Writers Guild Members Look to Internet Distribution

stevedcc writes "The Guardian is running an article about members of the Writer's Guild, still on strike, creating their own ventures to deliver content over the internet. The intention is to get their work to consumers while bypassing the movie studios. Their effort will include actors and directors, and it is not the first step they have taken to expand their interests during the strike. One particular project is said to include A-list talent, and will be released in roughly 50 daily segments before going to DVD. This is also relevant to the strike because, as the article states, 'at the core of the current dispute is the question of how to reimburse writers for work that is distributed on the internet.'"

The internet and control

[stevedcc (1000313)]

"The internet is a place where they can't maintain control," he said. "They are trying to introduce an old-school control-orientated way of thinking into a system that rejects and repels that tradition of control."

Thank god this writer understands - the studios really donät seem to

Re:The internet and control

[lgw (121541)]

Can't the Writers Guild and the Producers Guild just settle this on the PvP server like gentlemen? Nothing worse than guild drama ...

Re:The internet and control

[Original Replica (908688)]

The idea that they have a union is absurd

Perhaps the idea that the writers wouldn't get the same percentage of compensation for an internet release of their work as they would get for a DVD release of their work, is absurd. You would have never heard about this, except that they do have a union. People who know that their company is heavily dependent on them and yet do not feel treated well at that company, and talk about "screw this I'm gonna go somewhere else" in the breakroom but never do it; they are absurd. One singular worker thinking that their protest march of one is going to change the bottom line hunting of dozens of executive level managers; that is absurd.
That you think that an industry halting is "ludicrous" and that this is something that the studio heads "allow" tells me that you are either: a)wealthy and powerful enough that you actually consider yourself better that those who work for you. b)operate under such a surf's mentality that you think it is wrong to publicly disobey Master.

Re:The internet and control

[hedwards (940851)]

I hate unions, I think they're by and large full of selfish, greedy people that don't give a damn about anybody not in a union. But in this case the union is pretty much dead on. So no, it isn't just "leftist Hollywood limo-liberal crowd" or even mostly, it is just people that believe that doing an honest days work should come with some sort of benefit. I'm sorry if your brand of "conservativism" is lacking in compassion; I'll be sure to lend you some of mine.

The belief that they shouldn't be compensated for any use of their work for which their bosses are being paid is just absurd. The average screen writer makes very little money in the first place, then to deny them any of the profits from redistribution in a digital form on the internet is just stealing.

The media conglomerates make such a big deal about how people distributing copyright works without paying are hurting the artists but guess what, the writers are some of the artists, and the suggestion that I shouldn't download a movie so that the corporations can steal from the writers instead of me is just plain ludicrous.

The average screenwriter makes so little anyways, I don't think that it is unreasonable to expect that they'll get a piece of any additional revenues that are made just because they felt like writing for the movies/TV or whatever. Because it's awfully hard to come up with quality programming if nobody writes it. I for one would not want to watch only improv and reality programming all day everyday, I'd cancel my satellite, sell my tv and never watch the idiot box again.

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[fictionpuss (1136565)]

Like Radiohead? Seriously though, back up your claims!

Studios arent obsolete

[jorghis (1000092)]

Hmm, so all the writers need is actors, stagehands, a set, and all the other stuff required to produce a movie and they can make it and distribute it online. Maybe they could organize all these things together and call it a "production company". Thatll show those studios!

This isnt the end of studios, those amatuerish videos on YouTube may be entertaining but you will still need large organizations to produce anything complex. The only thing that will change is that some of the marketing and sales may be different.

Re:Studios arent obsolete

[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

Well, writers could feasibly bypass the studios by doing Red-vs-Blue type movies (forget the name for that type of animation). Presumably there's a software package more specifically tailored for this kind of movie-making so you don't have to use all kinds of workarounds?

Re:Studios arent obsolete

[The Master Control P (655590)]

You mean machinima?

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[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

Ah yes, that. Now, the name of the open source software package that's as easy to use as Halo for showing people moving around, but much more extensible?

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[RobertLTux (260313)]

big hint time to play "Will it Blend??" you need
1 a target
2 ????
3 a Camera

Re:Studios arent obsolete

[bahwi (43111)]

You are 100% correct. But the new studios will not have the ownership, perception of power, and complacency of the old studios. Or at least not as great.

Lots of small indie films that have hit it big have been from small studios or even just groups of people coming together to do it(still takes 10-50 people) but it's doable and has been done before.

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[SW6 (140530)]

You are 100% correct. But the new studios will not have the ownership, perception of power, and complacency of the old studios. Or at least not as great.

You appear to have misspelt "Or at least not yet" there. Power corrupts.

Re:Studios arent obsolete

[Rie Beam (632299)]

The thing is, though, is that while all of those people are necessary for the production of a high-quality product, they are all offshots of the kernel that is the writer's idea. A producer crafts it, the crew helps create it, and distributors help get it out to others, but without that original idea to bloom off of, you're essentially churning out a fake product.

