> “In that ground breaking AI proposal, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day’s pay, and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation,” he said. “So if you think that’s a ground breaking proposal I suggest you think again.”
I mean... it is ground breaking. Just in the worst possible way.
This was part of the plot of "Joan is Awful" (Black Mirror S06E01). I sorta expected some sort of AI proposal but I didn't think it would be so drastic, so soon. Then again, it might just be the tactic of asking for a mountain to get the hill you really want (I'm sure there's a name for this).
Black mirror surprisingly accurately captured the human consequences of the ultra-capitalistic-tech future.
Still remember the episode where the guy runs on a treadmill to collect points and uses it on porn. Not too different from tech workers running hard everyday and yet, spending all their money on only-fans, living in a studio apartment in a VHCOL city.
IMHO it's great that tech money is being redistributed to sex workers who work their butts (and other parts) off just to make a living. They might want families someday too, and their industry is way harsher. Better they get paid than tech workers hoarding money and driving up housing costs for everyone.
Just to be pedantic but in that episode the main character does not use it on porn himself although that is a common use of points in that world. The episode is about his love interest falling for that side of producing income however.
From an end-user's point of view, though, that's actually really great.
I love Star Trek The Next Generation. They're never making any more than those seven glorious seasons. If I could subscribe to a streaming service that offered an infinite number of AI-produce believably-authentic episodes featuring the original characters, and plot that could plausibly have been real episodes, I'd subscribe in a heartbeat. I'd just watch that and skip the rest of what passes for TV today.
I'd love for that subscription money to go to the original cast and crew as royalties, instead of buying the president of Paramount a seventh house. But I don't have a choice about that.
Pink Floyd [maybe!], Yes, Rush, they're never making any more music. Would I pay for an AI-based infinite album maker? You bet!
> Would I pay for an AI-based infinite album maker? You bet!
it sounds like you don't even like art
what exactly do you feel when you listen to music? what makes you want to listen to music? what drew you to rush and pink floyd in the first place? i ask because my subjective answers to those questions are diametrically opposed to some theoretical generative AI album maker
I would pay good money for an AI generator of Children of Bodom music featuring Alexei, or an AI rendition of his style. It's the only way I'd be able to hear new things of his very specific style now that he is dead.
Should I like art only if they're made by humans? If I did a blind test between AI and humans and I like the AI, does that make me suddenly not like "art?" Face it, I (along with most people) like the outputs of art, not the inputs. We simply don't care whether a human or a computer or a dog made it, as long as the output is good. If you want to define "art" as only a human thing, go ahead, but I will still watch and listen to what I like, regardless of its creator, and if that's not true "art," then I don't really care.
Then you don't like art, you like the product of art, the form or topography of art, the presentation of it, but not art itself. You like to consume a product.
Some people do actually like the art, the process, the artist, the questions that art open (even if mundane such as "how did they think of this?"). Remove that and it's just a shell, a hollow product without soul. It's ok if you like that but then you don't actually like art.
If we're getting into the definition of art I feel like it's a hard sell that an actual episode of TV, with plot and actors and everything, isn't art because no creative impulse went into it, yet a plain orange canvas is art that's worth $80 million [1] just because a human touched it.
You’re conflating economic value with artistic value. The worth of a painting is a highly speculative number based on a few rich people deciding they want to trade in art. Artistic value is independent from it. Art may resonate with you, yet be economically worth nothing.
This reminds me of how when Rush retired, they started then selling all sorts of re-hashed or knick knacks that aren't really new music or tours. It just feels like a cash grab now.
It'll be the same with these generated media. Consuming art is fundamentally an experience of humanity, of connection. The more generated it is, the more it loses its purpose.
It probably won't be long before algorithms can mocap just from the recorded footage and then transpose those movements to arbitrary 3D models :/
That doesn't take away from the beauty of martial arts though. You can have an exact definition of all the moves you'll ever do, but still spend decades refining them.
For actors though... yeah I can see why they're worried
I’ve seen the new Indiana Jones last week, and found the (clearly) animated opening scenes quite unrealistic. There was constantly something wrong with Indy’s sudden movements and other tells. Felt more like a really good cutscene. And they did have mocap available for that. I don’t think you‘ll get believable virtual actors (outside of action scenes) without mocap anytime soon.
