to land a boss who actually will lift you up). And, just to note from my own job search over the past few months, almost everything pays better for less hours outside of the entertainment industry.

One more thing that I really think assistants need, and I wish that the WGA or even IATSE offered, was a course on financial literacy. I know this isn’t something that’s a problem specific to assistants, or even to this industry, but it’s something I think every assistant would really benefit from, and it would give them more capability to walk away from bad situations, rather than staying because they need the money.

I think the biggest takeaway I’ve gotten from becoming financially literate is that you don’t need a lot of money to learn how to better manage it. I was essentially broke when I started to understand my finances. In fact, I think it’s more important to understand money when you don’t have it. Especially if you’re also trying to pay off debt. That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot and also contemplating in the context of being an assistant.

Sorry for such a novel of an email. After our conversation, I felt there was a lot I had left out that was more useful than what I had actually said, so I hope that this has been of value for your time.

Clarifying scene geography

Follow Up, Formatting, Scriptcast, Words on the page

Based on an earlier Three Page Challenge entry — and with the blessing of writer Andrew McDonald — I’ve posted a [new video](https://youtu.be/uSJw2Hvqo64) in which I revise a scene in real time. Along the way, I discuss how small choices on the page can help (or hurt) a reader’s ability to understand where characters are and what’s happening.

As a fun bonus, Andrew has also filmed a [demo version](https://youtu.be/s7_z3wbhVcE) of his vision.

Feature Residuals and the Mystery of SVOD

Film Industry, Follow Up, WGA

Following up on my earlier post, here’s an update on Aladdin’s residuals.

Let’s look at the breakdown for 2020 Q3:

Re-Use Market Amount
Basic Cable $1,536
Foreign Free TV $8,071
Home Video/DVD $11,161
Pay TV $76,687
New Media — EST $11,134
New Media — SVOD $222,496
TOTAL $331,086

Note that these are total writer residuals. As Aladdin’s co-writer, I get half, so I’m simply doubling what I see in my individual residuals report.

The first four categories are pretty self-explanatory. You can find more information about them in the WGA’s residuals survival guide.

New Media — EST stands for Electronic Sell-Through. This is when a customer purchases a download, which they then own forever. If you buy a movie for $19.99 on iTunes, that’s an EST. It’s the digital equivalent of someone purchasing a DVD at Target. The residual is calculated as 0.36% of the company’s accountable receipts.

The final category is a little confusing. Even after serving on the negotiating committee for the last MBA, I ended up emailing a colleague at the Guild for clarification.

New Media — SVOD combines very two different ideas. The full title for this category should really be something like New Media — Rental and SVOD. ((And even that’s not complete: this category also includes “Premium VOD,” which hasn’t really been a thing but might become more important.))

Rental is what you think. If you’ve ever paid $1.99 for a movie on iTunes and had 48 hours to watch it, that’s an electronic rental. The residual is calculated at 1.2% of the studio’s accountable receipts.

SVOD stands for Subscription Video on Demand, services like Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu, also referred to as streamers. The residual is calculated as 1.2% of the amount the studio receives for licensing the movie to the service. For example, MGM might license an old James Bond movie to Amazon Prime for 12 months. The screenwriter would get a residual based off the price MGM was able to charge.

In the case of Aladdin, it’s available exclusively on Disney+. Disney is never going to license it to Netflix or Peacock or Amazon Prime. So any fee Disney-the-studio is charging Disney-the-streamer is really just numbers on a spreadsheet. They’re the same company.

Now you’re asking: Wait, if this residual is 1.2% of a made-up number, how do you know it’s a fair price?

Self-dealing is always a concern, and has long been an issue in television. My colleague at the Guild writes:

When that happens the MBA requires the company to impute a license fee based on comparable pictures. This is an issue happening across all the streamers and is one of our most important enforcement efforts.

For 2020 Q3, this lone residual was worth nearly a quarter of million dollars for Aladdin. It’s both hugely important and largely opaque.

I don’t have a breakdown to show how much of this line item came from rental versus the imputed license fee, but it’s something I’ll be watching closely in the years ahead.

Working as a freelance reader

Film Industry, First Person, Follow Up

*On [this week’s Scriptnotes](https://johnaugust.com/2020/readers), we talked about professional readers and the challenge of making a living as a freelancer. We got several great emails from listeners, like this one from “Zeke.”*

—

Like most people outside LA, I had no idea that people are actually getting paid to read scripts or that coverage even existed. That changed when I took a story analysis course that specifically taught us how to read, analyze, and write professional coverage.

From there I started doing unpaid reading at a couple of places around town as an intern and with the Austin Film Festival. My first paying gigs were with some popular script competitions such as Screencraft and obscure ones such as the Canadian Wildsound. The pay ranged from decent ($30-$40 a script) to downright embarrassing ($15 per script).

My first “real” reading for a company was Paradigm talent agency, and then UTA, who pay more but also require more extensive work (additional character breakdown, etc.). From there, and for the past few years, I’ve been focusing on reading for production companies and, most recently, for premium cable and streamers.

Consistency is the bane of the freelance reader’s existence. I always make sure I’m reading for at least 4-5 places simultaneously, and even then, there are slow weeks with little to no work (especially around the holidays). As for rates, I started with lower rates and had to fight for raises. And that’s a big issue: unless you push the companies to pay more and ask more than a few times, you will stay at the same rate you started with years earlier. I know that for a fact by asking other readers who just didn’t know they could ask for more money.

Being a reader for multiple companies, I have to be on call essentially all the time, including nights and weekends. For example, just this week, I got a request to read a script at 11 PM on a weekday, and the requested turnaround was for the following morning. This is not a rare incident.

Technically, you don’t have to accept the work. If you turn down one script or one book, maybe it won’t change much. But the second time you do it, you risk losing the gig with that company, no matter how good your working relationship is with them. Needless to say, sick or vacation days do not exist. I go to Israel every year to visit family, and I work from there as well. Again, I was never forced to do so, but I have no choice since this is my main source of income.

As for the union, we’ve been having a discourse about organizing as freelance readers, but it’s still quite vague on what steps we could take. A union reading job is much-coveted since it not only provides you with stability, but also a respectable salary, excellent health insurance, and paid days off. I would note that Netflix is probably the company that offers the best pay and terms of all non-union companies who work with freelancer readers.

Finally, I believe that a major problem in this field is the fact that many of us, including veteran story analysts at the studios, often feel somewhat inconsequential. Intellectually, we know this work is essential to the development process of any production company/studio/agency. But it doesn’t often feel that way. And that problem translates to everything else: if readers don’t respect themselves, why should companies?

It’s hard to convince employers to offer better rates or better conditions when most places in town use assistants or interns to read their projects. No matter how good a given reader might be, free labor is hard to compete with.