Writers Strike & AI

[Kaleredar]

Like i said it is easy. If you make a sequel or base it on something and you do not follow the previous "lore" or facts
When you have plot holes a 5 year old can spot, lines that do not flow in a scene. Or movies where most of the scenes can be predicted from the get go etc. it is easy to spot bad writing in that case . So between good and bad writing ( or great/epic and poor/superbad its easy).
I do think between bad, decent, kinda and good its harder.

If it's so easy to write good stuff... where's your Oscar for best original screenplay?

Like, do you think these AI script prompts are going to be written like "Star Wars sequel, +the good parts of the EU, +White male protagonist, +Lightsaber fights, +the parts of the prequels I liked, -woke politics, -Kathleen Kennedy" with the "If going to make bad = don't" modifier on them, or something?

And i think what you are talking about sounds more like if a movie is succesful. A movie can be great looking live avatar, but still have a bad script. It does not mean that the writing is good.
And a movie can be fun, but badly written. My opinion is : if i leave the cinema and think: i have not wasted time and money. They movie was good enough.

Yes and no. I agree pay more and it might get better.
But even the well paid ones. Like derek and colin, still suck. So that argument does not fly for all of them.

And Studios are interested in making money. And if they have their druthers they're going to use AI to pump out generic, safe, predictable films that they think are likely to turn a profit. Until the bottom drops out of that because all they're doing is producing pablum.

[Endus]

And Studios are interested in making money. And if they have their druthers they're going to use AI to pump out generic, safe, predictable films that they think are likely to turn a profit. Until the bottom drops out of that because all they're doing is producing pablum.

Also, if you want to blame anyone for the pablum being successful, blame the audience. The studios are feeding a demand, if the demand is for samey bullshit, that's the audience's fault.

[jonnysensible]

Also, if you want to blame anyone for the pablum being successful, blame the audience. The studios are feeding a demand, if the demand is for samey bullshit, that's the audience's fault.

nah blame the capitalists who have pushed this 'fandom' nonsense onto everything. They are afraid of the future, afraid to make anything new and can only cannibalize the past.

[Endus]

nah blame the capitalists who have pushed this 'fandom' nonsense onto everything. They are afraid of the future, afraid to make anything new and can only cannibalize the past.

You know me; every opportunity to blame a capitalist.

But, Everything Everywhere All At Once made a total of $140m at the box office, and it's probably the best film I've seen in a decade. Wildly imaginative and important.

Fast X has made $67 million just in its opening weekend, for crazy stunts and Vin Diesel grunting "it's about family" (I haven't seen it, but that's every F&F film to date). It's definitely gonna make more money than EEAAO.

And that's the fault of the audiences, not the studios. We can blame studio heads for bullshit in making the film, and for bullshit in how staff who worked on those films are compensated, and the wonders of Hollywood accounting, but not for audience engagement. That's on the audience itself, 100%.

[Gorsameth]

nah blame the capitalists who have pushed this 'fandom' nonsense onto everything. They are afraid of the future, afraid to make anything new and can only cannibalize the past.

So long as people are coming to see these movies and they are box office successes while original stories do poorly you can't blame anyone but the people who still go to watch them.

If no one wanted these movies they wouldn't be getting these numbers.

[Fencers]

nah blame the capitalists who have pushed this 'fandom' nonsense onto everything. They are afraid of the future, afraid to make anything new and can only cannibalize the past.

General audiences like these films and franchises. Familiarity is a big consumer motivator in any product category.

[BeepBoo]

They most certainly would considering AI basically steals existing ideas to create its own narrative. Only instead of a knife you'll get a spoon or some shit, or it'll find someone's fan fiction and use that lol. AI cannot create original works, it can only manipulate and adapt. Its a collage of ideas and works warped together to produce something.

If this is your mindset, then no human alive can create original works. We all pirate ideas and concepts from our surroundings and just add spin to them. Even when a thought is truly an original thought, the likelihood it's been thought by someone else before (even though the person thinking about it now has never seen, heard, or been made aware of it's existence) is so large that the idea of "original thought" might as well be dead.

[jonnysensible]

General audiences like these films and franchises. Familiarity is a big consumer motivator in any product category.

Disneylanding sucks.

[Nilinor]

You know me; every opportunity to blame a capitalist.

But, Everything Everywhere All At Once made a total of $140m at the box office, and it's probably the best film I've seen in a decade. Wildly imaginative and important.

Fast X has made $67 million just in its opening weekend, for crazy stunts and Vin Diesel grunting "it's about family" (I haven't seen it, but that's every F&F film to date). It's definitely gonna make more money than EEAAO.