The Avatar films, the latest Planet of the Apes, and some of the Gollum scenes from the LOTR films seem like peak mocap. I'm guessing it's partly do to the actors, the director, the digital artists, and the fact they aren't all truly human. Things not being human make it easier to fool our eyes because we look at humans every day since birth.
I would love to hear from a primatologist who's decades into their career to see if they think Planet of the Apes holds up.
During covid I was working on a paintball video game and I took pro paintball footage and ran some university research skeleton modeling program on it and got reasonably good results. I was going to use that for crouch and bunker hugging animations. And that was just me an HN reader playing around.
EDIT: Sibling posted and I was using that project -- OpenPose!
Who would want to be an extra then? Aren't most extras people who want to break into the film business? If you are an extra for one movie and the studio owns your likeness forever, how will you get another job as an extra or a cast member? They wouldn't need you since they already have your likeness to use as they please in any film they want. I mean owning the your image within the movie is understandable. But owning your likeness which is transferable across films and mediums is rather amazing. I can't imagine extras are paid that much to begin with that it'll be worth it to sell their likeness for one days pay.
> owning the your image within the movie is understandable
I don't think it's at all reasonable to own someone's image for an entire movie, to manipulate it for as many scenes as they want, if the actor was only paid for one scene on one day. Actors should be paid for every scene they are in, whether real or virtual IMO.
It would seem reasonable to pay actors, including their likeness, by the second multiplied by factors such as the actor's experience, importance of their part to the film, etc. Maybe they get paid a little less for using their likeness, but that's a pricing negotiation between the actor and the studio. It could be that the actor's likeness is more valuable than the actual actor performing if the studio needed to do a lot of manipulation.
I found Rick and Morty LLC based out of LA listed as a production company for the show for two seasons. It's probably owned by Warner just like other production companies like Williams Street which does a ton of other shows for cartoon network or adult swim.
Not sure it's that groundbreaking since we've already effectively decided as a society this is exactly what we're going to do with art and writing and probably a whole bunch of other stuff.
And in general, we've long decided privileging capital is much more important than compensating labor.
I'm not saying this is right. I'm saying we didn't just cross this line. This is the logical extension of some trendlines we've been riding for a while.
If it feels uncomfortable, it's possible we should look back for the root of the mistake.
i think that as labour remains expensive and increasingly inefficient for companies to utilize they will naturally use capital to replace labour. the irony may be that the strength of the unions here hve driven studios to invest millions in cheaper technological solutions to get movies made. labour organizing only has power as long as there is no viable alternative to that human labour.
>Not sure it's that groundbreaking since we've already effectively decided as a society this is exactly what we're going to do with art and writing and probably a whole bunch of other stuff.
We didn't decide this as a society. Billionaire capitalists and the tech sector decided this on behalf of society, which is why society despises both tech and AI.
well, alternative they will just create non-existing actors with generative AI. my guess in 50 years, almost everything will be extremely cheap including human labour. except land maybe?
How does it have anything to do with AI? Most mocap / 3d capture stuff is just hard number crunching. Games have had automated animation software good enough for background characters for a while...
Manually putting pre-scanned extras with fluid arm, leg, and mouth movements would be very difficult. (I mean they do that with CGI shots of crowds, but imagine a close-up shot in a restaurant, all the background is pre-scans).
With AI it can make them automatically look lifelike, and you can just pull from your database of scans. Furthermore, you can use AI to create new extras from your existing training data.
> their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation
Thats how science works globally! Do you think scientists should be striking, or are they too stupid to realise how they are being used by the global population?
There is also one other deer in the headlights which I havent seen mentioned yet, and thats the financial system. Financiers dont realise their days are numbered and I certainly dont see nay VC's or bankers striking yet, but then I dont get paid for pointing out their demise.
The business philosophy of "maximize shareholder value above all else" is going to eviscerate our society until there's nothing of quality left.
Hollywood has always been a dirty and money-focused business, but it seems like the latest crop of execs are hellbent on entirely divorcing the creative enterprise from its human elements. Now studios are just exotic financial instruments that seek to turn "content" into stock prices.
