Writers Strike & AI

[Fencers]

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-...g-camposfilms-
https://medium.com/yardcouch-com/hol...y-2aa99c6f11fb

for those who don't understand just how much of a racket Hollywood accounting is.

"Hollywood accounting" is so infamously shady. It even is used as a term in other businesses for "make it work".

When I worked for Sony Online Entertainment, the CFO used the term often when we turned in the productivity reports. Everyone knew it was a racket. SOE wasn't the only game in town. Hollywood is though.

Working at Warner Bros was so bad I got out less than 3 months into the gig. And it did not end well for the Albany WB office- largely because of the creative money management. I think there are only 2 people left from the original team and they were moved elsewhere in the company. Fuck that place.

Bunch of shysters.

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The writers are not entitled to profits from Parks, Merch, Cruises, Sports, News etc..

I thought of one point of last nite however that does need to be brought up. Studios are
taking product to their streamers now without any side trips to pay windows. This will in
time kill cable for this kind of content but until it does an adjustment may have to be
made or compensation increased from the start. Something.

The WGA believes they ought ot be paid relative to the value of their work, however. From the perspective of a creator, they do not care how Disney generated the money if they are using the creative work they produced to sell products.

What writers are entitled to is exactly what the strike is over. Financial entitlements are created by humans- WGAS can and are striking because they disagree with the current allotment.

Also Disney or whomever can't pay you out from any one source. It does not work that like as there are various contracts, options, and points that are part of a creative talent agreement to work. These can be upfront, backend, or a mixture of both and for different roles, a creative talent may have participated in during and after production and distribution, and marketing.

Working in media is not like punching a clock at Arby's.

[Nymrohd]

I'm reminded of Shakespeare's "Macbeth."

You are not going nearly far back enough.
The entirety of Greek, Roman and Sanskrit theater were heavily political, both tragic and especially comic plays (largely satires)

[JDL49]

"Hollywood accounting" is so infamously shady. It even is used as a term in other businesses for "make it work".

When I worked for Sony Online Entertainment, the CFO used the term often when we turned in the productivity reports. Everyone knew it was a racket. SOE wasn't the only game in town. Hollywood is though.

Working at Warner Bros was so bad I got out less than 3 months into the gig. And it did not end well for the Albany WB office- largely because of the creative money management. I think there are only 2 people left from the original team and they were moved elsewhere in the company. Fuck that place.

Bunch of shysters.

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The WGA believes they ought ot be paid relative to the value of their work, however. From the perspective of a creator, they do not care how Disney generated the money if they are using the creative work they produced to sell products.

What writers are entitled to is exactly what the strike is over. Financial entitlements are created by humans- WGAS can and are striking because they disagree with the current allotment.

Also Disney or whomever can't pay you out from any one source. It does not work that like as there are various contracts, options, and points that are part of a creative talent agreement to work. These can be upfront, backend, or a mixture of both and for different roles, a creative talent may have participated in during and after production and distribution, and marketing.

Working in media is not like punching a clock at Arby's.

We simply don't agree. AMPAS can refuse anything* along those lines if it really wants to play hard ball.

*Revenue Sharing does not fall under the mandatory items of labor law. The studios can refuse to bargain
over it and if the Guild refuses to bargain to the point of Impasse they are screwed. Lets hope they just go
for better minimums and other things that fall under the mandatory column.

[Fencers]

We simply don't agree. AMPAS can refuse anything* along those lines if it really wants to play hard ball.

*Revenue Sharing does not fall under the mandatory items of labor law. The studios can refuse to bargain
over it and if the Guild refuses to bargain to the point of Impasse they are screwed. Lets hope they just go
for better minimums and other things that fall under the mandatory column.

That's what a labor strike is designed to do. To change the practice of business.

[Kaleredar]

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 there are good writers that write bad movies, same as their are good directors that make bad movies, producers, etc, etc.

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.

This is all completely subjective. Or at the very least, can have wildly differing results.

Lots of extremely popular and beloved movies have plotholes. In back to the Future 2, why is old Biff able to bring the time machine back to the 2015 future that Marty and doc are in after having given younger biff the sports almanac in 1955? According to the rules of the film universe, the universe should have immediately changed to a 2015 version of the Biff 1985 where he's successful. But it doesn't. Massive plothole in the universe right there. But people still love Back to the Future part 2.

