Grammarcheck.Net continues to delight us with its helpful tips for writers of all media. Here’s the latest example.
The COVID-19 Info Writers (and everyone else) NEED to Know
Every writer needs a personal writer-therapist-mentor friend to help them navigate through the highs and lows of showbiz and, yeah, everyday life. Dennis Palumbo is an overqualified expert in all the above.
This interview of course isn’t the same as speaking to him personally, but it’s valuable nevertheless. Check it out.
When Your Only Weapon Is Inaction
Dennis Palumbo via Writers Guild of America West
With the COVID-19 pandemic in its third month in the US, Connect spoke to psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo about recurring themes in his therapy practice with writers who are under extended stay-at-home orders and grappling with an entertainment industry on indefinite pause.
For three decades, Palumbo has been a licensed psychotherapist for working writers and others in creative fields. To the therapy setting Palumbo brings his own experience as a sitcom writer, screenwriter, and, more recently, crime novelist (2018’s Head Wounds is the fifth installment in his Daniel Rinaldi series). Palumbo’s non-fiction book Writing from the Inside Out (2000) was an adaptation and expansion of his regular columns for Written By.
You’re both a therapist for other writers and a writer yourself. So how is your writing going?
Dennis Palumbo: I’m a little more desultory because, like anyone else, I feel some of the stress of the uncertainty of this. Plus, you know, dealing with deliveries and putting on my mask and gloves when I go to get the mail. It’s certainly having an effect on my patients. My own writing is going ok. I have patients who are writing up a storm and I have patients who can’t focus for more than ten minutes. Because they’re thinking about the pandemic, and especially if they have young children they’re doing home schooling or trying to keep them entertained. Plus, there’s the omnipresent media. I have patients who just cannot stop watching CNN. As this thing has gone on and on, one of the first things I’m recommending to people is to very much curtail their watching of the news.
It’s a slippery slope between staying informed and getting lost in it all.
Palumbo: Check it in the morning and then check it in the evening to make sure there hasn’t been an alien invasion or something. Other than that, I think one of the problems that is endemic to this situation is, we have an enemy, this virus, and the weapon we use against the enemy is inaction, just sitting in your house. I think that’s very hard on the psyche. We have a fight-or-flight mechanism. When someone throws a rock at you, you pick up a rock and throw it back, or else you run away. And we can’t run away, we have to stay in the house, and we can’t fight it. So I think our cortisol levels are always being elevated because we’re in a state where there’s no tool we can use against the virus, other than staying put. I think the body doesn’t like that. The psyche certainly doesn’t like it. So no matter how busy you are, either with your children or with your writing, this sense of impotence contributes to depression and anxiety. And then you add to that, there’s no end date. Most people don’t like uncertainty. One of the real problems with the quarantine is the uncertainty….
ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY NEWS AUDIO EDITION – 05/28/2020
by Bob Tinsley
Why should you as a visitor to TVWriter™ be interested in creating audio fiction? Why should you be interested in making podcasts? Discoverability, that’s why.
Here’s the latest news to help you and your show get discovered:
Music from https://filmmusic.io
“The Builder” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
- I TOLD YOU SO, PART 1.
Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg to Adapt Bubble Podcast Into an R-Rated Animated Film.
From Indiewire: Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s work on 2016’s hit Sausage Party resulted in one of Hollywood’s highest-grossing adult-targeted animated films. Now, the duo is teaming up to adapt the Bubble podcast into an age-appropriate animated movie with Sony Pictures Animation. Jordan Morris, who created the “Bubble” podcast, serves as co-executive producer and will also write the script.
https://www.indiewire.com/2020/05/seth-rogen-evan-goldberg-bubble-podcast-animated-film-1202228886/
- I TOLD YOU SO, PART 2.
Peaky Blinders And Game Of Thrones Stars Lead Audible’s Gritty Reboot Of King Arthur Mythology.
From the article: “The leading streaming spoken word entertainment provider has announced its latest full cast drama will be Albion: The Legend of Arthur, a dark reboot that challenges perceptions of the iconic story.
Stella‘s Gruffudd Glyn and The Current War‘s Craig Roberts lead the series as King Arthur and his trusted companion Owein Of Reghad as they battle warlords, witchcraft and a betrayal that will test their brotherly bond.”
The production is written and directed by Audible’s Little Women veteran Robert Valentine.
Albion: The Legend of Arthur is available now on Audible.
https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a32269569/audible-albion-arthur-series-peaky-blinders-star/
- RESOURCES, PART 1.
April 2020 Audio Drama, Fiction and RPG Podcast Debut Releases.
The Cambridge Geek strikes again! A new list of 126 (if I counted correctly) brand, spanking new audio fiction podcasts. There’s a podcast listed here for every taste, so dive in and sample.
- RESOURCES, PART 2.
Podcast Sponsorships That Delight And Garner Top Dollar CPM.
Thinking about advertising in podcasts in general results in anxiety, indecision, derision, and blood feuds. The ads are usually intrusive, throwing you out of the story, awkward, and just plain bad. For fiction podcasts in particular that kind of advertising is so repulsive as to make most creators run the other direction. The ubiquitous Sean Howard of Fable and Folly (now Network) thinks there’s a better way. He asked Evan Gulock and Niko Gerentes from the podcast, Death by Dying, to put together a spec ad that would fit, if not seamlessly, then, smoothly into the format of their show. Read the article and listen to the ad.
- IF YA WANNA WRITE, YA GOTTA LISTEN.
Alba Salix, Royal Physician.
From Eli McIlveen and Sean Howard of Fable and Folly Productions (now Network) comes a terrific epic fantasy/comedy. Farloria’s Royal Physician has her work cut out for her. Fortunately, help is on the way. Unfortunately, that help is from Magnus, a troublesome young ex-monk and aspiring surgeon, and Holly, an accident-prone fairy herbalist. The production values are, well, professional. I’m especially fond of the interactions between Alba and the perennially up-beat Holly. Listen and laugh.
https://albasalix.com/alba-salix/
Until next week, same Pod-time, same Pod-channel, keep listening and keep creating.
Latest on WGAW 2020 MBA Negotiations Part 3
It’s contract renegotiation time!
Specifically, it’s that time when the Writers Guild of America sits down with the Association of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) and tries like hell to make our TV, film, and other electronic media writing lives happier, healthier, and more fulfilling.
In other words, we’re looking for ways to be more productive and creative and make more $$$.
This week we’ll be bringing you the full text of the latest missives from the Writers Guild of America negotiating committee on where we are on what probably are the three most important issues.
Here’s #three – streaming tv
Dear Members,
Streaming is the fastest growing segment of the business; global subscription streaming revenue more than doubled over the last four years to $37 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $62 billion in 2023. Disney+ only launched in November of 2019 and has already reported 54.5 million global subscribers. Netflix recently reported almost 183 million global subscribers. The pandemic has cemented streaming’s impending dominance, making starkly clear its economic value. This past March and April, for example, streaming platforms saw their viewership grow by 117% over the previous year. With the rollout of new platforms in the coming months, those numbers will only increase.
STREAMING RESIDUALS
Residual payments are the back end and the backstop of all middle-class writers. They are the way we share in the enduring value of our work and in the continued growth of the business. But in the streaming world, where content stays exclusive to a single global platform, revenue-based residuals that grew along with studio revenue from licensing and foreign sales have been replaced by low annual fixed payments. We have a number of proposals to ensure that this longstanding pact – where we share in the growth of the business – continues in the streaming market.
VIEWING BONUS: In streaming, viewership equates to success for the companies. Writers who create content that attracts large audiences should be rewarded for the success of their work. As viewership grows, so too should residual payments. We are proposing a tiered system of bonuses that is payable, in increments, based on the number of streams on subscription streaming platforms.
INCREASING THE FIXED RESIDUAL PAYMENTS: We also need to increase the fixed payments that apply to both domestic and foreign subscription streaming reuse. As these services grow, the baseline value for constant availability around the world of the programming we create needs to increase. Both Netflix and Amazon have far more foreign subscribers than domestic. Disney+ is on the same path. And yet, the fixed foreign residual for our work is only 35% of the domestic residual in the first year, and it declines after that. This is divorced from the global imperative of the streaming business, where the companies use what we create to attract potentially hundreds and millions of subscribers around the world. We are seeking to significantly increase the foreign residual so that it accurately reflects the value of our work in the foreign market.
COMEDY-VARIETY: These programs have become a staple of streaming services and yet their writers receive minimal residuals for their work. There is no justification for that. We are proposing that comedy-variety writers receive the same kind of residuals that writers who create comedies and dramas on the same subscription streaming services do.
TV REUSE ON AD-SUPPORTED VIDEO ON DEMAND (AVOD): Reruns of TV series on AVOD increasingly replace broadcast network repeats, and they do so by paying us pennies on the dollar. Meanwhile, executives boast about how this on demand availability brings in millions of viewers. We are proposing an increase in the residual for reuse of traditional media on AVOD platforms.
