Hey, everyone--

David Young, Executive Director of the Writers Guild West, just sent this email to members.  It's got some great updates and information on what's happened in the months since last year's writers strike... thought you'd find it interesting and informative (also, it copies and pastes funny, so my apologies for the weird layout...

February 27, 2009

Dear WGAW Member: One year ago this week an overwhelming majority of the WGA membership voted in favor of ratifying a new three-year contract. Today there is a concerted effort underway by the AMPTP and some in the press to minimize the success of our strike, calling it “unnecessary” and “self-destructive.” I’d like to set the record straight. Our current contract was the result of a months-long effort to negotiate in good faith with the companies, who unfortunately forced us into a 100-day strike. The struggle was marked by a high degree of unity among writers — television and screen, broadcast and cable, blockbusters and indie film. Thousands of you marched, picketed and blogged, and won the solidarity and support of union members, fans and the general public, in the US and around the world. We didn’t achieve everything we wanted – we never do – but we achieved our most important objectives, something we hadn’t done for decades. Over the past 20-plus years the companies have tried to use every important development in the industry – be it distribution technology or reuse method – to weaken our strategic and financial position. A difficult strike in 1985 led to a rollback on home video. This has never been corrected and has cost writers about $1.5 billion in lost residual income. We could not get global jurisdiction of scripted programming on basic cable, and to this day we are still fighting with the companies to cover many cable shows. Genres like reality and animation, where the WGA lacks coverage, have grown into a large portion of the worldwide market and are now significant areas of non-Guild production. This difficult history has tended to diminish the power of writers, both economically and creatively, as control of the industry has concentrated in the hands of a few AMPTP companies who bargain hard and bargain together. And the other Hollywood guilds and unions have suffered the same fate. All this set the stage for our negotiations in 2007. After 20 years of being told, misleadingly, that the studios would give us our fair share once any new market developed, writers decided to take a stand for what they deserved. While the studios demanded that we choose between a meaningless “study” of New Media or the gutting of our livelihoods through profit-based residuals, our Negotiating Committee stuck to three fundamental goals: Jurisdiction over original New Media production Good residuals for reuse of traditional TV and film product on the Internet: "If they get paid, we get paid" Access to New Media contracts as well as language requiring fair market value for related party transactions In the end, we got all three. Below is a comparison of the AMPTP positions on key issues on two dates: the day we struck and the day we made the deal. Keep in mind that when the AMPTP broke off negotiations with us on December 7th they had made virtually no changes to their November 4th offer. There is no doubt the AMPTP knew the importance of these issues, and they incurred real pain in a fruitless attempt to apply their formulas of the past 20 years to new media. Key Contract Terms Before and After the Strike                         November 4 AMPTP offer February 9 final deal Internet ad-supported streaming – in the first year of the life of a television program Free for 6 weeks; 1.2% of producer’s gross thereafter (equal to 0.24% of distributor’s gross) Free for 17 or 24 days; 3% of applicable minimum; switches for network prime time in the third year of the contract to 2% of distributor’s gross Internet ad-supported streaming – after the first year of the life of a program 1.2% of producer’s gross 2.0% of distributor’s gross Internet ad-supported streaming feature films No residual offered = zero 1.2% of distributor's gross Electronic Sell-Through (Download to Own) DVD rates (0.3% and 0.36% of distributor’s gross) 0.65% and 0.7% of distributor’s gross (though the companies are now reneging on covering library product with these negotiated rates) Internet Download Rentals 1.2% of distributor’s gross 1.2% of distributor’s gross Fair Market Value test Same as 2001 contract Enhanced test for related-party transactions Inspection of New Media Deals and Activity reports None Rights for quarterly inspections of unredacted company records Promotional use in new media Free, however they define it, including ad-supported streaming of complete programs Clips only are free and only with clearly promotional purpose Made-for-New-Media Jurisdiction over dramatic forms only if derived from MBA-covered scripted programs; excludes original, comedy-variety, serials, etc. Jurisdiction over all New Media programs; terms and conditions applied to all but the lowest-budgeted productions, only when done by non-professional writers Creator’s rights (“Separated” Rights) None TV Separated Rights adapted to New Media             As the companies begin producing original product for the Internet, they must provide coverage for WGA members or non-members who are working on projects with significant budgets. If made-for New Media replaces old media or the companies try to use it as a “pilot sandbox,” it’s covered. The victory of jurisdiction over New Media was hard fought because the companies had hoped to keep that production non-Guild. While original New Media content is still in