Mind you, this hasn't stopped studios from producing this crap, but still, writers are the heart of the industry. The whole point of this strike is reimbursement for what it is they actually do, whereas the studios apparently seem to feel that, despite being little more than the shiny wrapping for the actual product, the writer's cut isn't as significant.

This is a battle over content versus packaging. I'm not saying that a writer alone can produce something we'd change the channel or file into the theater to see, but that without their help, there's really no chance we'd end up there, anyway.

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[jorghis (1000092)]

Yes, and if you ask the actors guild they will give a line about how their contribution is the most important to a film. If you ask the special effects guys they will say the same thing about how important theirs is. And so on and so forth. At the end of the day if you have X number of dollars to produce a movie you have to divide it up somehow between the different parties. If the writers come along and say they think their effort is worth several times what they are currently paid you either have to g

Re:Studios arent obsolete

[Rie Beam (632299)]

You honestly expect me to believe that the issue here is that the studios aren't make enough money?

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[jorghis (1000092)]

That isnt what I said at all. I said that it costs X number of dollars to produce a movie. You cannot substantially increase everyone's pay without going above X. Therefore you either have to reduce someone else's compensation in order to give someone (the writers) a raise or pass the cost onto consumers. (raise ticket prices) Believe it or not studios do not enjoy massive profit margins that they could use to double everyone's compensation if they wanted to. (as an example viacom enjoys a 13% profit

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[chromatic (9471)]

You cannot substantially increase everyone's pay without going above X. Therefore you either have to reduce someone else's compensation in order to give someone (the writers) a raise or pass the cost onto consumers.

... or find new markets or sources of income, such as DVD sales and Internet distribution.

This raises three questions. First, if (as the argument goes) a DVD boxed set with commentary from the writers and producers and showrunner is worth more than a DVD boxed set without that commentary,

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[Oligonicella (659917)]

I write. Not screen plays, but stories. There is a butt-load more writing to do in a story that is to be delivered in print form than in a screen-play, which is really no more than a guideline for the director. The dialogue, scenes and action can and will change before it's committed. Even event sequences change. Given all that, the screen play writer is no more important than anyone else for a movie.

If you doubt me, pull one up online. There are plenty out there. Read it and then compare to the m

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[wizardforce (1005805)]

but you will still need large organizations to produce anything complex.

nonsense. the only thing big companies are capable of doing is creating a movie that costs 200 million to produce, that doesn't mean it's any more "complex" or even "good" all it means is that it is "expensive." granted most of the videos on you tube are crude to say the least but there are also a good number that are at or better than a lot of what hollywood and big studios produce [which as of late isnt all that hard]

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[jorghis (1000092)]

You cant produce something like Lord of the Rings with a webcam and a youtube account. As long as people are willing to pay 7 bucks for a ticket to see movies like Lord of the Rings there will be a reason for large production companies to exist.

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[wizardforce (1005805)]

You cant produce something like Lord of the Rings with a webcam and a youtube account

I dont care how much money they throw at the problem, if their storyline/plot are bad the movie is BAD. no amount of eye candy and pretty shots are going to fix it. LOTR did well because of the plot not so much because of the effects. take the plot away and you've got a mediocre movie that really isnt worth watching. that being said, money can improve a plot but it can not in its self make a good movie. then there's t

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[IamTheRealMike (537420)]

If you did LotR without the graphics, painted scenery, costumes, epic music and special effects you'd have theatre. There's a reason cinema is way more popular than theatre - these things matter and can really take a story to the next level.

Oh, also I don't agree that if the story is bad a film can't be successful. Look at the first Star Wars movie. The plot was derivative, predictable crap. It was an amazing success because it just had that magical something to it, and awesome special effects.

amatuerish videos on YouTube

[Presto Vivace (882157)]

beats reruns

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[TheMCP (121589)]

This isnt the end of studios, those amatuerish videos on YouTube may be entertaining but you will still need large organizations to produce anything complex. The only thing that will change is that some of the marketing and sales may be different.

I agree, but I think some additional considerations need to be made.

The barrier to entry is much lower today. It used to be that just the cost of a couple cameras and a darkroom and film and chemicals was prohibitive. Now you can get all you need to film a pro qual

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[ducomputergeek (595742)]

The Studios (TM), meaning those who control production and distribution are becoming obsolete. Production studios (What you mean) aren't. However, there are facilities that you can rent out for several thousand dollars per day/month that have all the equipment. All you have to provide are the actors. Hell, "The Studios(TM)" even rent out spaces from such facilities anymore.

I think Sin City only had most of the actors on stage for 1 or 2 days. I forget the total amount of time they actual shot princip

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[dave562 (969951)]

You miss the point. This is about (not that I've read the article) a shift in power. Rather than the talentless middlemen making all the money, why can't it be the writers?

