John August

Film Industry

No, really, everything is fine.

Film Industry

News from [SAG](http://www.sag.org/press-releases/january-13-2009/screen-actors-guild-national-board-meeting-adjourns-without-actions):

Los Angeles, (January 13, 2009) — SAG National President Alan Rosenberg sent the following message to Screen Actors Guild national board members and alternates today:

“At the end of the National Board plenary meeting this afternoon, a group of board members submitted a document to the Guild that purports to deal with the employment of the National Executive Director and the continuing approach to negotiations. After analyzing the document, Screen Actors Guild’s in-house and outside counsel have concluded that the document does not constitute a valid written assent, for several reasons, including a lack of sufficient signatures and the absence of any language on the document demonstrating the intent of the signers to grant their assent to the proposal. Guild National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Doug Allen and the National Television and Theatrical Contract Negotiating Committee remain committed to advancing the cause of actors and our crucial contract negotiations.”

No substantive actions were taken by the Guild’s national board, which met at SAG’s national headquarters January 12 and 13 for almost 30 hours straight.

No mailing date has been set for the previously approved TV/Theatrical strike authorization referendum.

We have no further comment.

I don’t want to do something I like for thirty hours straight. Go to bed, everyone. Sleep off the crazy and remember that we love you.

Cablevision and the infinite TiVo

Film Industry, Television, WGA

This morning, the Supreme Court asked the Justice Department to weigh in on a service Cablevision hopes to introduce. It’s an issue every screenwriter (or TV viewer) should be watching closely, because it could have a huge impact on the entertainment industry.

The case is called Cable News Network vs. CSC Holdings. The case made it to the Supreme Court after a U.S. Appeals court reversed a lower court’s decision. The case will probably end up back at the Supreme Court this fall.

The issue is deceptively straightforward: Cablevision wants to offer its customers a “remote storage digital video recorder.”

At first blush, this seems pretty unobjectionable. Under current U.S. law, it’s legal for a consumer to record television programs for later viewing. This is considered time-shifting, and was first made possible by the VCR. Conventional DVRs are high-tech cousins to VCRs, with a hard drive replacing the videotape. In the U.S., many cable and satellite companies provide boxes that include DVR functionality, generally for an additionally monthly fee.

Cablevision wants to offer DVR as a service instead of a device. Rather than recording 30 Rock on the box attached to your TV, the show will be recorded at Cablevision’s headquarters. Then, when you want to watch it, Cablevision will send the show to your television. If it works right, it should feel just like a normal DVR. Only without the cost of the DVR.

If Cablevision offers this service, I think it will be very successful. Less hardware means less things to break, and the service could presumably send a show to any TV in the house. (Some conventional DVRs can do that, but it’s often a hassle.) Plus, storage scales very well. Cablevision could offer a user much more recording space than a conventional DVR.

In fact, Cablevision could offer unlimited storage. And that’s where it gets dangerous.

Say Mary Jones sets her Cablevision RS-DVR to record 30 Rock. So does Bob Smith. Cablevision only needs to record it once. They can send the bits to Mary or Bob whenever one of them asks for it. ((Alternately, Cablevision could partition drives so that every customer has a certain number of gigabtytes (terabytes? petabytes?) of storage, and record each show in that partition just like a conventional DVR. But this is tremendously inefficient, and nearly impossible to audit.))

Given that Cablevision has more than four million customers, it’s a fair bet that at least one of their customers would be interested in any given show, so it makes sense for Cablevision to record and catalog every channel it distributes, 24/7/365.

Conventional DVRs only record what you ask them to record, with some modifiers, such as “new episodes of The Simpsons,” or “movies with Steven Seagal.” So for Cablevision’s service to work like a conventional DVR, it should only offer you programs you specifically chose to record. No fair waking up Friday and asking for last night’s The Office.

But wait. Cablevision is already recording every show. Why don’t they just offer a “Record Everything” option?

Once they offer you the choice to record everything, you suddenly have the ability to watch any show broadcast since you signed on to the service. This is transformative, a [Wayback Machine](http://archive.org) for television.

It would also destroy television as we know it.

Here’s where I put in my obligatory, “I’m no Luddite” disclaimer. I was the first person I know to have a DVR (the original ReplayTV), and consider myself highly familiar with the legal and less-legal options for watching video on computers and TV. As a consumer and geek, I would love to have a service like Cablevision’s. But I don’t think Cablevision should be allowed to do it their way.

Cablevision’s RS-DVR is back-door video-on-demand. They’re trying to offer the networks’ output to their customers on their own temrs, without paying any additional fees.

But it’s worse than that.

A service like Cablevision’s makes reruns absurd. Why would anyone watch a rerun of Desperate Housewives when it’s always been available for free on the RS-DVR? And it’s not just television shows that are affected. In a Cablevision universe, a feature film loses all its television value the first time it’s shown. Why would HBO want to show Slumdog Millionaire more than once, considering everyone who could ever want to see it would have it available for free in perpetuity via Cablevision?

For that matter, why buy a DVD, or spend $9.99 to buy a movie through iTunes when that same film is sitting on your (virtual) DVR?

Without reruns and ancillary markets (like DVDs and iTunes), there are no residuals, so that’s obviously a concern for writers.

But it’s worse than that.

*Without reruns and ancillary markets, there are no feature films and no scripted television.* Outside of lower-cost reality programming, it is simply not profitable to make a movie or TV show that can only be shown theatrically, or once on television. Very, very few movies are profitable in their theatrical release. Most make their money on video and television, which would largely be irrelevant with services like Cablevision’s. A movie studio could decide to never permit their films be shown on any station carried by Cablevision. For television, that’s not an option.

