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The future of entertainment on the Web still boils down to dollars and cents, as the Screen Actors Guild and Hollywood studios try to hammer out an agreement. On Tuesday, talks resumed after an eight month long impasse over artist?s share of Web revenues. The core issue is that the SAG is demanding the same money for Web distribution as that of TV and movies. Studios argue, Web revenues will not support the same model. Meanwhile, what we see on the Web, and at what price, remain central issues.

The SAG?s base rate of $759 per day, for every actor, in every production distributed via online video, runs contrary to the way Web consumers think in the first place. Free, is the online dogma for everything from music to software, and shifting this philosophy has proven futile in most regards. Web entertainment, as far as professionally produced content, remains an amateur?s market according to experts. So, where does this leave us with regard to our viewing pleasure? In this case, and perhaps for the first time, the Hollywood studios are right.
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/...pay-hollywood/


good luck with that.

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Doctor Dre

No way you can pay a bunch of people 1k$ a day to produce web content distributed for free...

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Fletch XXX

the quality of videos online are usually crap

ive yet to see a youtube vid that was quality or any other free servie, always choppy, grainy videos - no one is going to pay for it

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webmasterchecks

i see parallels between SAG and the United Auto Workers union and internet/technology.

acting, like music before it, is not going to be as lucrative as it used to be

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StuartD

"I don't care if you'll go bankrupt and pay me nothing later, I want money now!"

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pornguy

How fucking stupid can they get.

here is a bright idea. GO ON STRIKE

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Talk about oblivious to how digital media works...

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tony286

comparing sag with the uaw thats too funny lol

dial

you obviously don't frequent www.hulu.com or any of the major studios websites

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Rochard

Sur it will. The difference is with Music no one is buying CDs any more. With movies, they run in at the theatre first, then on DVD (which we still pay for at this point), and then on TV. We'll always pay to go the movies, and when it runs on TV actors will still get paid like they normally do.

It's a vastly different model than music.

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kane

For about 99% of those that do it acting is not lucrative at all. In order to qualify for medical insurance with SAG you need to make at least $5,000 dollars per year acting. Only about 5% of their members actually make that. Most actors get a few rolls, maybe do a commercial or two if they are lucky and the never work again. Or they get a part then don't get another job for 2-3 years. Acting is lucrative for some, but it is basically like investing in the lottery. You will have a few people that hit the jackpot and make big money. you will have some that win enough each year to keep themselves going and most will never get back what they put into it.

count of monte cristo

the internet makes things freeer, they need to understand this

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Enough Said.

"Would you rather live like a king for a year or like a prince forever?"

GatorB

So that means they should get all this extra money because it currently doesn't pay them well enough to live off? Um that's called LIFE. In what other job in the REAL world do you get paid like this? in REAL jobs you paid ONCE for doing a job. As is they get paid for doing a "job" I eman $800 and you might do is stand there and no have any lines. Sign me up. then you get paid if that goes into syndication, then you get paid for it if it goes on DVD. Now they want money from online? Ok out of work "actor", I know you really could use some cash from that small 30 second part in a epsiode Night Court from 1986, but get over it already, acting just wasn't in the cards for you.

kane

Here is how it works.

First off if you are just standing there and have no lines you are an extra (unless you are cast in the movie and just have no lines in that scene). Extras make $50-$100 a day and get no residuals. To make the $800 a day you have to have lines. So great. Say you get cast for 10 days on a movie and you get $800 a day. That is 8K for 10 days work. That is pretty nice. But you may not work again for 9 months (if ever).

Residuals are not what you think. Artie on the Howard Stern show talks about how he loves Christmas because they always play the movie Elf several times during that month. He was in that movie for a few minutes and worked for a few days on it. He gets about $500-$1000 a year in residuals. So sure, if you could rack up 15-20 of these types of movies you could start making a decent amount of money per year, but again, those that are able to do this are about 5% of those in the industry.

Look at it like this. If you work at Intel and you are on a production line making $10 an hour you will probably still get stock options, but since you make so little money the amount of the option will be pretty small. If you have been with the company 20 years and worked your way up to where you now sit on the board or are in a very senior position you will make a hell of a lot more money than the guy working on the assembly line and your stock options are going to be bigger. When they work out compensation contracts for the company they don't have the high up exec in mind. He is going to be okay. They are thinking more about the little guy. An extra $2K a year isn't going to matter that much to the exec making $500K a year, but it is a big deal for the guy making $10 an hour. So when SAG wants more money they are not worried that Brad Pitt is going broke. They want to help the unknown guy who has had tiny parts in half a dozen movies/TV shows and is struggling to make it.

