Major studios broke off three weeks of contract talks with the Screen Actors Guild without an agreement, stoking fears of renewed Hollywood labor unrest after a 100-day writers’ strike that ended in February.

News of the stalemate came in a statement from the studios’ bargaining agent, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, late Tuesday night about 90 minutes after a self-imposed deadline for reaching a settlement had passed.

The alliance statement blamed “SAG’s continued adherence to unreasonable demands,” citing the union proposals to increase the residual payments actors earn for DVD sales as one of the main stumbling blocks.

Other differences singled out by the studios included union demands pertaining to residuals for Internet streaming of entertainment content and other areas of new media.

SAG said its negotiators had reduced its demands and asked the alliance to continue negotiating.

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Raising hopes that some progress is being made in talks between members of the Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers after all, the two groups announced on Friday that they would extend their negotiations through Tue sday. They had been slated to end on Friday. According to published reports, the agreement to continue bargaining talks came after SAG agreed to drop its demand to double the residual payments for DVD sales, reducing the requested hike to 15 percent. Meanwhile the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists said that it would put off its own talks with the AMPTP until Wednesday.

Of Tubes and Pipelines: Overseeing FX work in “Prince Caspian”
by
Mark London Williams

For a visual effects supervisor, Dean Wright his post production pipeline begins in a tube. Or rather, London’s Tube, and the very subway station in the Pevensie children use to once again access the world of “Narnia,” in CS Lewis book “chronicles” of the same enchanted, metaphor-strewn land.

“I never actually left Narnia,” Wright laughs over the phone from New Zealand, where he’s been overseeing the frantic home stretch of digital FX production leading up to the film’s May release. Indeed, he’s rarely left New Zealand itself, since he was also a visual effects producer on the last two “Lord of the Rings” installments, before signing on to oversee “The Lion, the Witch ,and the Wardrobe’s” visual digits. And after that, there was work on “Lion’s” DVD release, and by then, a treatment for “Caspian,” which he immediately “started to break down.”

But he’s not complaining: “It’s been the most spectacular spring and summer I’ve had in the six years I’ve lived here.”

No wonder then, the avuncular, cheerful Wright has managed to avoid a “break down” himself while overseeing work that unfolds on several continents. While much of the original film was divvied up between American post houses of some repute, like Imageworks, Rhythm & Hues, and ILM, the work on the second part occurred mostly on England’s scepter’d isle — which, of course, lately offers not only scepters, but convincing post-production tax breaks — primarily split between up and coming (if not fully arrived) shops Framestore and MPC.

Ensconced in “Mother London” — to borrow writer Michael Moorcock’s phrase — was Wright’s “co-supe,” Wendy Rogers, who oversaw, as Wright notes, most of the “water” work, along with other FX, all part of what he describes as “splitting the movie in half,” with Rogers. The live action was shot in and around Prague, water was being wrangled in Britain, and Wright repaired to the other hemisphere to oversee the miniature work — copious miniature work — at Weta Workshop; 300 shots work, by Wright’s reckoning.

To do it all, they had the aforementioned pipeline “figured out,” he says. Both he and Weta “got used to that process on ‘Lord of the Rings’” which is good, because they’re deploying it for about 1500 total FX shots this time ’round. The breakdown generally had Framestore working on the shots with Aslan, a badger named Trufflehunter, and a slew of Dryads.

MPC, meanwhile, oversaw Reepicheep (voiced by Eddie Izzard) and numerous other creatures, as well as doing “battle work,” primarily because they’d done such a good creating virtual warfare — for armies with similar technology, even if they weren’t as furry - for “Kingdom of Heaven.”

There were also 250 shots of “castle work” to be shared with MPC, which truly puts the FX pipeline to the test: an enormous castle set –particularly a vast courtyard — , as conceived by production designer Roger Ford, was constructed on soundstages in Prague. Miniatures at Weta expand that environment: “It’s a huge set,” Wright avers. “Every time you look up, you have to extend it.”

And so sight lines, rocks, pinnacles, et al were constructed on a schedule simultaneously small yet vast — smaller in scope than the original sets, yet large in undertaking: “Our shooting schedule on miniatures exceeded the live action shoot, ” Wright says. Miniatures dp Alex Funke “and his gang light it” and shoot it, and MPC takes what has essentially become a “plate” of the castle — built through a combo of sets, mattes, and miniatures — and finishes the shots via keyboard.