Because those "talentless middle men" bring EVERYONE ELSE together. Productions are FREAKING HUGE operations. Do you live in Los Angeles by any chance? Have you ever seen what is involved with a production? I work in downtown Los Angeles at a building with a loading dock on Lower Grand Avenue. Lower Grand Avenue is in so many produc

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[jorghis (1000092)]

I always hear people say things like "running a company that does xyz isnt that hard and could be done a hundred times more efficiently". If you really believe that this is the case why dont you go do it and become a bazillionaire? After all our economic system is structured in such a way that if there actually is a better way to run a company you are free to go do it and reap the rewards.

good

[superwiz (655733)]

This is how it's supposed to work. If they don't like the business terms offered to them, they should work on their own terms.

Hollywood learns from Agrentina

[RevWaldo (1186281)]

If you can't get an agreement with the bosses, just take over the damn factory and run it yourself! http://www.thetake.org/index.cfm?page_name=synopsis [thetake.org] It looks like the strike will be settled one deal at a time, like they just did with David Letterman. ( http://gothamist.com/2007/12/29/wga_update_real.php [gothamist.com] ). The power of the AMPTP has been seriously underminded. The writers will get deals eventually. After all, without writers, how will they make reality TV shows?

Real writers need not apply

[pla (258480)]

I have no problem with the WGA sticking it to the studios - If the "rights"-holders have no one to write Rocky LVXII, perhaps they won't subject us to it.

I don't care about A-list actors - In most cases, I prefer second-string actors, for whom "hunger" still keeps "ego" in check.

I love the idea of distribution outside MPAA control, for reasons obvious to any Slashdotter.

But... Going back to my Rocky LVXII, I also have little sympathy for the hacks who keep trying to feed us the same trite watered-down

Re-Runs ad nauseum

[Migraineman (632203)]

I recently had a conversation about the writers' strike. My co-worker was completely oblivious. She had noticed that there seemed to be more re-runs on recently, but otherwise the TV programming seemed pretty normal. Makes me wonder if Joe Sixpack would ever notice if the broadcasters just played re-runs from now on. It'd certainly cut production costs ...

I still fail to see why this particular industry *needs* a union. The whole sense of entitlement astonishes me.

Do it old school

[sokoban (142301)]

You know, the writers could always go back to doing what writers did before the advent of movie studios, TV networks, and the like. There are these things called "Books" and "Plays" which are considerably easier and less costly to form into a finished product than movies and TV shows are.

XKCD on writers strike

[Cyberax (705495)]

http://xkcd.com/360/ [xkcd.com] - insightful and funny as usual.

Writers Union?

[houghi (78078)]

And here I was buying things on DVD and over the Internet, because the MPAA told me I was otherwise stealing from the writers and such.

I am confused now.

Salaried professionals

[markjhood2003 (779923)]

It's my understanding that these writers are on staff, earning regular salaries. How are they in principal different from professional software developers working for Silicon Valley companies? If their pay is miserably low, sure, striking for better pay is reasonable, but why should they get paid residuals every time the product of their work brings in income for their employers?

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[Oligonicella (659917)]

Now. Pull up a screen play on the internet, read it and get back to us if it's entertaining or shallow writing.

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[Punto (100573)]

what's your point? that "internet fanfiction" is never going to be good enough as the work of "real writers"? it will be once writers start exploring the medium themselves, this guys are taking the first step.

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[Adambomb (118938)]

The writers of content are not the ones held responsible for the closed captioning of their transcripts. Don't you notice those message saying "Closed captioning by: ". If they wish to move a significant amount of their content, once it begins in earnest they would have to find a solution to not having standardized CC or face this exact issue.

It's just not in the realm of their focus until theres a significant portion releasing their creations via the internet. I'm not saying it makes your point incorrect

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[Buran (150348)]

Actually, the law REQUIRES that you have captions on your show. You can farm out the job or have someone else pay for it, but the law says that it has to be there. The mechanism to show them has had to be built into all TVs 13" or larger since 1991 (and smaller sets can have it if they want; Mom's kitchen TV at her house has a caption decoder that shows really, really small captions. I think it's cute).

The technology to do the same with digital films has been in existence for at least 5 years, and yet almos

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[Adambomb (118938)]

Look, I know I cannot understand the frustrations you deal with not being hearing impaired myself. But you're blaming the wrong dog.

Closed captioning allows persons with hearing disabilities to have access to television programming by displaying the audio portion of a television program as text on the television screen. Beginning in July 1993, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required all analog television receivers with screens 13 inches or larger sold or manufactured in the United States to contain built-in decoder circuitry to display closed captioning. Beginning July 1, 2002, the FCC also required that digital television (DTV) receivers include closed captioning display capability.