Everything measured and optimised for shallow goals goes into the gutter. As the analytics overtook decision making, the quality of everything declined sharply.
IMHO, it's happening because we the humans optimize for proxy metrics which once were good as a proxy to the real thing but with the computer age they turned into shallow goals that end up destroying the real thing as the optimisation became too robust. Removing the human element from the machinery creates a fatigue on the remaining parts and the consumers. All jobs have become horrible, even if the productivity increases the optimisations end up destroying the workforce and this started eating into the society because no one is happy with their job and life. Seamen no longer can see the world through their sailing career because the stays at the ports are too short, a person can't have a simple job and a simple life because the simple job is optimised into exhaustion.
"As the analytics overtook decision making, the quality of everything declined sharply."
Pretty much. I'm sure Hollywood execs have always wanted to make as much money as they could, but they also (formerly) didn't want to be known as guys who only made terrible movies. Prestige, vanity, relationships, reputation...unanalyzable human factors are really important for the production of human-centric products like art and entertainment.
Couldn't Have Said It Better. It expands to everything, every job has perks and qualities that cannot be measured qualitatively and optimisations eat into it. As people spend most of their lives working, this degradation destroys people's life satisfaction too.
Or if you want to get philosophical about it, reification. Which is something the Frankfurt School (despised by some as "Cultural Marxists") discussed with great depth and subtlety
Completely agree. And the worst part is that sentiment is used as a completely valid reason/excuse.
"They are just doing what is legally required of them and maximizing shareholder value!!".
People throw that out in there as if it's some inherent law of nature that can't be questioned. No- it's an intentionally created human construct by the rich & powerful to completely excuse them of any actions.
I can't recall any STNG episode where they solve some tech issue by doing the same thing but after a restart or two.
Didn't computers at the time of writing have the state problem solved by reboots? Like, reloading the program was essentially the same thing or something?
The quality of movies released from Hollywood in the last 5 years has been abysmal. It made sense to have large studios when film cost dollars per foot and needed an army of editors in post. Today you could film a 1960s blockbuster on 10k of equipment and a medium sized desktop computer with a few friends.
> The business philosophy of "maximize shareholder value above all else" is going to eviscerate our society until there's nothing of quality left.
Well no, because there are literally an entire industry (luxury goods) where the main selling point is quality, and I don't see any sign that's going to disappear anytime soon.
I’m not sure how familiar you are with luxury goods, but there are lots of YouTube channels and analyses of the quality of luxury products, and it’s not what you think it is. They’re maximizing shareholder value too, they’re just going after people narcissistic and wealthy enough to not notice that they’re buying junk that’s dressed up because the brand name means something to them.
Some of them, sure. But a lot of luxury products are Veblen goods, where the demand is created by the high price itself, rather than the quality. Status symbols and the like.
If you think all LVMH workers have good working conditions, or that materials are sourced ethically, I have bad news for you.
Quality doesn't prevent the search of profit maximization. Hell, luxury goods aren't even about quality. The price/quality ratio on your Vuitton Bag or your Ferrari is down in the gutter. You're buying a social status, not quality.
What's to stop the actors or writers from simply making their own content?
It made sense to me when you had terrestrial television stations with actual monopolies over broadcast rights.
But now with the internet they have many vectors to share and market their content.
So you won't be on NBC or Netflix or whatever, so what, post it on Twitter and YouTube. If they move to alternative distribution platforms and the studios don't do anything then the studios will lose their audience and thus their revenues.
Some of the best content I've encountered is exactly this. A good example is "High Maintenance", which started as a Vimeo web series and cost $1000 / episode to produce. [1] Another example is Christopher Nolan's first film, "Following", which cost $6,000 to produce. "El Mariachi" by Robert Rodriguez famously had a $7,000 budget.
They could also pool their money, crowdfund, or otherwise shoot for a bigger budget, in which case they could mimic the first Coen Brothers movie, "Blood Simple", which had a $1.5 million budget. There's also "The Blair Witch Project" ($200k), "Clerks" ($230k), "Paranormal Activity" ($15k), etc. [3]
I truly hope this latest labor dispute causes an industry shift in the direction of creatives taking more control over production and distribution of their content. Musician Anton Newcombe said this about the recording industry, and I think it applies equally well to film studios:
"...it’s a mafia. And until they can write the letter that I’m writing, they are the postman, and I am the letter writer. Period. End of discussion."