Actors get paid over and over again for the same work because that is how the industry works and even the biggest most popular actors in the world don't work 50 weeks a year so these residuals help them live while they continue to look for other parts. The movie or show they worked on is still being marketed and making money and they are sharing in the profit. In the end, for the most part, they are using your face to sell that product. If they are using your face resell the product, why shouldn't you get paid for it? If you are so against getting paid for something after the fact should this industry do away with recurring payouts? Why should we have them? You did your job. You sent the visitor to the site and they signed up. Take you $30 and like it. If they stay a member for the next 2 years and the site continues to collect a membership fee for the next 24 months should be of no concern to you.

NaughtyRob

Makes sense.... I remember in like 02, 03 models would take like $500 for a boy/girl scene that was for an internet company but if it was for DVD they would demand $800 plus....

Funny thing is, those same web companies then made DVD's of the scenes. lol

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kane

Oh, one other thing. A great example of a real job that pays you like this would be an insurance agent. My agent bills me every month for my car and home owners insurance. The payments get auto-debited right from my checking account and he collects a fee. In the 5 years I have been with them I have actually spoken to them about 5 times and I would guess 3 of those times were this winter when the heavy snow collapsed my carport and totaled the car that was under it. So after signing me up he has done next to nothing, yet continues to collect a commission check for what they bill me each month.

The same can be said for many writers. If you write a book they give you an advance. If your royalties eventually earn you more than the advance you got you will start getting checks. Stephen King still gets checks for books he wrote 20 years ago. Should he not? He hasn't touched that book since turning it in 1982, but it still is selling and generating revenue for the book publisher, but since he is not actively working on it he shouldn't be allowed to profit from it?

TyroneGoldberg

@kane

thanks for talking in simple terms.

si expect someone to counter what you said for the hell of it though

lol

ExLust

Agreed.

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davidd

Just another union looking to drive another US enterprise into the ground.

Foreign films like Slum Dog Millionaire, ratings that never recovered on network TV, declining box office pulls, etc should be a wake up call for the SAG members... it won't be, but it should.

Like GM & Chrysler going bankrupt will be the final nail in the UAW coffin. SAG can look back in 15 to 20 years and behold the jackal effect their decisions had on their members.

The current model for TV, movie, DVD, CD's, etc is becoming nullified almost daily. Physical products are becoming a thing of the past and viewing methods are morphing each day.

-dd

Add to this if SAG strikes, right now, it will only make California's budget issues much worse.

GatorB

And my answer is so? So what if you never work again. If you get a job at McDonald's and after 10 days get fired you should get paid residuals? Since when should failure to maintain employment be rewarded?

And how many actors are there in that movie? dozens? each getting a piecve like that or more. I'm sure studios take residuals into acount when they price movie theater tickets, DVD, rentals, PPV, cable/TV deals etc etc. Which is why I'm paying $8 to see the movie and $17 for the DVD.

kane

It is different. If you work at McDonald's and your job is to make the fries you make the fries, someone buys them and eats them. That is it. The fries are sold once to one person who eats them. With a movie the same product can be sold over and over again without any additional work going into it. If you are in a movie that movie can be released in theaters, then sold on DVD, rented on DVD, sold to premium cable like HBO, sold to pay per view, sold to basic cable, sold to tons of foreign markets, sold to regular free TV, sold to syndication type distributors who resell it to independent TV stations all over the globe, packaged and resold to other basic cable channels and now possibly put online. All of these are reselling the same product over and over again and generating revenue for the studio. What is wrong with those people who are in the movie getting a share of the profits?


I don't totally disagree with this, but I don't think it is fully correct either. If there was no such thing as residuals how many professional actors would we have today? If you work hard and get small rolls in 10-12 or more movies that get played on TV/Cable regularly or sell well on DVD you might make enough money to live on for a few years without working. You aren't going to get rich, but you might be able to support yourself while you pursue more acting jobs. If that were not the case you would have to get another job and work that job while you tried to make it in the business, but then making it in the business would be next to impossible. If you had a regular job and you suddenly got offered a part that was going to pay you $800 a day and you would get 45 days of work, great. Chances are you would have to quit your regular job to take that part. After 45 days you earn 36K. But after taxes and agents fees you will see maybe half of that. Even so, 18K is a nice piece of change for 45 days of work. But that is it, nothing else will ever come of that so you will have to get another job and go back to work doing something else while you try to get another acting job. Becoming successful as an actor is basically already a nearly impossible task. If there were no residuals the odds of doing it would be like winning the lottery twice. We would have fewer and fewer decent actors and the quality of TV shows and movies would suffer greatly.