the early stages of development, the establishment of WGA jurisdiction is essential. The most important battles in American labor history, including the famous GM sit-down strike of 1937, were over this issue: jurisdiction. We won this battle. On reuse, the residuals formulas we negotiated will allow writers to benefit in the expansion of new media as a secondary market for television and feature films. Our agreement allows the companies to experiment with different forms of content delivery, but not at the expense of writers. We also won the right to inspect the New Media deals the companies are making, including distribution statements and usage data. Transactions between related companies must meet the fair market value standard of reasonableness. These are important tools for the enforcement of our agreement and for understanding the companies’ evolving business models. This is a significant inroad into the companies’ self-dealing, ever. Now, does this mean that the strike created huge, immediate gains for writers? Of course not. We knew and the companies knew we were fighting for the future, for the day when the Internet replaces TV and dominates media consumption. Writers fought to avoid a repetition of recent history wherein we are told to wait to get our share until the new business model develops, then that share never comes. Everything we’ve seen since, be it Joss Whedon’s online hit Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, the decision by CBS to purchase CNET for 1.8 billion dollars, or Fox/NBC’s hulu.com, tells us that we were right and that the companies know it. Furthermore, we improved the DGA deal in significant ways: The DGA won EST at 0.65 and 0.7% only for movies and TV first released in 2008. The WGA won EST at 0.65% and 0.7% for our entire library of product – although the companies are trying to renege on this, forcing us to seek arbitration. The DGA won only a small raise in the third year of streaming. The WGA, for the first time ever, won a formula by which the writer will be paid 2% of Distributors Gross in the third year of streaming. The DGA sunsetted all New Media provisions in their contract. WGA accepted no such sunset clause – we don’t want to start from zero in these hard fought areas when we go back to the bargaining table in 2011. In the final two days of negotiations WGA won protection of our separated rights in New Media. In early 2007 WGAW President Patric Verrone and I sat down with Ron Moore, developer of Battlestar Galactica, who told us that this negotiation was simple. He wrote: In my opinion, nothing is as important as the issues surrounding digital delivery of content.  Nothing.  In the not so distant future, literally every piece of work ever done by the Guild will be available digitally.  The systems and methods of delivery will vary and change, but the central truth is that all our work is going to be converted to ones and zeroes and sent to the consumer.  We have to have a very clear, very solid method of tracking and being compensated for any and all work that is delivered in this way, whether it was originally created for TV or film or directly for digital distribution.  To me, it is a strike issue. He was right. These were strike issues. Whatever their differences, our members knew he was right. We struck over these issues and won. There is important work left to be done in future negotiations. There are windows to be closed in streaming, and budget thresholds for jurisdiction in original New Media to be eliminated. Nor can we just sit back and watch the checks roll in. The companies have been incredibly slow in reporting and paying on New Media, and we are already filing claims and taking other steps to enforce our agreement. 2008 was a tough year for everybody. The strike meant a quarter of lost earnings, and then the economy went into a severe recession followed quickly by a collapse in the financial markets. These events have caused hardship and loss of income for many people, and writers are no exception. But these difficulties don’t change the fact that writers together achieved gains that will stand the test of time.  Next time we very much hope there will be no need to strike. We believe we’ve earned a large measure of new respect from the companies and that next time both sides can bargain successfully without a strike. We will reach out to industry leaders and company CEOs and make every effort to reach a fair and reasonable agreement. But make no mistake: should the companies choose to test us, we’ll be prepared, again. Unfortunately – and responsibility for this sits squarely on the shoulders of the companies – it seems every important advance made by entertainment unions, including pension and health, credits, residuals and jurisdiction over New Media, has required a strike by either the WGA or SAG. We salute SAG’s current effort to resist the AMPTP pushing their expiration date back to June of 2012. The AMPTP is determined to continue their time-tested strategy of “divide and conquer”. We are determined to end that practice by building the unity of the entertainment unions on the basis of our common interests. We are doing everything we possibly can to hasten the day when, like the companies, multiple entertainment unions can sit down and bargain as one.  Finally, I would like to thank all our members and all those friends and members of other unions who stood in solidarity with us. They helped give us the strength to persevere through the months of sacrifice and struggle. It was a historic event, one that will not be soon forgotten, and we can all feel proud of our great effort and achievement. David Young WGAW Executive Director