Distribution, access to capital, a reliable track record, contracts or relationships with channels, etc. All the unglamorous parts of media.
There were some very cool things that came out of the last strike (like Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog) but I would guess that at least 75% of you have never heard of it.
IMO, it's because writers and actors form a seriously minor part of the labor needed to make a film or TV episode.
From VFX to catering, there's a lot of labor needed - much of which is highly specialized - that would cost too much to contract or develop independently.
> What's to stop the actors or writers from simply making their own content?
1) access to capital to cover the cost of production. $/min of a Mandalorian episode or even a late night comedy show is way above self funding capacity of most of the people employed as writers or actors.
2) critical mass providing leverage in distribution. It is very very cheap for Netflix to market just one more show, as compared with the costs of a new subscription service to try to acquire new customers. On the feature side, studios pay a lot less to be in theaters (as percentage of box office revenue) than indie films.
> So you won't be on NBC or Netflix or whatever, so what, post it on Twitter and YouTube.
It's not like people haven't been trying. But take any successful show in the last few years, it simply could not have made nearly the same audience or revenue on these platforms. The stuff you see there is already hyper optimized for these platforms - it'd be a very poor business decision to take a show with the production cost of TV or subscription services, and monetize it purely on these platforms.
> But take any successful show in the last few years, it simply could not have made nearly the same audience or revenue on these platforms. The stuff you see there is already hyper optimized for these platforms - it'd be a very poor business decision to take a show with the production cost of TV or subscription services, and monetize it purely on these platforms.
This is exactly it. There are tons of incredible series with high production values on YouTube created on shoestring budgets, but they mostly cater to very specific niches. They can succeed on YouTube because they aren't going for the broad appeal and hyper-consistent development cycle required for TV channels to pick them up. If such an ecosystem existed in the early 00s, some of these series probably would have been picked up and made incredibly successful to a much broader audience by channels like Discovery, History, or TLC, but falling cable subscriptions has resulted in massive consolidation diluting the original premises of these networks, thus forcing them to focus on more generalized content. (The 2007-2008 WGA strike certainly didn't help, but I think this was inevitable with the subsequent rise of streaming services - the strike just kickstarted the realityfication/enshittification of cable TV a couple years early.)
That's not to say that no YouTube series or YouTubers can make it on TV, but they have to fall into the niche of having broad appeal on YouTube without being limited to YouTube, and I think Drew Gooden made this point really well in his video covering Lilly Singh's late night show [0], which got off to a horrendous start because studio execs, blinded by the prospect of getting a popular YouTuber to make a show for them and (hopefully) get that YouTuber's audience to throw their eyeballs at it, did not attempt to create a show that worked for Lilly, but instead shoved Lilly into a tired formula which she floundered in. (Keep in mind that Lilly's core YouTube demographic would be sound asleep by the time each episode aired at 1:30 AM, and one wonders the kind of discussions that led to this show getting greenlit in the first place.)
In a way, though, we're already seeing lots of content which is hyper-optimized for streaming services that is paid for by the big studios - I remember seeing an interview with some writers for a show only available on Netflix (I think, and I wish I could remember anything more specific) who remarked that with broadcast shows, you had to fit everything neatly into very specific timeslots, and that each timeslot had to have a hook to keep you sticking around after the commercial break, but when you're writing for a streaming platform, all those considerations just go out the window, allowing for much easier and more natural storytelling, like a movie.
Of course, you could still air these shows on TV, but they wouldn't work as well on TV as, much like movies that get chopped up for broadcast, very rarely do you have good hooks before commercial breaks. In addition, many shows made for streaming services do not follow the standard 18-22/37-42 minute show length, which means you have to either insert a ton of ads to pad the runtime into a 30/60/90 minute timeslot or have an odd lineup until you can get to some other oddball-length show (or until the infomercials begin).
>What's to stop the actors or writers from simply making their own content?
