Friday, November 2, 2007

Between a rock and... well, another f**king rock.

So, a friend of mine wrote (and said I could post) this:

"Anyway, I'm dying to post on your site but bc most of my background is WGA live-action, I sorta feel like an animation impostor. But I've written a bunch of animation and the project I'm doing right now with ******** is animated, so I'm silly to feel that way. My question to you is this: Do most of the members of the WGA even give a flying f*** about animation writers? I know I didn't -- until I became one.

Is animation even one of the main things on the table? I'm not sure the guild has ever or will ever care about us. They'd sell us out for a hundredth of a point of DVD sales. No matter how this strike resolves, do you believe it will actually benefit animation writers?? I'd really, really, really like to believe that, but I'm not sure I do."

And to that I say, so far, you are right. The strike rules specifically carve out 839 / IATSE projects in television, while making a grab at animated features. Features, I suppose, are a gray area. TV Animation has been IATSE for as long as I know.

The fact is, there isn't an animation writer on the planet that wouldn't prefer to be represented in a way that gets them residuals on reuse of their efforts. And the fact is, the WGA has tossed animation writers to the wolves in return for... I don't know what. I wasn't part of the WGA at the time.

The fact is - Fairly Oddparents, Spongebob... shows like that, they rerun MORE than most shows when they first air. Syndication? No. Because they are owned lock, stock and shmock by the channel that paid for them. But on those channels? I can tell you by the BMI royalties (music) that they have the crap played out of them.

And writers are paid once.

If given the choice, I would rather see the union I am within - 839 - fight for the same rights that the union I am also in - the WGA - for the job I do... which is the same job I do for both unions.

I would rather see Story Board artists - who are not part of the WGA - get the same respect that any writer gets, when it comes to animation.

Do I have answers?

No.

But I do know what I think I'd like to see.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

How's this:

Writers stay in 839 and split “story” residuals equally with the storyboard artist and director. Whether it’s a story-driven show or a script-driven show, split the residuals equally. Keeps it simple and clean – and it’s better than collecting nothing.

Anonymous said...

Not a bad start... I have deeper theories about this.

I'll post on that later...

Anonymous said...

Not a bad start... I have deeper theories about this.

I'll post on that later...

Anonymous said...

In live action, does the WGA split the writers' residuals with the directors? Or doesn't the directors' guild handle that for them?

Anonymous said...

In live action, the directors collect their own residuals, via their union.

Miles said...

Another site to discuss the WGA strike on-

http://outsidetvsafe.blogspot.com/