Many properties have tone/character shifts from their original form. The 21 Jumpstreet film was completely different in tone from the 21 Jumpstreet show. It went from being a police procedural drama to a slapstick buddy-cop comedy. Complete change-up of the tone of an intellectual property. But people still love the 21/22 Jump Street films.

And being a "super fan" doesn't mean a project will come out good. The Rings of Power TV series showrunners were both huge Tolkein fans. The series was not particularly well recieved. Meanwhile, Andor, probably one of the best Star Wars things... ever... was showrun by a guy who really doesn't care about Star Wars, and just wanted to tell a good story.

And those are just three examples off the top of my head in relation to the three examples of "obvious problems that should be easily avoidable" you gave, wherein what you said clearly wasn't a problem. There are scores of examples of an idea working in one iteration, and not working in another.

If i am a car mechanic and i instead of fixing the tire, use superglue to do it. i am a bad mechanic.

If you don't know how to fix cars you probably shouldn't go about telling people how to fix them, and should take only mincing guesses at what's actually wrong with it. You might know enough to see the check engine light is on and that means something's wrong, but that doesn't mean you know that that light is actually telling you that your crankshaft is out of position, and that absolutely doesn't mean you know how to fix the engine.

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.

I bring up politics only because that is precisely what people identify as being what's "wrong" with a movie when that almost is never the case. Captain Marvel wasn't a hum-drum movie because it had Brie Larson and she said a thing about male reporters that one time, it was a hum-drum movie because it had a generic script and unclear characterization.

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.

And I'm saying it's not so simple. "Stop hiring the bad writers/directors, only hire the good ones" is not a simple prospect.

Rian Johnson directed The Last Jedi, a film some people who call themselves Star Wars fans disliked (often for varying degrees of stupid reasons, but we wont get into that here.) And Rian Johnson also directed Looper and the two Knives Out films, all three of which were widely acclaimed. Rian Johnson ALSO directed Ozymandias, widely considered to be one of the best episodes of Breaking Bad, an extremely well-regarded show.

So someone saying "Don't hire Rian Johnson, he's a bad director" because he made a Star Wars film that some people don't like clearly isn't a concept that holds much water. And you can say that for many other directors/writers who have had good and bad projects. Spielberg, Lucas, Scorcese... the list goes on.

[JDL49]

That's what a labor strike is designed to do. To change the practice of business.

It doesn't work if your union either goes out of existance or goes under Federal Receivership for bad faith bargaining.

[Fencers]

It doesn't work if your union either goes out of existance or goes under Federal Receivership for bad faith bargaining.

That's really unlikely to be the case here. Extremely so.

[Kaleredar]

It doesn't work if your union either goes out of existance or goes under Federal Receivership for bad faith bargaining.

They can probably quite demonstrably show that the motion picture industry makes hundreds of billions of dollars every year and that their work, without which the industry literally could not exist, is seeing less and less share of the profits.

Your Hangup seems to be “there aren’t commercials to make money off of anymore, they should just accept that!” which 1) isn’t even always true and 2) isn’t even relevant. They aren’t after “profits from advertising,” they’re after receiving just compensation for their work. And the only people arguing otherwise are multi-millionaire studio heads.

[BeepBoo]

maybe.. just maybe, we have fight in common here and could accomplish something to both our benefit if we, I don't know... WORKED TOGETHER AND SUPPORTED EACH OTHER???

OR maybe just get the fuck out of the way of progress that is the equivalent to a plow/jack hammer/microsoft excel/whatever other tool you can think of that helped serve to make some workers more efficient while invalidating a lot of other workers in the area.

Just because AI can do a LOT of things when we previously thought manual labor was the only thing tools were going to be good for doesn't make it any more or less the exact same situation that has been happening since forever. "But muh livelihood didn't take this into account and now my life is getting uprooted!" not the rest of the world's problem. Adapt and overcome, or go the way of the dodo.

Man I can't wait for the future of 100% truly novel shows that I can watch whenever I want, that have never been seen before.

[Endus]

Man I can't wait for the future of 100% truly novel shows that I can watch whenever I want, that have never been seen before.

Man, do you seriously not have even the least understanding of how modern generative AI works.

[BeepBoo]

Man, do you seriously not have even the least understanding of how modern generative AI works.

Oh no, I do. And I also see how fast it will be able to advance.

[Endus]

Oh no, I do. And I also see how fast it will be able to advance.

If you did, you'd understand why "truly novel" isn't something generative AI is capable of.