At this point, I would think the union. I have a family member in Equity that couldn't play in his own productions because he couldn't afford to pay himself. Sounds like a joke, but it's true.
Refusing to accept a deal is akin to acts of violence? I feel like the pro-union rhetoric is getting hyperbolic, and is detrimental to the quality of the discussion. If simply refusing to accept a deal is "tar and feather territory", then what do you call it when studios are literally covering union members in tar and feather? "tar feather (fr!) territory"? Rather than discussing actually relevant topics like which side's offer is objectively more fair, half the comments here are about trying to describe the studio's actions in increasingly hyperbolic terms.
> Refusing to accept a deal is akin to acts of violence?
Its not 'refusing to accept a deal', its this:
"“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” a studio executive told Deadline." [0]
I don't think I can get more hyperbolic than "our stance is we won't talk to them until they're freezing in the streets".
The part that you're not mentioning is that the union members are choosing not to sign the deal, and therefore are freezing in the streets. This sucks for union members, but I don't see how else such negotiations are supposed to work. If there's no threat of either side not accepting a deal, then what leverage does either side have? And if the union doesn't want to accept a deal from the studios, and consequently doesn't want to work, why should the studios continue paying them?
I think you're vastly oversimplifying their stance as merely "refusing to accept a deal". If studios are waiting for writers to "start losing their apartments and losing their houses,"[1] that is a major negative impact to people's lives.
>that is a major negative impact to people's lives.
I fully acknowledge the hardship that the union members are going through, and that the impact is likely disproportionate. However, that's a negative impact brought on by themselves by choosing to engage in said strikes. The union might still be in the "right" in terms of what they're demanding, but they're still the proximate cause of their own hardship.
This is a very cruel take, lacking such empathy that you blame the least powerful people in an industry for demanding a living allocation of the vast wealth the industry creates from those in power that decide the allocations? Walk away from your career and surrender if your partners decide to take all the income from you? What an odd way to live your life. What an impossible way to live a life.
>This is a very cruel take, lacking such empathy that you blame the least powerful people in an industry ...
See my previous comment: "The union might still be in the "right" in terms of what they're demanding, "
My only point was that the union and its members was presented with two choices: accepting a "bad" offer, or striking in hopes of getting a better offer. If they chose the latter and lost out, it was entirely their decision that led to their predicament.
Not being the worst tactic used by companies to break strikes doesn't make it good or even OK.
Nor should it lessen the condemnation faced by these companies.
EDIT: To be clear, I expect a company's executive team in the 21st century to act ethically and with even the smallest bit of compassion for their coworkers. I do not expect them to act like some entitled plantation owner in the late 19th century.
And if that's me being naive, it's a naivety I'll gladly take to the grave.
This not some dirty tactic, it is specifically how all breakdowns in employer/union negotiations go. Union withdraws their labour until their demands are met, employer doesn't agree until their demands are met. As time goes on, both lose money, both parties are betting the other party will compromise in a beneficial way before their side does.
If you don't approve of this, you don't approve of unionization. Because this is how it works.
You seem to misunderstand what unionisation is. The current state of things has been reached as kind of a gentleman's agreement. If employers want to revert to life threatening solutions, unions will revert to life threatening solutions too. Sequestration, destruction, tarring, and other fun things.
But then again, defenestration of a bunch of execs might just be the exact thing the world needs to put some fear back into these ghouls again.
> You seem to misunderstand what unionisation is. The current state of things has been reached as kind of a gentleman's agreement. If employers want to revert to life threatening solutions, unions will revert to life threatening solutions too. Sequestration, destruction, tarring, and other fun things.
Weird, my definition of "unionization" is "workers bargaining collectively". It doesn't involve any veiled threats of violence.
That is what it means, but it's an arrangement that replaces the previously "we'll resolve this with violence" situation. If one party wants to dump the "new" way of doing things, mostly likely it just goes back to the "old" way.
Life threatening solutions? Let’s cut the hyperbole please. You are the one making threats here, no one else is.
They have made an offer of employment to the union, following the legal framework in the country.
It’s the same predicament any striking worker has. Each party is applying significant financial pressure on each other to get what they hope will be a better deal than the current offer.
How… how do you think this works in other strikes?
