Hollywood Strike..whats the deal?

[Mijin]

@Exapno Mapcase

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It is no different in any industry with stars and behind-the-scenes technicians. You can’t run a baseball team without a manager, coaches, trainers, doctors, bat boys, equipment handlers, and turf specialists, but virtually all the starting players will get far more money and other perks. You can’t have fewer people than nine on the field, but they won’t all get the same money either.

You can’t run a university without… You can’t run a hospital without…

Doesn’t matter what the field is. As long as we live under capitalism, there isn’t even a moral question about the relativity of the system.

I agree with your basic point, and the examples you gave, but I think in many cases there are “stars” and “technicians” simply because of a human innate tendancy to separate out people and roles into high and low status, and pay accordingly.

Here in the UK, I can name lots of low-status jobs where people are very much in demand and yet salaries remain low. And conversely, high-status jobs where there is a glut of able candidates, and little evidence of competition for candidates between employers, and yet salaries are very high.

I get the impression that the US is more market-driven though

[Cartooniverse]

@Keeve

In my opinion, the wardrobe department and cameramen are also as important as the above.

As a working cameraman of 28 years, god bless ya

The “below the line” trades have traditionally been contract players, so to speak. We work on a daily/weekly deal. Commercial rates are based on single-day of work and tend to be highest. For example ( and these are not accurate rates, but are representational of the idea), I’d work for 1,800.00 for a day. For a week of steady work, I'd do 1,300.00 a day or less. Sometimes a flat weekly, though they are rare because in this business, nobody likes to give up O.T.

The exception to the contract players idea is that sometimes on very low budget movies, the crew will be asked to work for Deferred Pay. That means that when the movie becomes the next Rocky, the crew will be paid the difference between what the cheapazoid Production Company pays them at the time of the shoot, and the agreed upon “full rate”.

I’ve never seen a penny of Deferred pay. I don’t know anyone who has, though I do know a completely verified story of lost Deferred fees. A crew member on the original “Rocky” was asked to work for Deferred fees. He declined and made a deal for pay as he worked. In 1997 when I was first told this story, his calculations based on yearly gross box office for that movie from date of release showed that his decision had cost him over $ 160,000.00. Brutal.

I do a lot of teaching of camera operating techniques, both here and abroad. One of the fundamentals is that a brilliant script gives you more to work with than you can possibly deliver. A poor script leaves you flailing about for a way to finish the scene.

Writers are underpaid, IMHO. They DO deserve a bigger cut of the pie, and Producers are notoriously chintzy with the deals that writers get.

Cartooniverse, member of 2 film trade unions

p.s. Wardrobe is OUTRAGEOUSLY overpaid.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

The US is more market driven than anywhere. :smack:

But it all comes down to basic capitalism. Not only supply and demand but the fact that there are many ways to organize a contract for payment. It wasn’t all that many decades ago when the thought of paying for a car or house on credit was almost unheard of. Today that arrangement is the overwhelming norm. The star system is also something that is relatively new. Ballplayers made five figure salaries well into the 1960s. Professors used to expect to live in genteel poverty. Both groups found that the market could be exploited to their benefit.

Writers have had this understanding for a longer time, as copyright protection was written into the Constitution and understood to be a basic social good. Even so, the origin of the Writers Guild lies in extremely bitter disputes with the studio heads in the 1930s. It was the collapse of that system, the possibility of work having a continuing life due to new technologies, and the magnitude of the money involved that has led to the current system.

It is neither moral nor immoral, fair or unfair. It is merely one possible way of arranging equitable contract payments, as Cervaise’s post illustrates. It is not necessary for it to apply to any other any field for the system to work in this particular application. It is not necessary for the world to to be fair in any way when it comes to payments. Indeed, when there is a legitimized system of equals vying in a contest to keep the most money, one should expect both sides to exploit any advantages that they have. Strikes are never fair, but the need to have a strike is never fair either. Fairness is a concept that should be left out of the equation. Capitalism is not about fairness, which is the core principle on which it has most successfully been attacked over the years. Unfortunately the alternatives are all worse.

Here in the UK, I can name lots of low-status jobs where people are very much in demand and yet salaries remain low. And conversely, high-status jobs where there is a glut of able candidates, and little evidence of competition for candidates between employers, and yet salaries are very high.

I’d like to see examples of each for clarity.

[filmyak]

@Musicat

So why are some tasks in the world “royalty” tasks and others “for hire”? Is there any inherent reason or is it just who can scream the loudest?

Let’s say you’re an actor. Not an A-lister like Tom Hanks or Jack Nicholson, but a commercial actor. You manage to get cast in a few commercials per year. And you get paid every time a commercial airs (overly simplified, but there’s a minimum and then more for additional runs).

Because you’re on a national spot for Taco Bell, there’s no way Bell Taco will also hire you for their spot. Neither, most likely, will any other non-related chain (Circuit City, Pampers, etc) because they don’t want overexposure. They want their ad to stand out, not the actor who is suddenly appearing all over the place. So those 4-5 gigs/year have to pay enough that you can survive.

How about film writers, then? You write a movie, you get lucky enough to sell it, you get a paycheck. While the movie is in production, you’re probably on set making changes and updating dialogue, etc. You get paid for that, just like the grips, gaffers, wardrobe, etc.

Now the movie ends. The grips, gaffers, wardrobe, etc, all go straight to another job.

As a writer, you now have to spend 6-12 months writing another script. And no one is giving you a dime (unless you are lucky enough to get HIRED to write another script).

That’s another reason they get residuals and the rest of the crew doesn’t.

Also, there’s a bigger issue: a writer creates a piece. So does a director. So does a producer. Gaffers and grips don’t. They are talented individuals, but are essentially blue collar skilled craftsmen. Really good carpenters and riggers. They have a union, they get benefits, but they are not the creative forces that make a project come to life – they are the soldiers that do what the generals tell them to do. Why SHOULD they get residuals?

Do you go to movies just because your favorite director/actor/producer made it? Many people do. Who the heck goes because their favorite grip worked on a show? Just the grip’s friends and family, that’s who.

The idea behind residuals is that the creative forces that make a project actually happen deserve a cut of the profits, just as much as the financial forces that make a project happen do (even if it’s a smaller cut). No way does that apply to a production assistant who runs around and gets coffee. They don’t deserve continuing pay for that kind of work, I’m sorry.

So that’s a partial set of reasons that some jobs get residuals and others don’t.

PS – the one group that doesn’t get them that should is editors. Very involved creatively, make a huge difference to a project, but have one of the weakest unions around.