[BeepBoo]

If you did, you'd understand why "truly novel" isn't something generative AI is capable of.

Again, you're underestimating how fast this will evolve. Generative AI is simply the beginning of something much more powerful. Besides that, it's nearly identical to how a human learns and produces stuff, so unless you're making the argument that most humans can't generate "novel content" as well (since literally everything they've ever witnessed has in some way, shape, or form led them to think of exactly what they're dreaming up), we can skip the minutia.

[micwini]

you know what this has a vibe of? people blaming the cashier at the supermarket for prices of goods and the script they are given that they HAVE to say to every customer or get fired as - if its the cashier came up with all that bullshit and is personaly out to annoy you. writers for shows are given directions and there is only so much they can do ESPECIALY WHEN THEY ARE NOT EVEN THERE TO TAKE CARE OF THE INEVITABLE REWRITES. which is part of the concerns brought up during this strikes, coincidentally. that writers are rushed through a few weeks of initial cramming and then are not even there for the rest of the filming, but they sure are the ones being blamed for everything.

Terrible comparison. It is like complaining to a painter if their painting is shit. A painter can get commissioned to make a painting of X, Y or Z. In the end they can either make a good painting, or a bad painting. The painting wouldn't be bad because of what he painted, but how he painted it. Same exact thing goes for writing.

In general, this strike means nothing. People complained when ballpens came out. Shitty writers will remain shitty writers and writing still produces a form of entertainment and in the end, entertainment products are not really "necessary".

[Endus]

Again, you're underestimating how fast this will evolve. Generative AI is simply the beginning of something much more powerful.

Generative AI isn't magic, dude, and you're talking about magic. Stop listening to techbro propaganda. Same way crypto's never gonna replace real money. Same way the Metaverse isn't ever going to replace the Internet.

Besides that, it's nearly identical to how a human learns and produces stuff

Not even a little bit, no. You really don't understand generative AI systems.

[jonnysensible]

humans in the field picking fruit and then stacking it, groundworkers cooking in the sun and freezing in the cold, tradesmen dying young from inhaling doom at the construction site while the robots paint pictures and do poetry.

You are soulless dreamers.

[Soulwind]

If you did, you'd understand why "truly novel" isn't something generative AI is capable of.

https://tvtropes.org/

We don't do truly novel either.

AI, right now, is good enough for brainstorming, drafting and even touching up a script, reducing the number of writers needed for a project.

The final product may or may not be as good, but it'll certainly be cheaper and faster, and studio executives are dying to use it to cut corners.

Will it replace every single writing job overnight? No. Will it eventually? Maybe. Should people in artistic fields be concerned? Certainly.

If nothing is done to soften the blow, thousands, if not millions of people will lose their jobs pretty quickly. The technology is inevitable, but we can control how quickly and harmfully it's introduced into the market, and give creators and consumers time to adapt to it.

Neither the artists nor the audience should be in any rush to get this thing in the hands of producers, so why would anyone but them be against setting some rules?

[BeepBoo]

Generative AI isn't magic, dude, and you're talking about magic.

Correct. Being capable of learning, self-improvement, and evolution on its own isn't magic. It's how it works.

[Endus]

Correct. Being capable of learning, self-improvement, and evolution on its own isn't magic. It's how it works.

You don't seem to understand the strict limitations inherent to generative AI in these matters. They can rapidly approach a plateau for certain skills, and that plateau may be higher than the average human plateau, but that plateau has significant limitations a human brain does not. Innovation, for example, is entirely impossible for generative AI. Not a matter of "currently out of reach"; the systems used cannot generative innovative concepts.

[Witchblade77]

Terrible comparison. It is like complaining to a painter if their painting is shit. A painter can get commissioned to make a painting of X, Y or Z. In the end they can either make a good painting, or a bad painting. The painting wouldn't be bad because of what he painted, but how he painted it. Same exact thing goes for writing.

In general, this strike means nothing. People complained when ballpens came out. Shitty writers will remain shitty writers and writing still produces a form of entertainment and in the end, entertainment products are not really "necessary".

nope. its like commissioning a painter to make a painting of a shitty subject in a specific shitty style with mediocre paints on mediocre canvas and giving them barely enough time to finish a draft of a painting and then complaining that the painting is bad and its all painter's fault.

there is only so much you can do no matter how good you are.

you think show and movie writers have far more power over what they end up producing or how they get paid for it than they actualy do.