"It's legal" is about the most basic, dogshit argument you can ever use. When there are livelihoods at stake, when we have emails of execs explicitly wanting to wait it out so their writers get evicted, when Bob Iger makes the GDP of a small African country and refuses to give anything even close to acceptable, it's not a threat of violence. It is actual violence, but you've been conditioned to only see violence as the physical act.
Abusing the massive wealth imbalance to force people back to work under your own terms is violence. They should be happy people haven't actually resorted to violence in return.
How it works in other strikes? It'll depend on the context. Your small company that can't afford everyone striking for a month will go to the negotiation table and reach a deal. Other companies? In my lifetime, I have seen offices destroyed, CEOs sequestrated. And you know what? It worked.
> Not being the worst tactic used by companies to break strikes doesn't make it good or even OK.
I mean, I'm very pro-union rights, but I think in this case, it's pretty simple. If you don't work, you don't get paid. Both the studios and the unions are playing by the rules, here.
It may not produce a fair outcome (because the distribution of power in society isn't fair), but it is at least a fair process.
And the union should really have put aside more money to fund a longer strike.
"absolutely gentille" and "strike-breaking" seems like weird ways to describe studios refusing to accept the union's offer, as if they're expected to accept whatever that the union offers.
The studios haven't even come to the negotiation table in the 70 days of the WGA's strike. Their entire plan is waiting them out so they'll accept a worse offer.
>The studios haven't even come to the negotiation table in the 70 days of the WGA's strike.
What's the point of coming to the negotiation table when the other side's demands is so far from what you're willing to offer?
>Their entire plan is waiting them out so they'll accept a worse offer.
It takes two to make a deal. By refusing to accept a deal, both sides' are hoping to inflict damage to the other side so they can get what they want. You might have your own opinions about which side has the more reasonable offer and is therefore in the "right", but both sides are essentially trying to do the same thing.
> What's the point of coming to the negotiation table when the other side's demands is so far from what you're willing to offer?
Uh, does this situation not fit the dictionary definition of negotiation? Such a gulf in demands/desires/position between the sides necessitates negotiation and compromise. The institution saying "lol fuck them, we'll starve 'em out" is monstrous in that context, imo.
>> What's the point of coming to the negotiation table when the other side's demands is so far from what you're willing to offer?
>Uh, does such a situation not fit the dictionary definition of negotiation?
There's nothing in the definition of "negotiation" that necessitates compromise. Moreover, negotiation isn't an end goal in and of itself. The point is to reach an agreement (ie. contract), and the very definition of a contract is that it's voluntary. That means walking away is an entirely valid response.
Same argument could be made in the vein of why should one side be forced to accept the other's demands unilaterally? Thus the deadlock and the strike. After all, each side making concessions is how this usually works.
Has anyone run the numbers on how long this might take? I know there's a lot of people in both striking unions who aren't super wealthy, but don't know what the spread is.
I'm fully expecting more dogmatic/richer members to bankroll the strike to prevent it breaking. I'm guessing through loans or something.
Not really. Ironically the kind of people who frequent this forum will be the ones to end labor once and for all.
Unions are only helpful with leverage. For now labor has inherent leverage as capital production fundamentally requires some labor. As AI increases productivity of certain individuals the amount (of people) of productive labor will become less, thus making unions ineffective.
It's not clear that AI will be a productivity boost for writers of any more magnitude than the move from the typewriter to the computer word processor. It can improve productivity, but only marginally so, and without need to replace writers altogether. An AI is about as useful for screenwriting a complex show as a spell checker.
The kinds of productivity boosts that studios and streaming houses have already gotten from writers are much simpler and timeless - hire less writers per show, for shorter term contracts, don't pay them residuals based on the show's long-term success, and keep them in the dark about the value of their work by hiding viewership data so that they won't know when they do have leverage individually.
I'm just talking about it for screenwriting specifically. It can improve productivity like GitHub copilot can for coders, which is to say, incremental improvement (vs firing the software engineering department and replacing it entirely by GitHub copilot)
Unions only work because they can threaten to withhold labor. If AI takes off the and AI replace workers, they'll be unemployed. Unions aren't going to help situation.