Hey, writers--

Next week, the Writers Guild of America is hosting a rally outside American Idol to support the Idol writers who are not getting health care, pension, or union coverage... which is all of them.  Obviously, the WGA has been very active in trying to unionize reality TV, and since American Idol is the biggest reality show in the history of television, this rally is an important event!  Hopefully, if we can convince American Idol to go Guild, other shows will follow.

Also... I'll be speaking at the Rally!  So come by... support the cause... say hello... and hey-- if you're lucky-- maybe you can catch a glimpse of Simon or Paula.

Here's the official WGA press release with all the information... hope to see you there!


                     Support American Idol Workers!

In 2008, the American Idol Truth Tour traveled across the country to expose the poor working conditions for writers and other workers on American Idol.

On Wednesday February 18, the Truth Tour comes to:

CBS TV CITY
7800 Beverly Blvd, LA 90036
Genesee Gate
 
Rally & picket begins 3:30 pm SHARP

American Idol continues to be a ratings juggernaut, raking in huge profits for FremantleMedia, the multinational corporation that produces AI and other popular shows like America’s Got Talent, Million Dollar Password, Family Feud, and The Price Is Right. Despite FremantleMedia’s success, the corporation does not provide the writers who contribute to the success of these shows necessities like health care and pension!

As American Idol broadcasts live on Feb. 18th, join reality and game show writers, along with the Teamsters, Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice, Professional Musicians Local 47 and other community supporters outside CBS TV City to demand that FremantleMedia treat its writers with respect!

To RSVP, please email reality@wga.org.

For more information call Trish Albert at 323.782.4185 or Laura Watson at 323.782.4747 or go to www.truthaboutfremantle.com.

Hey, screenwriters—

We’ve been chatting with Ellen Besen, an accomplished animator and author of the great new book, Animation Unleashed: 100 Principles Every Animator, Comic Book Writers, Filmmakers, Video Artist, and Game Developer Should Know.

Last time, we talked about creative principles of animation.  Today, we’ll learn the rules of breaking into the industry as a young animator…


ME:  LET’S TALK ABOUT BREAKING INTO ANIMATION.  IF I WANTED WRITE FOR TV OR FILM, I’D WRITE A SCRIPT.  IF I WANTED TO BE A DIRECTOR, I’D DIRECT A SHORT.  AS AN ANIMATOR, WHAT PRACTICAL TOOLS DO I NEED TO BREAK INTO THE INDUSTRY?  JUST SAMPLE DRAWINGS?  ANYTHING ELSE?

ELLEN:  Certainly, if you want to be an animated script-writer, you come up with sample scripts.  Fortunately—even more so in some ways than live action—the festival circuit; if you can put a film together, it’s an open door to enter, regardless of whether you’re a first-timer or have been animating for forty years.  

The field is in flux in some ways; there was a fairly long stage before the full advent of the Internet where if you wanted to be in the industry, you had to get into a school.  It’s very hard now to get a full-scale industry job.  If you want to be a Disney animator [or anything commercial], it’s very hard now without getting into a decent school.  The key, of course, is to know a decent school from a fly-by-night school.  

Animation is a grunt business in that there is no getting away from having to work very hard.  I’m saying this because there are quite a few schools that cater to the person who says, “If I can just get my hands on the equipment, I can fool around, figure it out, and put something together.”  The person like that is never going to do well.  You have to be willing to take direction.  It’s an attitude.  

I’ve done workshops that are a mix of actors and animators.  [With the] actors you had to coach everything, and be careful… they’re delicate in how they feel about stuff.  But with animators, you can be blunt, dump it on the table.  It’s never meant personally… it’s about the work.  That’s the first thing.  You have to have the right attitude, love the field, be willing to work incredibly hard.