So what should happen?

The Supreme Court should rule that copyright holders (the studios, in this case) retain the right to profit from the distribution of their work for a given period of time. Yes, copyright law is frustrating, and corporations routinely abuse their authority through DMCA and endless extensions. Generally, the studios are the bad guys, so it’s hard to be on their side. But if they’re not getting paid, nobody’s getting paid. And if nobody’s getting paid, there is no industry.

The studios should then negotiate with Cablevision and all the other cable and satellite providers to roll out a system that calls this service what it really is: video-on-demand. A consumer should be able to watch (or record in their home) an episode when it’s first broadcast, or get it through VOD for a fee. That fee should be low, cheap enough to make it an appealing alternative to piracy.

And studios should continue to support Hulu, iTunes and all the other competing services. Television will change, and it will probably resemble something like what Cablevision is trying to do. But it needs to keep paying the people who make the shows, both corporations and individuals. Or there’s no television left.

Why is joining the WGA mandatory?

Film Industry, QandA, WGA

questionmarkWhy is it mandatory that you have to join the WGA when you sell a script? Why can’t you just go on about doing your own thing?

— Ethan Gentzsch

Because if it weren’t mandatory, studios would pressure writers not to join.

That seems like too simple of an answer, but it makes sense if you think it through. Let’s say a studio reads a script it wants to buy. The writer isn’t a member of the WGA. If the writer weren’t required to join the union, the studio could save a lot of money and hassle.

* It could pay less than minimums.
* It wouldn’t have to pay into the health plan.
* It wouldn’t have to pay into the pension plan.
* It wouldn’t have to pay residuals.
* It could decide which name would be listed for “written by.”

Given these advantages, a studio would certainly prefer if the writer weren’t WGA, and could make purchase of the script contingent on the writer agreeing not to join the WGA. ((I’m certain this is illegal under labor law, but we’re playing hypotheticals here.))

If it were optional, the studio would make sure you didn’t take that option. So making it mandatory protects incoming writers as much as established writers.

[Ted Elliott](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0254645/) and [Craig Mazin](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0563301/) are always the guys with the most thorough answers regarding anything involving entertainment guild law, so I won’t be surprised if they answer this same question better over at [Artful Writer](http://artfulwriter.com). But I’m here and handy, so I can least talk you through the exceptions.

There are some studios and production companies that are not signatories to the WGA. They can only hire non-WGA writers. I know some fledgling writers who’ve written entire scripts for $5,000 — which might be okay given their needs and goals. Likewise, feature animation is not typically covered by the guild, including the animated projects I’ve written (Titan A.E. and Corpse Bride). As a WGA writer, I’m allowed to work on them, but I don’t get any of the benefits of the guild, such as residuals.

While you can’t choose whether to join the WGA, a screenwriter can choose to effectively quit the guild by going fi-core. “Financial Core” status means you’re freed of most of the obligations of membership, but also lose your vote, and frankly the goodwill of many fellow writers. It’s very rare someone chooses to go fi-core, and usually involves hyphenates (writer-directors, writer-producers) who chafe against rules or decisions.

As far as “doing your own thing,” it’s important to understand that writers can choose to work completely outside the system. Many of the films at Sundance are written by writers with no connection to Hollywood or the WGA. The Guild has indie contracts that can offer some protections, but they’re optional. Likewise, international productions are largely outside the auspices of guilds and unions. But in my experience, when I meet international screenwriters they’re always wishing they could have an organization with the clout of the WGA. It’s very hard for a single screenwriter to achieve meaningful leverage with employers.

Charlie Brown, advertising, and whatever comes after postmodernism

Film Industry, Meta, Video

I went to undergrad hoping for a career in advertising. This video reminds me why I’m happy I bailed:

It also reminds me of my junior-year class in postmodernism, in which we spent at least half the semester trying to arrive at a definition for the term — and never really got one. This video certainly has aspects of what we were seeking. It appropriates familiar cultural elements (The Charlie Brown Christmas Special) for use in unexpected contexts (advertising), much the way Michael Graves used the Disney dwarfs to hold up the roof of the [Team Disney building](http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/gravesdisney/disney.html). And in both cases, the project doesn’t really make sense unless you’re familiar with what it’s playing off. In this case, Lucy isn’t Lucy and Linus isn’t Linus, but the joke doesn’t work unless you understand who they usually are.

But I’d argue that the video also represents more than whatever postmodernism is or was. It’s the kind of thing you can’t imagine existing without YouTube. While the technology to make it could exist independently of internet distribution, the idea of doing it feels net-dependent. If Ernie doing M.O.P. is the quintessential video mash-up —

— then The Charlie Brown Ad Agency is its close kin. A mix-in, maybe. And it exists in the same metaverse as Beyoncé’s [Single Ladies video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m1EFMoRFvY), which remakes a mash-up ([Walk It Out Fosse](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8iLBQFeX4c)).

I offer these observations without any clear idea about what it means for screenwriting, but you can look at many current films through this lens. The Dark Knight is less a Batman movie than a Big Serious Movie with Batman mixed in. Twilight isn’t a vampire story. It’s a teen girl fantasy with a small thread of vampirism — not even real vampires, but something almost wholly different — woven in.

And I think that’s what our books and movies are going to be for a while: Aliens vs. Predator vs. Mr. Magoo. Our cultural world is vast and ephemeral, so we look for familiar icons that we can recall and repurpose. We want to know just what we’re getting, yet still be surprised. We’re toddlers that way.