Considering that actors (live action and voice) are constantly asked to hand over their rights and likeness to companies creating AI and other machine-learning ways (1), it's surely worth fighting for so agreed here.
No, open source AI is booming. It's set to be a more democratizing force than anything, when some kid in on their laptop can make an entire feature length film using just the ideas from their brain rather than having to hire people to produce, direct, act in, and edit their production.
The opposite of tyranny is not freedom. The opposite of tyranny is solidarity. Freedom is the state of people in power acting responsibly and it can only be expected that they act responsibly if there are consequences for not doing so.
If you won't sacrifice for someone else, they won't sacrifice for you. If you won't put yourself at risk, nobody will put themselves at risk for you. When you allow the oppression of others, you allow the oppression of yourself.
The opposite of tyranny is supporting your peers and therefore being supported by your peers.
For consumers, now is a good time to evaluate paid streaming services. The content pipeline will be rationed and extended, leading to a decline in new programming. HBO/"Max" was already looking shaky, and we've noticed Apple and Amazon are increasingly plastered with paid options.
I have been doing that for a long time not because of the strike, but because 90% of the content is garbage, and the few shows that have found interesting they cancel after 1 season....
I think the situation with the Witcher will be the last straw with me and Netflix..
I am probably one of the few people that still have Prime because of the shipping but as they keep increasing costs to add a bunch of things I have no interest in (like Sports, and complete Trash that is Rings of Power) the value is less and less for that as well
The Witcher wasn't really Netflix's fault though? I thought Cavill was lured by the Amazon deal to do Warhammer. Gotta love a company like Amazon producing shows and selling toilet paper all in one shop.
Cavill did not leave voluntarily. HE was pushed out because he wanted to stay true to the lore.. Netflix and their hand picked show runners disagree and want to completely change the story
OTOH, the best season of the Witcher was Season One, which Cavill had little to no control over substantively or stylistically.
Season 3 is the season in which he has exercised the most creative control...this is the Witcher as he envisions it...and it's making GOT Season 7 look good.
That is factually incorrect. Cavill wanted them to be more faithful to the books, so they changed from the monster of the week setup of the 1st season to the silly political drama of the books.
The thing about The Witcher is that the books aren't very good. People like the Witcher despite the horrible writing (the same way people liked Twilight despite the horrible writing). If Season 1 had been faithful to the books it would never have taken off.
Most people seem to be basing their ideas for what the show should be like based on what the games were like, but the games are quite liberal in their adaptation of the underlying material.
Can you share any source describing that Cavill had the most influence on season 3 out of any seasons? Right now it's pure conjecture on your part and goes against what Cavill and others said themselves.
Complete Nonsense. The whole Witcher series is very well written (though I read only Czech translation, so I cannot speak of the English one) and Sapkowski is a good writer (which he later more than proved with The Hussite trilogy). The problem with the second season is that they completely butchered the story from the books. If Cavill wanted the series to be more faithful to the books, he failed.
Isn't that the Japanese model? You can get your motorcycle and your baby grand piano from the same company. It looks like it works pretty well for them so maybe there's something to it.
I don't know about Japan, but the primary force acting in the consumer's favor in the U.S. is competition. When you have conglomerates that can use enormous profits in one industry to undercut competition in other industries it really destroys the free market.
Consumers are savvier than ever about that stuff. People already demonstrate a strong willingness to hop on and off subscriptions for different services based on specific shows they want to watch.
I can imagine a ton of people canceling their subscriptions if all the providers put out is that crap “filler content.”
A refreshing show of solidarity between groups of workers whose interests clearly align. If they call for the public to cancel subscriptions, I'll do it.
Well, to be honest we've been served a lot of trash content before the strike for various reasons so I'm not sure how our interests and worker's interests align here.
People have been continuingly trying to say "content is garbage, the writers on strike weren't any good anyway" and such throughout this whole ordeal. But there's a lot of content for a reason--we each have our preferences. What one person loves, someone else thinks is shit. Most content will not be for everyone. This is fine.
But are you actually saying that there is nothing out there that you really enjoy? That 100% of it across the board is terrible? And are you willing to say that most other people feel the same way? There is nothing out there for anyone?