It still doesn’t hurt to know how to draw, even if you’re working digitally.  In another generation, that may change, but at this point, knowledge of the feeling of pencil on paper, and being able to translate from the real, three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional drawing [is important].  There’s some primary learning that happens in there.  The ability to do good quality life drawing… how the body looks, how it functions, not just for structure, but how structure translates into movement… those are all foundational skills people still find helpful and [employers] are still looking for.  

So get into life drawing classes… not just drawing from photographs.  That’s a different skill altogether because the photograph does the translation for you, which is why it’s so much easier to copy.  You have to build up the ability to see the three-dimensional and how it translates onto a piece of paper.

The studying of action [and] learning the nature of good character design are important skills.  I see a lot of bad design these days—overly busy.  

You have to understand, for example, that when you’re… designing an illustration or a comic book, that frame you’re drawing is the final piece and how you are arranging it on the page is the final thing.  That’s why comic book artists can do such wonderful things with their page layouts… in terms of how they ask readers to trace their thoughts around the page and follow the story.  In animation, you have very little choice.  It WILL be one frame replacing another on the screen; it’s the nature of the medium.  So you have to build things for movement.  You have to build things for that one frame they’ll see at any given moment.  If you can’t make that leap into that understanding, you’ll get very confused when you try to figure what you should be doing in preparation.  So the way characters are designed directly affects how they moved.  

When they first were doing TV specials with the Peanuts characters… they were initially trying to make them like three-dimensional characters.  When their head would turn from right to left, they tried to give it full rotation like a real head, with three-quarter angles… and it looked awful, freakish.  The animators realized if you treated the head like a ball, with full three dimensions, you lost the sense of the characters; they changed too much.  You couldn’t do a three-quarter angle on a character’s face; it didn’t look like a character anymore.  There was something key to the nature of this environment that wouldn’t allow it to go there.  So they had treat [the Peanuts’ heads] like coins, so they were flat.  They could go from the front view, to the profile, to the front view and the head would flip around… and that actually looked like the characters.  That was a design element; they worked better as if they were made of paper… if they were thin, rather than a three-dimensional character.  So [you have to have] awareness of designing the character, knowing how they’d have to perform in the story, and knowing what kind of feeling you want.

Do you want realism, a Disney style of classical feeling?  Or do you want something that deliberately looks abstract?

Did you ever see The Simpsons special where they suddenly threw them into the three-dimensional world?  It was hilarious.  It was one of their early ones from ‘93, ‘94, something like that.  A couple guys who had worked on the CG part of it came to the Ottawa Animation Festival a couple years later and showed footage; they said it was really, really hard to make Homer three-dimensional.  The characters didn’t translate that easily.  He’s a crazy looking character anyway, but in three dimensions he was hideous.

Well, those are design problems you must anticipate in how you design the character.  Learning to have that awareness is critical.  Everything affects your final outcome, down to that final detail.  

Animators tend to be extreme detail people with that kind of analysis. It’s a great place for disassociated people.  You’re an actor who has to be able to act something spontaneously, then step back into someone who watches the action, then break it down into it’s tiniest component parts and anticipate all the problems.  Then the artist kicks in to take that analysis and recreate it as drawings of what might not even be a human; your character [might be] an animal or a chair.  So you have to translate the performance onto this other object!  Great animators have three or four skills going on—it’s amazing to me.


I ALWAYS TELL PEOPLE THAT THE BEST WAY TO BEGIN A CAREER IN ENTERTAINMENT—AND YOU TOUCHED ON THIS-- IS TO START AT THE BOTTOM AND WORK YOUR WAY UP.  HOW DO YOU DO THAT IN ANIMATION?  HOW DO YOU TAKE THE FIRST STEPS IN AN ANIMATION CAREER?

You can come up through the production line, which is where most people are going to get work.  It’s hard work, but if you love it, you love it… and it’s more stable than it used to be.  It can be up and down, but the advent of specialty stations has been wonderful for animation.  