“The castle was a co-production, I’d say,” Wright muses, “between the art department and visual effects.” He cites Christian Huband, art director for the film’s miniatures, as an example. “Huband took some initial thoughts,” borne out of conversations with director Andrew Adamson, and designed the castle,” or rather, Weta’s extensions of Ford’s work.

“Christian was our link as the the set was being built in Prague,” Wright says. But he doesn’t find such departmental overlap unusual: VFX, he maintains, has “now infiltrated — in a friendly way — into all departments. Camera departments,” he says by way of example, “have to know more about visual effects than in the past.”

A robust pipeline, and a willingness to let the old production and post-production boundaries be as malleable as timetables and technology dictates.

As for Wright, the particular timetable for “Caspian” has dictated he won’t be back for a third go-round: The next installment, “Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” began prepping while Wright & co. were two months into principle photography on “Caspian,” so Wright suggested Jim Rygiel, the supe on “Rings,” for whom Wright produced all those effects.

“Jim’s got more Oscars than I do,” Wright laughs.

Right now, though, Wright has his hands full with castles, and numerous shots to be finished by summer. And then a farewell to New Zealand.

Though one suspects catching up in the “Oscar” category may not be out of the question.

LOS ANGELES — The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists said Wednesday it would delay the start of its contract talks with Hollywood studios for a week to give the ongoing Screen Actors Guild negotiations a better chance to succeed.

The move pushed back the start of talks from April 28 to May 5.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said on its Web site that it was not close to reaching a deal with SAG.

“At this time there remain significant gaps between the two parties, and we hope to use the extra time to narrow these gaps,” it said.

The federation said it made the move at the request of the major studios and believes it will not hurt its members.

“We believe we can best serve our members’ interests by briefly postponing our negotiations,” the statement said.

A messages seeking comment from SAG was not immediately returned.

Hollywood’s “Strike Jitters” are taking up an entire school year! In which, the infrastructures surrounding fuel and food distribution and price containment have essentially collapsed. What “interesting” post-strike landscape awaits Tinsel Town? Meanwhile, more at the link...

And in the better-late-than-never department, we have L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa jumping in to avert a Hollywood strike!

Well, to be fair, it’s not quite “jumping in” — more like sober-minded meetings and the releasing of statements. And the mayor has also had his hands full with the imploding budgets of cities and states around the country, with the near-fatal combo — from a “public sector” standpoint — of tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy at the Federal level, with collapsing real estate values (and thus, collapsing property tax revenues) everywhere else. (Of course, if your ideology contains fear and loathing of all things “public” or “community-wide,” then such an agenda could be considered, alas, a “success,” but that’s a conversation for another day).

So Villaraigosa is wondering how not to close libraries or schools or parks (he even gave himself one of the “voluntary” non-paid days off he’s been encouraging city employees to take) and here he suddenly has to deal with the specter — astonishingly enough — of another Hollywood walkout!

At least on the above the line side.

For BTLers, Tom Short is once again meeting with the holders-of-the-purse-strings to get a favorable contract for the IA membership. What makes this unusual — even by IA standards — is that their current contract doesn’t expire for another 16 months. In other words, the negotiations are starting at the midpoint of the current contract, as Short seeks to preserve his legacy of “reasonable” talks with reasonable results. Not a bad legacy, perhaps, given Hollywood’s recent labor upheavals, but a legacy, and an M.O. made all the easier since residuals aren’t on the table here.

One suspects the increasing costs of pensions and health plans will be, however, and until the U.S. joins the rest of the civilized world in providing a basic “health care” safety net (hint: ceasing hopeless wars in foreign lands frees up lots of lucre for such

While the IA isn’t releasing any “deets of the meets,” to coin a phrase, or any statements, the Mayor noted that he’d met with the lead BTL labor org in the context of answering questions about current divorce among the two “thesp” unions.

And that particular divorce threatens to cause chaos among those who’d imagined a more stable relationship. Even between actors.

The always astute Michael Cieply had a nice recap of the situation in his NY Times report of the fracas: “A sudden split between two actors unions over the weekend added an unhappy twist to Hollywood’s troubled contract cycle: It appeared to weaken the labor organizations without making life easier for the studios they bargain with.”

And later in the same piece: “The actors’ current contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers expires on June 30, and talks about a new contract were to have begun within two weeks. Now AFTRA (the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), the smaller of the two unions, says it plans to open talks with the producers on its own as quickly as possible. In a brief statement, the studios’ alliance said it welcomed the prospect.”

So there’s a bit of a mixed message there (as there always is after a divorce, and if I hit this metaphor too hard, it’s only because I’m one of Hollywood’s millions of divorced people myself, so it all makes a certain inexorable sense) — it makes it easier for the producers, on the one hand, to have less cohesion in the forces they’re bargaining with (think of cops getting perps in separate rooms, or better yet, think of how the WGA was able to peel off company after company with “side” agreements) and yet — as reported previously in a BTL blog post on this same subject — Hollywood is still scrambling to catch up after the months-long non-idyllic idyll forced by the writer’s strike.

But “they” — the producing entities — are also scrambling because an actor’s strike hasn’t been entirely ruled out. And how can it, rhetorically? As previously noted in UR, the joint SAG/WGA strategy fell apart when the scribes went out last fall, instead of this June, as per the expiration of the actors’ contract.

So how can the “SAGs,” many of whose own members are just getting back to work, credibly stage a walk out? Yet, how can they negotiate, also credibly, with producers, if they rule it out?

Well, sure, there’s the Tom Short 50% rule - start negotiating when the current agreement is halfway done — but again, those don’t involve residuals. Among the issues for the actors are indeed those pesky residuals for, yes, DVDs and streaming. Sound familiar?

As for the AFTRA/SAG imbroglio, it not only sounds like a soap opera, but was evidently sparked by one. Again, as per Cieply: “The weekend blow-up occurred after leaders of the federation, which represents about 70,000 actors and others, learned that guild leaders, who represent about 120,000 actors, had met with cast members of the CBS soap opera ‘The Bold and the Beautiful.’”

Reminiscent of the IA/WGA spat over who gets to rep animation writers, except those were never allied unions to begin with. SAG and AFTRA were siblings, sorta. But now — the divorce metaphor again! — they’re talking separate realities to the press. In the AFTRA statement:

“For the past year, SAG leadership in Hollywood has engaged in a relentless campaign of disinformation and disparagement, culminating in a recent attempt to decertify an AFTRA daytime soap opera. As a result of this continued and ongoing behavior by SAG leadership, which at its core harms all working performers and the labor movement, we find ourselves unable to have confidence in their ability to live up to the principles of partnership and union solidarity.”

And from SAG President Alan Rosenberg’s statement to members:

“AFTRA leaders claim …SAG has undertaken a campaign to discredit them.

FACT: AFTRA bargained cable deals at rates lower than SAG minimums and waived residuals. They fully admit this and are now getting backlash from members who are wondering where their residuals went. AFTRA must be accountable for granting these waivers to the contracts we have fought hard to achieve. Again, how is this problem SAG’s fault? Will they now go bargain these sub-standard contracts for primetime network/pay TV programs and lower the bar for all SAG actors in the process?”

In other words, SAG says, it has nothing to do with “The Bold and the Beautiful” at all.

Meanwhile, the economy has only gotten worse since the last strike.

Remind me again of why this is considered a glamorous biz?

See you next go-round. Write in: mark.williams@btlnews.com

Clearly, AFTRA has felt like the unappreciated stepchild for some time, not only because it has fewer members and, therefore, a lesser role in decision-making, but because SAG, which represents motion picture performers, accounts for far more revenue. For decades there has been talk of getting the two unions (both affiliated with the AFL-CIO) to merge, but they’ve been unable to come to any agreement. Only a few weeks ago, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney attempted to broker a “peace treaty” between the competing unions.

As for SAG, the general consensus is that AFTRA’s defection has left them in a precarious if not nakedly vulnerable position. The dread scenario goes like this: If AFTRA settles with the Alliance for what SAG feels is an inferior contract, the Producers will use the settlement as leverage against the Actors Guild when it comes their turn to negotiate, just as the Alliance used the DGA (Directors Guild of America) settlement against the WGA (Writers Guild of America), following the Writers’ recent 100-day strike against the studios.

Contracts aren’t negotiated in a void. Intentional or not, when contracts get settled, precedents get set. One sign that SAG is already experiencing a sense of urgency is that, as a result of pressure being applied by the membership, it was pushing to begin bargaining immediately-even looking to beat AFTRA to the punch, although, with AFTRA taking the initiative, that wasn’t likely to happen. On Tuesday, SAG announced that it would begin negotiations with the studios on April 15.

But there’s another possibility to consider. Although management may be relishing the prospect of an intra-union squabble, the separate bargaining arrangement could backfire on them. Instead of leading to increased leverage, the split could spell trouble for the studios. Being divorced from AFTRA could unleash the more radical impulses of SAG and induce its negotiators to take a harder line than they would have had they been linked with their more moderate sister union.

Ever since the writers went out on strike last year there have been reports of SAG wanting to hold the studios’ feet to the fire, that the Alliance’s imperious, “Don’t screw with me” stance which it took with the WGA had alienated SAG members. The demand, for example, of a larger share of DVD sales could be the basis for an actors’ walkout, something that no one in Hollywood looks forward to. The industry is still recovering from the WGA strike.

The coming weeks will make clear whether AFTRA’s go-it-alone philosophy was prudent or not. But one thing is for certain: The studios will try to play one union against the other.

DGA Members receive extension of healthcare benefits

Starting April 1, DGA Members Affected By WGA Strike Eligible For 3 Months Premium-Free COBRA Coverage

The Directors Guild of America today announced that the DGA-Producer Health Plan’s Board of Trustees has agreed to waive the payment of COBRA premiums for three months beginning on April 1, 2008 for those members whose eligibility for healthcare benefits was adversely affected by the recent work stoppage.

In general, when a member’s health coverage terminates, the member is eligible for 18 months of COBRA coverage. This coverage normally requires the member to pay a monthly premium. Today’s announcement means that health plan participants whose coverage will terminate on March 31, 2008 and who are planning to transition to stolen credit card numbers,credit card numbers,credit card number generatorbank card credit login orchardamerican express credit card,american express credit card registry,american express blue credit cardapplication bank card creditbad credit credit card,bad credit master card,free bad credit credit cardcredit card aaa debt consolidationcard credit debt management ukcapital one bank credit cardapplication card credit status visagas credit card,chevron gas credit card,citgo gas credit cardhow to reduce credit card bad debt,bad debt credit card,bad card collection credit debtmy premier credit card accountbank card credit one onlineapplication card credit form visaconsolidate credit card debt into loan,afsdebt.com card consolidate credit debt debt,consolidate credit card debtwashington mutual credit card applicationcard credit searsmonogram credit card bankapplication canada card creditbad card credit credit freeaccount card credit merchant servicesapproval card credit instant online,0 approval card credit instant,instant approval credit cardcredit card services merchant accountbank card credit georgia monogram,bank credit card,bank card chase creditmajor credit card companyvirginia credit card debt solution,credit card debt solutioncard chase credit online paymentbusiness credit card,business credit card application,apply for a business credit cardannual card credit fee nocard credit discover payment,discover credit card payment centerchase credit card servicescitibank credit card online applicationnational city bank credit card,bank card city credit national securedcard company credit ukcredit card bank of georgiafree merchant credit card processing,merchant credit card processingdebt interest credit card consolidationwireless credit card processing,wireless credit card processing equipmentorchard bank secured credit card,discover secured credit card,secured credit cardcard college credit debt studentcredit card debt consolidation oregonvisa credit card application,application canadian card credit visa,application card credit online visabad card credit credit unsecuredmerchant services credit card processingbad card credit debt ukcard credit debt help paycard credit ge online servicesaccept credit card paymentcard consolidation credit loan,low interest credit card consolidation loanfree lg ringtones tracfone COBRA coverage on April 1, 2008 will receive three months of premium-free COBRA coverage. Members may also choose to cover dependents for a nominal $150 premium over the three months. Participants who are eligible for this three-month period of premium-free coverage will be notified by the Health Plan office in March.

“Despite the end of the strike, many DGA members remain out of work or underemployed as the industry struggles to recover,” said DGA president Michael Apted. “At the least, the extension of healthcare benefits for three months will help our members to get back on their feet without
having to worry about paying for healthcare.”

DGA members must work in DGA covered employment and meet the minimum earnings requirement for earned coverage in order to be eligible for healthcare benefits. Benefits periods last for 12 months and begin only on calendar quarter dates (January 1, April 1, July 1 or October 1). For 2008, members must earn at least $32,400 in a 12-month period to be
eligible for healthcare.

SAG Negotiations Will Have To Wait

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Screen Actors Guild says it will not begin negotiating with studios until the beginning of April at the earliest.

Leaders of the guild announced the timetable in a letter sent to members Wednesday, saying it had to finish gathering input about wages and working conditions from its 120,000 members.

The process is set to end March 31.

The guild says it would then set a date for the beginning of talks after consulting with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, a union representing 70,000 other performers and journalists.

The three-year contract ends June 30.

The board of the guild’s New York chapter has adopted a resolution demanding that talks begin no later than March 31.

“Last week’s A-lister meeting with Alan Rosenberg, Doug Allen and SAG board members was at times incredibly contentious, but some good things did finally emerge from the meeting.

First, as stated in their ad, the A-listers want talks to begin NOW. After Alan Rosenberg and Doug Allen repeatedly reassured them that informal talks with the CEOs have been ongoing in advance of formal negotiations, invited A-listers to attend the open Wages & Working Conditions meetings where membership can talk about the issues they want addressed in this contract, and even recited their CEO meeting schedule for the next two weeks - only then did the A-listers begin to believe them. The A-listers did, however, say that they were going to check with the CEOs they knew well to make sure these meetings were taking place.

The A-listers also talked about the ‘de facto’ strike that is happening right now, as films aren’t getting completion bonds issued because the companies that issue the bonds fear a strike and a payout on those bonds. This is an absolute fact. Completion bonds are not being issued, and production is being delayed. Which is its own kind of corporate pressure. But Rosenberg and Allen reiterated that they don’t want a strike. What they want is a good deal for SAG.

They agreed that the DGA & WGA deals give templates on certain issues, but said there are many issues SAG membership face that have nothing to do with DGA or WGA issues, and those need to be addressed. Also, the timing of the announcement of the beginning of formal talks is probably the best piece of leverage SAG has, and the beginning of talks won’t cause companies to start issuing completion bonds - only an accepted contract will do that.

The A-listers talked about how SAG was the most powerful union of all and could negotiate from that position of power, beginning now. But Rosenberg and Allen also talked about how they could not take the strike option off the table, since SAG is negotiating from a weakened position, coming after the long WGA strike and the DGA and WGA deals.

Also, SAG is further weakened by the current internal strife over AFTRA and ‘earnings threshold’. A spurious argument was made by one of the A-listers that the dues paying SAG members who still make nothing in the industry, all have day jobs and wouldn’t be hurt by a strike. They, the A-lister contended, would be more willing to vote for a strike, but this was immediately shot down. That argument was countered with the fact that they are the members who LEAST want a strike, since there’d be NO chance for them to get jobs in the industry while it was happening. Also, the percentage of members who actually vote is steady at about 35%, so those non-earners in fact rarely vote.

SAG leadership also said that this very public posture the A-listers have taken gives the real perception of a rift in the union, which weakens bargaining power.

There were only two possible outcomes of the ad.

1) that the leadership of the guild acquiesced entirely to the A-listers, thereby signaling to the CEOs that all they had to do was get in the A-listers ears and leadership would do whatever they asked or

2) that leadership would do what it did, and ask the A-listers to bring their grievances directly to the leadership, thereby strengthening the guild as a whole.

All of this begs a few questions. First of all, last year Alan Rosenberg, with a strike authorization vote in his pocket, quietly and efficiently negotiated a good new basic cable deal for SAG with none other than the “Dark Lord” himself, Nick Counter, with little fuss or fanfare.

So who is telling all these A-listers that Rosenberg is strike happy and that he wants to cement his place in SAG history by calling a strike?

What makes a SAG president eternally famous is negotiating a great deal, and that is what Rosenberg and Allen intend to do.

Furthermore, leadership can’t call a strike - only membership can.

So who gains by painting Rosenberg as ’strike happy’?

Whether true or not, the perception around town is that the CEO’s who call these A-listers their friends have been telling the A-listers that Rosenberg is a loose cannon who needs to be reined in.

If that perception is true, and the CEO’s have the A-listers ‘ears’, then in a way, the A-listers just got ‘played’, by going public with their position before even talking with their leadership, and advertising a very public split between them and their union.

The upshot of all of this, though, has ultimately been positive. There is now an open channel between leadership and the A-listers, and discussion between them has been ongoing since the meeting.

We can all hope that this continues.”

The vote reflects the strong support and enthusiasm our members have for our new contract. We won important gains such as higher wages, higher residual bases, significant improvements in basic cable, a more secure health plan, and solutions to problems affecting our ADs and UPMs.

We also set a series of important precedents crucial to our survival in this digital age — among them, jurisdiction in new media, a doubling of the home video rate as it applies to electronic sell-through, and the establishment of a gross based payment in ad-supported streaming while maintaining our historic fixed residuals where there is continued uncertainty about actual grosses.

We entered this round of bargaining steadfast in our belief, borne of 70 years of negotiating experience, that what would make it possible for us to achieve our goals was our 18 months of research and preparation, our understanding of the issues our industry faces, and our willingness to sit across the table and negotiate until a conclusion was reached. We also recognized that this was only the beginning of a series of difficult negotiations and that we are still years away from the time when new media will be our industry’s dominant revenue source.