And that's the fault of the audiences, not the studios. We can blame studio heads for bullshit in making the film, and for bullshit in how staff who worked on those films are compensated, and the wonders of Hollywood accounting, but not for audience engagement. That's on the audience itself, 100%.

I think its a shared blame - ofc its only my experience to go off of but :

I only heard of EEAAO because someone in a discord channel mentioned it about winning tons of awards. That was literally the first time I even heard of the movie, and it was only on the acronym, I only looked it up cause I had no idea what it stood for. That was almost.. what 9 months after it released?

I knew about Fast X about 4 minutes after announcement. I have (and do not want) to see any of the Fast/Furious movies, they dont interest me, but marketing is so high on it, I knew about it almost instantly. Studios choose to market stuff the way they do for whatever reason and audiences eat whatever they are given. Movies I would have seen in the theater, I had 0 clue about until much.. much later, while movies I would never want to see I know long before they are released.

[vizzle]

I think its a shared blame - ofc its only my experience to go off of but :

I only heard of EEAAO because someone in a discord channel mentioned it about winning tons of awards. That was literally the first time I even heard of the movie, and it was only on the acronym, I only looked it up cause I had no idea what it stood for. That was almost.. what 9 months after it released?

I knew about Fast X about 4 minutes after announcement. I have (and do not want) to see any of the Fast/Furious movies, they dont interest me, but marketing is so high on it, I knew about it almost instantly. Studios choose to market stuff the way they do for whatever reason and audiences eat whatever they are given. Movies I would have seen in the theater, I had 0 clue about until much.. much later, while movies I would never want to see I know long before they are released.

Ehhh this seems more like an issue of, you're in the bubbles where marketing agencies thought Fast X fans would be most likely to exist, and not in the bubbles where EEAAO marketing occurred. Because I heard about EEAAO many times in many different channels.

Seems more of an issue of the demographic you're rooted in.

[exochaft]

And that's the fault of the audiences, not the studios. We can blame studio heads for bullshit in making the film, and for bullshit in how staff who worked on those films are compensated, and the wonders of Hollywood accounting, but not for audience engagement. That's on the audience itself, 100%.

It goes both ways. There's obviously variables unique to both sides, but the state of the audience is also influenced by what the studios have done.

For example, studios have a huuuuuge influence when it comes to advertising and accessibility of movies when it comes to theaters (and streaming services to some degree). The short version is that if a studio wants to push certain films over others that don't come from their studio (such as independent films), they will pressure movie theaters to not carry certain movies else they'll pull their movies from their theaters. This also extends to streaming services, although the process is slightly different as the medium is slightly different, but the concept is the same. Such behavior extends to advertising, where they'll low key threaten platforms to pull their massive advertising big bucks if there are competing movies in the way.

When it comes to the audiences... it's a complicated topic. If anything can be said that won't get into a pages long response, I think it's fair to say that there's been a drought of good content as a whole to where people will consume mediocre content and treat it like a masterpiece. Doesn't meant there hasn't been good content, there's been some really good gems out there. Also doesn't meant there hasn't been trash content since content was a thing. However, the volume of trash content is so high nowadays that it's harder to find good content in a sea of garbage. The end result is that when your average person finds something that's even semi-palatable (even if it's not really good) in a sea of garbage, they'll consume the content readily. There appears to be a shift occuring where the average person is starting to notice such trends as these, but the masses will tend to lag behind what individuals will notice much further in advance.

When it comes to the strike... both sides are being ridiculous here. I can understand you want to demand too much in order to reach a middle ground in negotiations, but I'd say the writers are demanding way too much from a weaker bargaining position. This is why the AI topic is coming up: it's because the writing quality on average is so terrible right now that using AI to supplement and replace part of your writing team seems like a good trade-off. Of course AI won't completely erase writers, but it would separate the wheat from the chaffe. However, there's sooooo many writers in the WGA that they don't want their abilities to affect their employment (I think something around only 10-12% of the writers in the WGA are actually working at any given time). There are writers out there who aren't concerned about AI (aka, they're the good writers) as they know they'll be in demand regardless of what happens with the WGA. Furthermore, the job of a writer in a place like Hollywood has always been this way: if you're a writer selling scripts or writing for a show, you've always know it's a temporary gig with a large influx of cash... basically, it was never your main job or you always had another job (hence the trope of actors/writers being waiters trying to make it big).