The other way you go is totally as an individual, independent filmmaker with their own style.  As long as you can make the thing move, there are a million ways to make the stuff work.  There’s no limit on how many designs, as long as you come up with something that integrates properly.  The nature of [“Animation Unleashed” is that the principles can be applied to any style of animation, it doesn’t matter what technique you’re using.  If you can get a coherent piece together, make a film.  Animation, especially with digital stuff, is so cheap now.  You can get an application and do the whole thing from beginning to end, and if it’s good enough, if it looks good on the screen, put it on the Internet or send it to a festival.  You can break in that way as well… and go to a commercial career.

The main thing is: get into a school, get your portfolio, and gather those commercial skills.  [Or] if you feel you don’t fit—if you don’t like to follow those rules, if you hate being a team player, if you hate hearing blunt instruction on how to do things—then it’s not the field for you.  

[Or if you have a genuinely] quirky drawing style, point of view... make a film.  If you need to take courses to understand how to make a film, do that.  If you can throw it together out of your own abilities, do that, too.  But make a statement and get it out there.  

Either of those routes, depending on your talents, can get you into the field these days.


IN THE WORLD OF TELEVISION, THERE’S A VERY SPECIFIC, STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS TO BECOMING A WRITER.  YOU BEGIN AS A P.A., MAKING COPIES… THEN YOU BECOME  THE P.A. FOR A WRITING STAFF... THEN A WRITER’S ASSISTANT… THEN, HOPEFULLY, AN ACTUAL WRITER ON THE STAFF.  

HOW DOES THAT PATH WORK IN ANIMATION?  IMAGINE I’VE JUST GRADUATED FROM ANIMATION SCHOOL AND STEPPED INTO THE REAL WORLD.  WHAT’S MY FIRST JOB… AND THE NEXT STEPS AFTER THAT?

Basically, we’re talking about the person who wants to go into commercial production, probably at a studio, big or small.  The first thing: you’ve got a great portfolio.  You’ve used your time in school to get a great reel.  You can show you can animate.  You have a great portfolio that shows a variety of other skills you can do.  

There are two different [pieces of knowledge] that are useful to have.  One is where your initial skills are, an awareness of where they fit with the industry; and the other is where you WANT to be. Sometimes those things are quite different.  

In the old days it was easy.  You could go in and be a cell painter.  Many people started as cell painters and got the animators to look over their shoulders.  [Then, they would take] home a few drawings, become the animators’ assistant, et cetera.  It’s tougher these days.  

One thing people have to realize is—for better or worse—quite a lot of animation is done overseas.  

More has come home with digital stuff, which has been good… but… there was a long period—certainly through the 80’s and much of the 90’s (pre-digital)—where what was happening with a lot of TV work and feature work [was they] would do all the pre-production here, but actual animating, coloring, shooting, even final background work was done in places like Korea, India, China.  There are actually giant factory-like studios in the Far East and various countries where they churn this stuff out.  [They] can do a three-week turnaround on a half-hour film, which is otherwise unthinkable.  That’s allowed certain things to happen, but for many years it meant you couldn’t really animate here; you’d do pre- or post-production, but you couldn’t actually do production.  Digital has shifted that and a lot of people are getting to animate again, which is a good thing, but… it may go overseas again.  

So if you’re a CG animator here, you can actually be animating.  But a lot of the work is pre-production, so the kinds of jobs that are possible are: you could start as an assistant animator, which means you’re working down the line, maybe directly with an animator.  It might be with more of a breakdown team, depending on the level of animation you’re doing.  You could be working as a colorist. You could be in the layout department, helping to design elements, or doing cleanup of someone else’s designs.  You could be in production, working with whoever is managing the whole project, filing, keeping track of numbers.  Or you are working in a smaller studio, assisting with flash animation.

[Also very important:] storyboarding.  Storyboarding is an art and there’s always a shortage of people who can do it.  If you’re a person who can lay down ideas… storyboard in animation is much more structured than in live action.  It is literally the whole structure of the film; it’s every shot, every action in that shot, any indication to what the key sounds will be, editing decisions, camera moves.  In real, full-scale animation storyboards, everything is indicated, everything is pre-planned.  They may make changes as they go along, but this is a starting point.  You look for a very tight shooting ratio at the other end, so basically you’ve pre-edited the film to a large extent.  And people who can churn out small accurate drawings, getting the camera angle right, are very valuable.

TO BE CONTINUED…