If there is anything you do like, then you want to support the workers because it gets made the same way as the stuff you don't like, and this is by design.
Unless, of course, you're expecting everything to be Game of Thrones or some other huge show that most people seemed to enjoy simultaneously. In that case, you should be even more on board, because those are hard to come by, they are expensive, risky, and require all the talent available to them.
If you have a monopoly on anything(i.e food, content etc) you can just push it to the masses and they will consume it regardless of its quality. That's how propaganda works too. It's not like people prefer repetitive junk promoting a certain agenda.
I wouldn't mind to try the AI stuff. Why would I care if the sea of junk content is generated by an AI instead of low paid humans?
Maybe the AI will prove how worthless this B content actually is and let real humans focus on good/valuable content. Either way competition is always a good thing in my book.
I'm sure there will still be premium content such Game of Thrones, Top Gun, Avatar etc. Maybe the AI will even let us tailor the experience/plot more to our individual preferences(i.e our own check-boxes) so let's embrace the technology once again.
It may be the solution not the problem to the quality of content and not only(i.e diversity). People could choose to watch the same movie in different modes(i.e director's mode, kids mode, snowflake mode, adult mode, asian mode, black mode, caucasian mode, lgbtq+ mode, mixt mode, random mode and so on).
Do we know how the unions are asking people to interact with media companies, streaming services and films?
Would they prefer people avoid them, cancel services, and avoid buying tickets for the moment as a form of picket line? I don't cross picket lines, and would be more than happy to stop my consumption of these things if it helps send a message.
A writer on addressed this on a podcast. They said maintain business as usual unless you see a call to action from the writers/union. A large shift in response to such a request sends a much stronger message than a slow trickle of cancellations.
The last time both were on strike was 1960. How did Hollywood cope back then? Less shows/different landscape obviously....was that the birth of the rerun? haha
Now this could actually force the Hollywood studios back to the negotiating table in earnest. Its one thing to outsource writers, its not easy (I'd say rare to impossible) to outsource the actors themselves.
The visual effects people and animators in Hollywood should absolutely be organizing for one, because their work is the soonest to be blown up with AI stuff. There's already a ton of stuff for small productivity improvements that reduce editing or grading tasks that used to take days into minutes.
Disney, whose animators have been unionized since the 1950s, bought Fox's animation operation and is trying to run it non-union. They're refusing to bargain with TAG, even though Disney has recognized the union.[1]
There aren't that many animation studios left. Most either went out of business or were bought by Disney. The remaining Hollywood unionized animation studios are Disney, Sony, Nickelodeon, Rick and Morty, Titmouse LA/Robin Red Breast Production, and WAG Pictures, Inc.
Despite repeated attempts, TAG has been unable to unionize game developers.
Writing and acting are both explorations of the human condition. I am unsure how something that's removed from the experience of humanity can portray that in any sense. I still think it's interesting to explore new ideas so I am curious to see how generative content (writing, actors, settings etc.) will be utilized in different contexts.
I guess the part that feels disconnected to me is that just because you call something art doesn't make it so, and just because you make something with AI doesn't mean it will be intelligent or interesting. But content creators will only care about improving their standards if content comsumers stop eating shiny-looking shit on a platter. I guess one can dream...or demand better standards and have higher expectations. If the bar to create something is so low, then anything that's created must be proportionally evocative, profound etc.
Disney's operating income from its entertainment segment was over $1.1B for the last quarter [0]. It's down quite a bit from the year before but there is still plenty of wiggle room to pay actors and writers.
I mean, you joke, but it honestly seems more and more like that's the position many execs and finance types are trying to take these days. Top management and shareholders deserve to get big bucks; everyone else, especially the people doing 100% of the actual work, are cost centers to be minimized as aggressively and uncompromisingly as possible.
They had old scripts in the pipeline. A number of projects in the works will be halted immediately.
TFA cites actors not doing publicity for projects that are in the can and awaiting release. The film can still be shown, but with less promotion is expected to do less well.
I think this helps disempower scabs. Plenty of non union people would love for s studio to pic of their script, or the studio might pull an old script out of the bin
I mean... it is ground breaking. Just in the worst possible way.