In 1996, Congress required video programming distributors (cable operators, broadcasters, satellite distributors, and other multi-channel video programming distributors) to close caption their television programs. In 1997, the FCC set a transition schedule requiring distributors to provide an increasing amount of captioned programming, as summarized below.

If the FCC had put the onus on the CREATORS of the content from the start, then there would be a reason to expect them to have their changes follow suit when releasing content directly to the internet. The problem is the onus has been on the DISTRIBUTORS not the creators of the content to have them closed captions.

Source: http://ftp.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/closedcaption.html [fcc.gov]

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[Buran (150348)]

The end result is the same however and it's the creator's job to ensure that captions are put in. The distributor's job is just to get the finished product to the end customer. I think the actual implementation of the rule (and thank you for the link - I had forgotten that the rollover for 75% of captioning being required is next week) winds up being that distributors will refuse to air shows that don't have captioning, so that they can meet the requirement, so producers are forced to put the captions in if

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[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

There are always going to be holes in catering to those with disabilities. Someone's always going to be e.g. deaf and blind. For my part, various medical difficulties make it so I can't feasibly sit through a movie (though luckily those problems are getting corrected).

The good news is that voice recognition is improving every day, to the point that closed-captioning could be automated. Also, I wonder what the barriers are to crowdsourcing it? Let bored/low-wage people all over the world transcribe the d

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[Buran (150348)]

Good luck - I hope whatever they're doing works. Unfortunately my problem is dead nerve cells in my cochlea caused by prenatal rubella (not listening to an ipod too loud or anything) and is going to require stem cell therapy to fix and the research is still ongoing (I know; some of it is going on at the medical school where I work).

Unfortunately, I have no faith in crowdsourcing -- if you want it done in a timely fashion (the appeal of episodic TV is gone if you miss a show and can't see it before the next

Maybe sometimes?

[Junta (36770)]

I've watched a fair share of CC, and even on non-live programs, I have to wonder if sometimes some dictation software was used then edited. I can hear and can tell when things are omitted, or off base. Sometimes *really* off base. Examples:
"Seeing my family is very important to me" was what was said.
"Seeing my family is very porn" was the CC.
"Miss Universe" was the audio, CCed as: "Miss Urine Verse"

Or it could have been a person who wanted to slip some humor in...

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[Buran (150348)]

Those are live-caption shows where a stenography machine was used. Those work on phonetics which is why you see strange errors like the last one you listed. "Universe" is a less common word than the two that replaced it so the software defaulted to the strange error -- it's a computer, so it doesn't know any better. The operator can override the mistake on the fly, so perhaps you may have seen it corrected later on in the broadcast.

These sorts of things are less likely to happen if the operator has time t

This is not about the Internet.

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

There are MANY subtitle formats, and MANY container formats. As for "getting paid enough", you obviously haven't been following the story. It's not that they're not getting paid enough, it's that they're not getting paid fairly. This is an industry where individual actors can be paid millions of dollars, so there is absolutely no excuse to cut the writers out. But your credibility goes away when we remember that the writers are "whining" about not getting paid, and you're whining about not being entertaine

Whoops, reposting with paragraphs.

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

There are MANY subtitle formats, and MANY container formats.

As for "getting paid enough", you obviously haven't been following the story. It's not that they're not getting paid enough, it's that they're not getting paid fairly. This is an industry where individual actors can be paid millions of dollars, so there is absolutely no excuse to cut the writers out. But your credibility goes away when we remember that the writers are "whining" about not getting paid, and you're whining about not being entertained

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[Buran (150348)]

If someone is going to do something that doesn't accomodate the disabled, and I've ALREADY SAID that I know the technology exists, but I also said that it never gets used, don't tell me where I can and can't talk about it. The fact that I'm talking about it here doesn't mean I might not have brought up the topic elsewhere. Ignoring the disabled is a SERIOUS issue.

I also don't care if you don't think my argument has any credibility to it. I'd love to see you laugh off the problem of disability access to thos

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[Buran (150348)]

I have 5 out from the local library right now, and have that very book on hold -- they refused to give it to me when the computer told me it had arrived for me to pick up (4 times in a row, sheesh, one email was enough!) - but we'll see. (What's up with the "we won't give you your book yet" thing anyway? I've never had them conveniently tell me it was an "error" before).

The fact that I watch TV (and that the few shows I watch are all rerunning the same shit I've already seen) doesn't mean at all that I don'

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[spellcheckur (253528)]

As someone close to the situation, I'll bite:

First of all, an increase of costs (writers fees) will do either one or both of the following: increase prices of content and decrease the budget of other areas of production. You can damn well guarantee that even if the Studios and the writers do make a deal, that extra money is definitely not coming out of the Studios' pockets.

Well, this is silly. If the studios have the capability to magically cut production costs or increase the prices to consumers, why h