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Have We Got a Deal for You!
by Larry Brody
The WGAW has posted the recommended payment rates for TV pilot scripts, and I gotta tell you, my mouth is watering. This almost makes me wish I never retired.
ALMOST.
Have a look-see:
Aha! The Answer We’ve All Been Waiting For!
Sad but true:
Our Narrative Prison
By Eliane Glaser
How is it that we live in an era of apparently unprecedented choice and yet almost every film and TV series, as well as a good many plays and novels, have exactly the same plot? We meet the protagonist in their ordinary world, plodding along, not living their best life. And then an inciting incident changes everything, making it impossible for the protagonist to carry on as normal. They are pulled into a new quest. On the way, they meet someone who shows them a completely different way of being. They ask themselves: have I been living a lie?
This is the mid-point, the point of no return. Life can never be the same. But there’s a double wobble since the protagonist’s quest is opposed by a powerful antagonist who frustrates the hero at every turn. At their lowest point, the protagonist realises their old mode of being is redundant, but the new one is too daunting. The story is resolved either in the protagonist’s favour or against them: they triumph or else fail tragically. The important thing is that their life philosophy has been turned upside down. When they return home, everything is the same, but everything is also completely transformed.
Will the WGAW Prevail over Village Roadshow Productions?
by Larry Brody
If what this email from the WGAW is true, and I assume it is because WGAW, I urge all my Guild member friends and TVWriter.Com visitors to pay attention and do the right thing.
Dear Members,
We are writing to alert you that WGA members are prohibited under Working Rule 8 from performing writing services for, or optioning or selling literary material to, Village Roadshow Productions Inc., or any affiliate thereof.
UK proposes letting tech firms use copyrighted work to train AI
Surprise! Enjoy the least surprising headline of the day:
UK proposes letting tech firms use copyrighted work to train AI
by
Dan Milmo and Robert Booth
Campaigners for the protection of the rights of creatives have criticised a UK government proposal to let artificial intelligence companies train their algorithms on their works under a new copyright exemption.
Book publishers said the proposal put out for consultation on Tuesday was “entirely untested and unevidenced” while Beeban Kidron, a crossbench peer campaigning to protect artists’ and creatives’ rights, said she was “very disappointed”.
Once More into the Breech: WGA Girds its Loins…
by Larry Brody
This email from the WGAW and WGAE clearly is a shot across the bow of the big studios. I’m sure that, for better or worse, there will be a lot more to come:
Dear Members,
Yesterday, the WGA sent the following letter to the CEOs of Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Paramount Global, NBCUniversal, Sony, Netflix, and Amazon MGM Studios: