Month: April 2015
TV’s Dirty Secret: Your Agent Gets Money for Nothing
We love Gavin Palone because he’s so, so…right. For example:
by Gavin Palone
I’m all for increased efficiency when it comes to producing filmed entertainment. I embrace moving a production to where it can be made more cheaply, cutting a schedule to the minimum necessary to realize the project’s vision and doing away with decadent perks. I even understand why my fees and profit participations have been reduced, in line with other producers, over the years; and I accept that it was necessary for some of my friends to lose their jobs during the recent rounds of layoffs at major studios and networks. Pruning dead branches allows the tree to keep growing. But what I can’t abide is how those same companies, which ask us to make do with less and find it expedient to de-job those who have served them loyally for years, continue to tolerate the most deplorable cost associated with creating their product: the television package fee.
If you are unfamiliar with what packaging fees are, I’ll give you more details in a bit, but in short, it is a large upfront payment and an even larger back-end participation that talent agencies receive for doing exactly what they are supposed to do for the regular 10 percent commission they charge their clients.
Aaron Walker Sr.: Building a Universe… And a Website
CARGO 3120
The Making of a SciFy Franchise #20
by Aaron Walker Sr.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Story So Far starts HERE)
On our last blog I talked about my personal and creative priorities, and how sometimes we’re forced to shift focus from our passion to other things. But again, one must know when to shift that focus back. Life happens to everyone. We all have many things tugging at our time. But I know myself, the longer I stay away from a project, the harder it is for me to return. So I had to give myself a hard date as to when I would resume work on the comic.
Now my focus is back to Cargo 3120! Currently, our artist Lemelle is hard at work on the comic. The first couple of pages are complete, along with rough drafts of future pages. And they look awesome. While awaiting the art, we decided to release additional content designed to give our readers insight into Cargo’s backstory. So we started with the human controlled faction of the Cargo 3120 universe: “The Interstellar League of Planets” (a.k.a. The ISL).