If I had to point towards what the main issue it, it's the influx of new writers who are young and ignorant of the world. It's not only reflected in their writing but also in what they're complaining about. Demanding things like mandatory minimum of 6-12 writers for a show and guaranteed employment for a certain length of time is silly when it comes to what they're actually doing, and it shows their immature mentality when approaching the situation. If they were more focused on things like getting screwed out of residuals and the other abuses they actually endure, one could take them more seriously. In fact, I think the strike would be settled much faster if they appeared to be even a bit more serious about this instead of coming off like children before and after the strike occurred.

Another issue is the streaming services (and the movie studios to some degree) and how it affects the writing situation. Basically, we're on the trailing end of the streaming service content boom, where places like Netflix were throwing money at everyone to create content. Now that the streaming services are losing more and more money, those jobs are drying up. While that in and of itself isn't the issue, when it comes to ratings and actual numbers games these streaming services and studios, it affects the writers in predatory ways. For example, I'm sure people have noticed that the metrics to tout a streaming show/series as 'successful' has to ridiculous levels, where we're using metrics like minutes watched... but actual viewing numbers that actually matter are kept secret, even from the content creators in many cases (because it'd likely show how terrible a lot of their shows are doing). The end result is that the streaming services and studios end up screwing content creators, actors, and writers out of residuals from two angles: the first is that they can just underpay them because they can just make up whatever numbers they want (in some cases they won't get residuals at all because of this), and the second is that legitimate content creators and writers who want to improve content in response to their audience are hamstrung because the streamers/studios won't give them the feedback they need.

Now, there's a lot more aspects to this, but I'm already getting long. The long and short of it is that both sides are in the wrong, there is no good side. Good individuals maybe, but as a group they're both in the wrong.

[Ivanstone]

Ehhh this seems more like an issue of, you're in the bubbles where marketing agencies thought Fast X fans would be most likely to exist, and not in the bubbles where EEAAO marketing occurred. Because I heard about EEAAO many times in many different channels.

Seems more of an issue of the demographic you're rooted in.

EEAAO had relatively little marketing. They’re only gonna spend so much on a 25m movie. A few targeted marketing campaigns can’t be compared to Fast X marketing which was big and wide. Fast X marketing is literally Everything Everywhere All At Once.

I only heard of EEAAO because of MMOC. A few people posted enthusiastic reviews. It had Michelle Yeoh in it and that was just enough information for me to go see it in the theatre.

[baskev]

If it's so easy to write good stuff... where's your Oscar for best original screenplay?

Its not. But if i am not good at being a hearth surgeon i would not demand a raise if i kill many patients.
And there is a oscar for best original screenplay like you hinted at. So there are good writers.
And like i said several times in this thread. I do also think there are good writers/great writers.
Sadly also some very bad ones that get several scripts.

And i am not talking about things i feel like are wrong.
I am talking about things that can be measseured. Like if you leave plotholes in a movie a todler could spot. If a cast member needs to correct you and you call them a to die hard of a fan ( like with the witcher), or wednesday's writers who did not even get the basics on wednesday characther.
If i am a car mechanic and i instead of fixing the tire, use superglue to do it. i am a bad mechanic.

Like, do you think these AI script prompts are going to be written like "Star Wars sequel, +the good parts of the EU, +White male protagonist, +Lightsaber fights, +the parts of the prequels I liked, -woke politics, -Kathleen Kennedy" with the "If going to make bad = don't" modifier on them, or something?

nope, and i never said that. I do not care if its a man , women or droid who is the next focus.
again you are saying things here i never said. i do not like the idea of AI movie scripts.
And i did not talk about politics. you do here.

And Studios are interested in making money. And if they have their druthers they're going to use AI to pump out generic, safe, predictable films that they think are likely to turn a profit. Until the bottom drops out of that because all they're doing is producing pablum.

again i never said i liked Ai writing movies. You are filling in things here i never ever said!

And i do think they deserve more money. I am just pointing out, there are some bad writers that should not payed more. Like in many proffesions you see weak, bad, under performers that bring down the hard good workers. thats all i am talking about.


My god, what are you on. Half the stuff you are talking about i did not say. Or did not even mention.

[Ivanstone]

And i do think they deserve more money. I am just pointing out, there are some bad writers that should not payed more. Like in many proffesions you see weak, bad, under performers that bring down the hard good workers. thats all i am talking about.

When we see bad product should we be blaming the writer or the producers? The writing can be bad because the producers couldn’t be bothered to hire someone talented or alternatively a talented person was not given time to come up with something better.

Residuals are a self-correcting problem. Bad writing will be punished because no one will want to pay good money to see bad product. Sometimes bad writing will get rewarded but that’s fine because money was made. I see no reason why producers should be the only ones making money when bad product gets lucky and makes money in spite of itself.

[Fencers]

Disneylanding sucks.

