Today, two movies that talk about the Writer's Strike. One, from the Writer's Guild of America, tries to explain in easy terms, what the writer's are striking about. The other, from the Movie Blog, explains why the WGA might be out of touch with the way the rest of the world works.
Both videos after the jump. Discuss.
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Movieblog's writer has a poorly informed point of view. Residuals do not exist in a vacuum. They are a form of royalty, an economic institution dating back hundreds of years. Not only does this legally recognized concept apply to intellectual property, such as film scripts (and television scripts, a product that Movieblog's writer willfully ignores in his piece), but also to trademarks, copyrights and patents. Without this sort of protection and incentive, inventors would not invent. Writers would not write. Take a cursory look into its history: without copyright and royalties, Dickens would not be Dickens.
The writer complains that screenwriters do not live in the same world as the rest of us. Well, this world is recognized and acknowledged by the very studios that have thus far agreed by contract to the reality and nature of residuals, as well as the right of writers to receive them (not to mention actors and directors). Though the concept may evolve, it will not die out. There is no turning back the clock. The writers are asking for a fair royalty for their work when it airs over new mediums such as the Internet, just as they now receive a royalty when a DVD is sold.
In closing, I'd advise the writer of the blog to check his grammar. It ought to read, "…than just the PR spins that the WGA want you and ME to see." Not "you and I."
Good luck breaking into the business, bro.
Have to agree with Chris here, especially about the Movieblog's examples. The difference is that "Joe the Carpenter's" chair can't be replicated endlessly and sold in a variety of other mediums.
Residuals exist to protect artists in many different situations. Here's an example:
A writer sells a script to a producer for $1000.00 and the producer turns it into a low-budget movie. The movie goes to Sundance, sells to a studio for a modest amount of money (let's say $1 million) and the writer maybe gets another $10,000. Sounds great but the truth is that's not a lot of money for a feature length script. Then, the movie comes out and it grosses $250 million at the box office. Residuals exist to reward the writer for that spectacular performance.
Without those residuals, writers might not take a chance and sell their scripts upfront for such low fees, and many movies, especially independent films, wouldn't have a chance of being produced.
I have to agree with the above two comments. Moreover, I think it is worth noting that the Muggler missed another important point: much like film, the MAJORITY of money for a lot of great but perhaps, second tier TV comes from DVD sales. Not that Matt Groenig or Josh Wheaton are hurting for money, but the writers from shows like Futurama or Firefly, certainly deserve a cut of the hugely successful DVD sales.
Two thing I do want to comment on from the Movie Blogs video, like Chris said, the chair isn't being duplicated. Moreover, sure Apple doesn't charge you residuals to use their software -- and they could -- however, if you take their software and start duplicating it and reselling it on, say, a USB key, you bet your ass they are going to come after you and demand payment. As much as they may be bullshit, the EULA you clicked through when you started using Pages or Word is a contract, and they have already told you exactly how you are allowed to use their IP. Secondly, while I know in the real world, software is treated more as an engineering product than IP in terms of contracts, that comes, in large part, from the fact that we aren't smart enough to have a union. Back in the olden days, royalties and residuals were how programmers made money, but the field has changed. That certainly doesn't mean that it still isn't a common tack to take in software licensing. Indeed, lots of software sold to companies is based on a usage model or a revenue percentage.
It is also worth noting that while the book example stood out in the WGA video, how ripped off most authors are. If you put an Amazon affiliate link on your website and sell a book, you get more money back from Amazon than the author gets from their publisher. Especially with a lot of writing product moving onto the web and authors getting no compensation for books that are licensed to online libraries, I expect to see this revisited soon too.