I can see your point. I believe you are saying that if there were no residuals that movie tickets and DVDs would cost less. I disagree to some point. If the movie is a flop and doesn't sell any on DVD there are no residuals to pay out, yet the studio still had to front all the money to pay to make the movie. It is kind of like a sales commission. If you don't sell anything, you don't get any commission. So sure, they might lower the price of the tickets or DVDs a little, but I doubt it. I think they would stay the same, the studios would just pocket a larger portion of money for themselves and they would justify it by saying that most movies don't make a profit anyway, so they are just covering their losses.

kane

Total box office sales for 2007 - $9,629,052,774
Total box office sales for 2008 - $9,851,168,891

Looks like box office revenue is up.

I agree that the market for physical product is on the decline but some things will stay the same for a while. Movies in the theater will always draw people. For a lot of people seeing a movie on the big screen is about the experience and the atmosphere. Sure, if it were available at the same time at home, some people would choose that, but there is always going to be box office draws.

That said the doing away of the physical product is what the SAG people are worried about. Right now they get residuals on DVDs sold. If the DVD goes away and their contract doesn't cover downloads, they get fucked.

During the writers strike one of the key negotiators said that when they look back on this contract negotiation 10-12 years from now he was not going to be the guy who gave away the internet. If you ask for a lot, you can give stuff up and still get a fair share. If you ask for too little it is harder to get more later.

Doctor Dre

That i understand. But at 800 $ a day for web content, it's simply not viable for the producers. The producers have to make money too.

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kane

For me it would depend on who is producing it and what it was for. For example if you are shooting some bonus footage for a major TV show on a major network and this stuff is going to go on the website and bee seen by millions, $800 a day is fine. If you are shooting something you hope to put up on sites like Youtube and Google Video and hope it draws views to your website, then it is a little too much.

Another thing to consider is that there is always the option of non SAG shoots. These happen all the time. You work for little or nothing on the promise that if the movie gets sold you will get paid. This allows producers to make something on the cheap and if it eventually makes finds an audience and makes money the cast (and often the crew as well) get paid.

If you are wanting to shoot a web video that features George Clooney, it is going to have to be a SAG shoot. But then if you have Clooney, you are probably not worried about paying him $800 a day. If you are making something with a group of unknown actors you can do a non-SAG shoot and pay them nothing.

GatorB

[QUOTE=kane;15532160]Total box office sales for 2007 - $9,629,052,774
Total box office sales for 2008 - $9,851,168,891

Looks like box office revenue is up.[/bquote]

because ticket prices are up. and your numbers are off.

2007 $9,663,700,000
2008 $9,630,600,000

tickets sold

2007 1,404,600,000
2008 1,337,600,000

for reference 2002 1,575,700,000 ticket's sold. If ticket prices were the same in 2002 as they were in 2008 2002 would have seen revenue of $11,345,000,000

Which is exactly why they should release a movie on all formats at the same time. That would cut down on piracy.

DVD/blu-ray isn't going away anytime soon. Why do a deal now when downloading is in it's infancy? in the long run they may be hurting themselves to signing a bad deal. That's what they did when they signed on VHS/DVD too early.

Since this is all new they could very well be giving away the internet. Best to wait until you see how big or not it becomes.

kane

[QUOTE=GatorB;15533279]I was just going with the numbers I saw on the site I saw them on so I can't verify if they were 100% accurate. I do believe I read too that total ticket sales were down, but let's be honest, the industry losing that many ticket sales during a major recession year is not that bad so I wouldn't say the industry is dying, or even hurting that bad.

They may also lose a ton of revenue. Part of going to the movies is because you want to see the movie now. You pay the premium price to get to see the movie today, on the big screen and not have to wait for it to come out on DVD. If they released it on DVD, pay per view, download and theater all at once they may get the same number of viewers, but many of them would pay far less to see the movies than those who went to see it in theater. You might argue that they could lower ticket prices to drive customers to the theater, but now we are moving into a different world. Much of the price of a movie ticket is set by the theater chain, not the studio so you would have to convince them to lower their portion of the ticket price as well.


All that said piracy would still run wild. When you look at the top 10 most downloaded movies on torrent for any given week at least half of them are movies that are still in theaters. If it is available on DVD/Blu Ray the same day it is released in the theater people can buy, burn it and share it and who knows how many people will download it for free. There is no way of telling how many of those people might have gone to see the movie in the theater and paid, but you can bet some of them would have. By making it available right then you can help make the piracy that much easy to pull off.