Fair point, I suppose.

[JDL49]

So was my post. Works created by WGA writers are played and sold in many markets by media distributors.

Both. Although content isn't designed for packaging. It is packaged. Media rights holders distributed work digitally without the same obligation to regional licensce rights for OTA broadcast.

For example, MGM couldn't sell rights to WGN to air Dr. No without paying up residuals. Which among other things, are tied to the market distribution. And which market.

However, in digital distribution, packaging became the new way. Everything is packaged these days, and it means a lot of things. But they don't have to sell the rights in per market basis anymore. They can package Dr. No with a bunch of other stuff and sell it as one bundle that is paid out once but distributed to many markets.

Media distributors are making way more and paying way less to the workers relatively speaking, basically. "New media" was too loose a term and there was no consistent regulation market to market for what made up "new media" (i.e. digital).

So distros, being who they are, were very slick on their packaging rights.

I see. I was not expecting another residual rights kerfluffle. I would have thought that the guilds would have made sure that never happened again OR....... is what the distro's are doing with packaging possibly not legal ?

[Logwyn]

You certainly had much less choice back then but a hit show had actual longevity because there were other things supporting it. This was back in a time when you had to schedule your life around the shows you liked. I remember not wanting to do other things on Thursday night and sat there for two hours watching Cosby, Family Ties, Cheers and Night Court. Scheduling was important of course but other media and advertising were also important.

The other thing too is that the typical TV show was just 15 to 20 minutes of content and the other balance of the hour was commercials. I know the trend carried on for a while. Like "Friends" only about 20 minutes... the Simpsons like 15 minutes.

[s_bushido]

The other thing too is that the typical TV show was just 15 to 20 minutes of content and the other balance of the hour was commercials. I know the trend carried on for a while. Like "Friends" only about 20 minutes... the Simpsons like 15 minutes.

You exaggerate. Shows in the half-hour time slot are 22-23 minutes. In the hour, they're 42-45. Obviously that includes the "Previously on..." and title sequence stuff which reduces the runtime of the actual content, but there's no shot that half the airtime is/was commercials.

[Fencers]

I see. I was not expecting another residual rights kerfluffle. I would have thought that the guilds would have made sure that never happened again OR....... is what the distro's are doing with packaging possibly not legal ?

It's legal. Everything is packaged. You can't really do business otherwise. There are only 3 major talent agencies and a handful of studios. If you don't package X and Y together, you really are not gonna be able to get anything done. The costs are too high as well.

Packaging has existed, legally, forever. Since the dawn of Hollywood. People just didn't expect how narrow it was gonna become or the extent to which streaming and so on would go on to be.

Many services such as Apple TV (2019), Peacock (2020), Paramount Plus (2021), D+ (2019), HBO Max (2020) are still new. Legacy streaming platforms had many iterations and only got original programming production in recent years. Hulu, Prime, Tubi, etc- these services were all acquired programming for the majority of their life cycle.

Nobody, absolutely nobody, is ahead of the game like Netflix. Their algorithms is the KFC's original recipe of entertainment media. Playing catch-up to Flix and their robo-CEO is bonkers on the cost scale.

You can't do that without packaging. This is why "mini-rooms" (which Netflix pioneered and made standard) is a huge point of contention for the WGA.

[JDL49]

It's legal. Everything is packaged. You can't really do business otherwise. There are only 3 major talent agencies and a handful of studios. If you don't package X and Y together, you really are not gonna be able to get anything done. The costs are too high as well.

Packaging has existed, legally, forever. Since the dawn of Hollywood. People just didn't expect how narrow it was gonna become or the extent to which streaming and so on would go on to be.

Many services such as Apple TV (2019), Peacock (2020), Paramount Plus (2021), D+ (2019), HBO Max (2020) are still new. Legacy streaming platforms had many iterations and only got original programming production in recent years. Hulu, Prime, Tubi, etc- these services were all acquired programming for the majority of their life cycle.

Nobody, absolutely nobody, is ahead of the game like Netflix. Their algorithms is the KFC's original recipe of entertainment media. Playing catch-up to Flix and their robo-CEO is bonkers on the cost scale.

You can't do that without packaging. This is why "mini-rooms" (which Netflix pioneered and made standard) is a huge point of contention for the WGA.

OK are they negotiating to correct the loss of residuals in packaginng ? There is the possibility of changing laws I guess but not a very high one probably.

The mini-room thing though is bad. IIRC that falls under the rights and perogitives of management. The DGA got past their equivilant on the safety issue. I can't see anything like that with writing. BTW would I be being cynical in thinking the studio's were happy to push set safety onto someone else ?