As we enter the global streaming era of the business, the MBA must reflect the realities of writing in the streaming market and ensure that we share in the success these services derive from the programming we create.
In solidarity,
MBA Negotiating Committee
Michele Mulroney, Co-Chair
Shawn Ryan, Co-Chair
Betsy Thomas, Co-Chair
Liz Alper
Arash Amel
John August
Amy Berg
Ashley Nicole Black
Adam Brooks
Francesca Butler
Patti Carr
Robb Chavis
Meg DeLoatch
Travis Donnelly
Kate Erickson
Dante W. Harper
Eric Heisserer
Melissa London Hilfers
Elliott Kalan
Chris Keyser
Adele Lim
Peter Murrieta
Luvh Rakhe
Dailyn Rodriguez
Erica Saleh
Sara Schaeffer
David Slack
Lauren Ashley Smith
Meredith Stiehm
Patric M. Verrone
David A. Goodman, Ex-Officio
Marjorie David, Ex-Officio
Beau Willimon, Ex-Officio
Kathy McGee, Ex-Officio
Bob Schneider, Ex-Officio
More to Come Next Week
Latest on WGAW 2020 MBA Negotiations Part 2
It’s contract renegotiation time!
Specifically, it’s that time when the Writers Guild of America sits down with the Association of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) and tries like hell to make our TV, film, and other electronic media writing lives happier, healthier, and more fulfilling.
In other words, we’re looking for ways to be more productive and creative and make more $$$.
This week we’ll be bringing you the full text of the latest missives from the Writers Guild of America negotiating committee on where we are on what probably are the three most important issues.
Here’s #two – Pension and health benefits
Dear Members,
In 2017, after years of healthcare costs outpacing inflation, we needed more money for our health plan. At the time, our plan was projected to run a deficit of $70 million by 2019. We used our collective power, including taking a strike authorization vote, to secure an increase in the employer contribution rate from 9.5% to 11.5% over the life of the 2017 MBA. Today our health plan is on solid ground; we ran surpluses over the last three years, and increased the number of months our health plan has in reserve.
Now, we need to secure additional funding from our employers in order to put our pension plan on strong enough financial footing to weather this market downturn and preserve pension benefits for future retirees. Currently, our employers contribute 8.5% of our compensation to the plan, which totals almost $150 million annually. While our pension plan is designed to pay out benefits over many decades, federal legislation mandates a short-term focus on investment returns that can threaten our benefits. In 2006, Congress passed the Pension Protection Act (PPA), which added new requirements for pension plans like ours that could require us to make changes quickly in response to a short-term decline in investment returns. Due to this law, and lingering effects of the 2008 market crash, a severe enough market downturn could force us to make future benefit cuts.
An increase in the employer contribution rate is not enough. We need to substantially increase the caps on contributions for screenwriters and writers of long-form TV. Members of teams should get full contributions for their work as individuals, not on reduced amounts simply because they are employed as a team. We also need to increase the type of compensation and residuals subject to benefit contributions. Most TV residuals generate contributions to the pension plan and health funds, but it’s not the same for streaming residuals. As streaming reuse is replacing TV reruns, streaming residuals need to generate contributions to our benefit funds. We need to change that now before streaming residuals replace other residuals, ultimately putting additional financial pressure on both the pension and health funds.
Our pension plan is a critical source of long-term financial security for middle-class writers, and a benefit that writers who came before us fought hard to achieve. Even if you’re early in your career and not thinking about retirement, one day it will come, and we want to make certain your WGA pension will be there for you.
Please check out this explainer video to better understand how the pension plan works and why it’s essential to negotiate increased contributions to defend it.
In solidarity,
MBA Negotiating Committee
Michele Mulroney, Co-Chair
Shawn Ryan, Co-Chair
Betsy Thomas, Co-Chair
Liz Alper
Arash Amel
John August
Amy Berg
Ashley Nicole Black
Adam Brooks
Francesca Butler
Patti Carr
Robb Chavis
Meg DeLoatch
Travis Donnelly
Kate Erickson
Dante W. Harper
Eric Heisserer
Melissa London Hilfers
Elliott Kalan
Chris Keyser
Adele Lim
Peter Murrieta
Luvh Rakhe
Dailyn Rodriguez
Erica Saleh
Sara Schaeffer
David Slack
Lauren Ashley Smith
Meredith Stiehm
Patric M. Verrone
David A. Goodman, Ex-Officio
Marjorie David, Ex-Officio
Beau Willimon, Ex-Officio
Kathy McGee, Ex-Officio
Bob Schneider, Ex-Officio
Tomorrow: Part 3