Also the theater is used as a marketing tool and a tool to decide the size of the DVD run. Some are no brainers. Anyone would have been able to tell that Dark Knight was going to be huge and places like blockbuster would have ordered a ton of copies and stores would have ordered a ton of copies of the DVD. But there are a lot of movies that get good word of mouth and build an audience in the theater and then get nominated for awards and those movies eventually make it to DVD and get a larger DVD release than they would otherwise have. Sure, you can always print more, but if your going to release everything at once, there will be more pressure for immediate success and a lot of good movies that eventually build an audience could get lost. One day there might be some kind of multiple release system like this in place, but I think it may end up doing more harm than good to the studios.




Both are valid points, but it can also be looked at the other way. If they sign a deal now and it turns out the internet wasn't what you thought it would be, than oh well, nobody made much money off of it. But if you sign a bad deal now and the internet turns out to be a boon for business, you missed out and it is harder to negotiate yourself up to higher position than down from that position.

The entertainment industry is full of schemers. Musicians often hire accountants to audit the books of a record label to make sure they are getting paid correctly and almost always they find they are owed more money. The same is with the movie industry. They tell you that you will get 1% of the net profits. The movie does 100 million at the box office and does well on DVD and other markets yet somehow through creative book keeping they tell you they never made a profit. This happens all the time. Why do you think big stars demand big salaries? In a perfect world they could make more by taking a tiny salary and taking a part of the profit, but they know they will never see much if any of that profit so they get what they can up front. The catch 22 is if you sue them you are screwed. Many in the industry won't hire you because they will be worried that you will sue them when you get done. This is why you almost never hear of big stars (or even mid level stars) filing suit against a studio. They just grin and bear it and hope being in the big movie gets them another job.

There is a pretty recent, somewhat famous case involving a movie called Hustle and Flow. The producer and director of the movie got everyone to work for next to nothing (far less than the SAG standard $800 a day) with the promise, via contract, that they would get a percentage of the profits. The movie comes out, it gets great reviews and becomes a hit. Taryn Manning, one of the stars of the movies, has said she has never seen a dime and will never see a dime. When she ran into the producer somewhere she asked him why he screwed the cast out of the money they are owed and he told her that he, "gave them all careers." Well, he gave Terrance Howard a career. A couple of other people in the movie had been in some other stuff and still get some smaller parts, but as she said nobody is beating her door down cast her. The only good thing about it is that since it got a large distribution it had to get SAG approval and she did end up getting paid her $800 a day for the shoot and she has gotten residuals from the studio.

wheat

They should just run dating and webcam ads around the videos. Adapt or die!

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GatorB

Because they were paid to ACT. They acted, they got paid. Nuff said.

Tough shit. It's call life. Harrison ford was a struggling actor that did carpentry between acting gigs. In fact he was offered more money as a carpenter than to do Star Wars. He took a chance and it paid off. Once again the failure to keep steady employment in your desired profession doesn't mean you deserve to keep getting paid.

EscortBiz

movie industry barely making money now, fuck sag let them die

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sortie

But it not the scripts that suck, it's the actors right???

The scripts SUCK.

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EscortBiz

im not talking about if movies are good bad but rather from a business stand point there is little money to be made in movies and it will get to a point where people will avoid using union especially those who can market online etc

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kane

So if you work your ass off promoting a sponsor that offers recurring payout then after a couple of months you decide to not promote them anymore (for whatever reason) should you then forfeit the rebills you have already sent? You aren't actively working with them anymore and you are doing nothing on behalf of that site so why should you continue to get paid?


Harrison Ford, like a lot of other actors took a chance. Unlike most he found success. I'm not saying anyone and everyone who ever stepped in front of a camera should be paid millions and get recurring income for life. I am saying that if the studio continues to sell the product you are in over and over again it is not unreasonable to ask for some kind of recurring income from it. It is like a business partnership.

Here is an example. There was a movie called The Blair Witch Project several years back. they made the money with almost no budget. The actors worked for free. They were promised, via contract, that if the movie got sold and got major distribution they would get SAG rates. So they took the chance because the potential payoff was there. And it worked. The movie got a big distribution deal and did very well at the box office and they benefited financially from it. Without the SAG agreement they would have had to cut a deal with the producers and hope the new studio that bought and distributed them movie would have honored that deal. In the end none of them have had big careers. They have been in a few things, but they are not making millions and are far from big stars, but they still were rewarded for the risk they took with the unknown movie. I don't think that is unfair.

I see it as a business. If I go to work for a startup company I am taking a risk. Sure, I could keep my regular steady job and all would be find. But by going to the startup I am offered the chance to get in on the ground floor of something and it could benefit me financially down the road. I am willing to take a risk in exchange for a potential payoff if the business succeeds. If I am acting in a movie I am an major part of that movie and its potential success so I don't see why I shouldn't be compensated accordingly if the movie succeeds.

candyflip

He's just talking out his ass to drop his sig and hear himself talk.

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