TV Writers strike (Lost, Heroes, Prison Break, 24...heck, everthing on hold)

[AE_Zeitreise]

The Failure of Windows Vista will lead into the biggest Legal-Action that Microsoft has ever had and that will lead Microsoft into great Loss of Money and Failure.

[SebZ]

Originally Posted by AE_Zeitreise

The Failure of Windows Vista will lead into the biggest Legal-Action that Microsoft has ever had and that will lead Microsoft into great Loss of Money and Failure.

Yeah... That's why most big companies aren't swapping to Vista and why some PC manufactures, such as Dell, are using shipping Linux on their computers.

[Echomote]

New guy & Sebz:
Actually, many companies are just awaiting service pack 1, because they don't want to do all these system updates widespread between their computers. Vista is way more robust and secure than XP, and really doesn't use up that much more resources, and the resources are better managed so that useless crap is in swap space anyway - they're not going to be running vista themes and aero, and that is the main culprut. This is not the end of Microsoft, the Microsoft Surface is an absolutely brilliant idea and they have Windows 7 still being made (what they wanted Vista to be, but failed somehow along the line). I think the organisation has plenty of experience to know not to waste it on "Legal-Action".

I'm posting this after tried XP for plenty of years, Vista since RTM release, and Ubuntu Linux since 7.10 release.

Dell shipping Linux on their computers sounds revolutionary, and I thought so at first, but they hide the option from the general shopper anyway.

[ChaosFish]

Vista is really buggy and dirty. I tried using it, even tried installing a stripped comstumized version of it... I couldn't stand it.

Anyway, this topic is about TV writers!

[Darkflame]

Vista was a half-way upgraded which is way it, frankly, sucks.

If Microsoft just waited an extra year and got all the fundimental features they planned in, it would have been a significant upgrade as to be worth it.
As it stands, its just different enough to be annoying in compatibility (sound ect), but not different enough to be revolutionary.
The only real advantage I can see is GPU-based desktop, which is a good move.

Dell shipping Linux on their computers sounds revolutionary, and I thought so at first, but they hide the option from the general shopper anyway.

TESCO's, however, most certainly does not.
They have cheap Linux PC's in full view for any customer to buy

Anyway, this topic is about TV writers!

Indeed, I'll split it if it gets off too much.

[Darkflame]

Kyle XY renewed for a 3rd season of 10 epps, with 10 more left in the current run anyway.
So, well, at least thats something next year to watch

The rest of the year I'll probably spend watching Farscape again from start to end, followed by Lost.

[Kitarii]

The Mighty Boosh starts tomorrow!
A bit of sillyness (silliness?) is what we all need at a time like this.

[Darkflame]

An excelent video by some of the DailyShow writters on the strike;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzRHlpEmr0w

[Homeless]

Originally Posted by Darkflame

An excelent video by some of the DailyShow writters on the strike;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzRHlpEmr0w

Haha, perfect.

[ChaosFish]

Lost's Damon Lindelof on the strike:

Mourning TV
Published: November 11, 2007
Damon Lindelof


TELEVISION is dying.

I should have realized this four years ago when I first got my TiVo box, but denial is always the first stage of grief. I simply couldn’t acknowledge that this wonderful invention heralded the beginning of the end.

TiVo stores your favorite movies and shows on its hard drive, allowing you to pull up last night’s episode of “The Daily Show” as easily as you click open documents on your laptop. In fact, once you download the original broadcast — sorry, I meant to say “record” it — you can watch it at your leisure. The next morning. Next year. Your call. Because now? You own that episode.

Best of all, you got it free.

Television has always been free. Sure, if you want all the N.F.L. games in high definition, you have to pay the piper, but the broadcast networks still offer their entire schedules for absolutely nothing. The only catch, of course, is that you have to watch commercials. Economically, it’s a fair deal. The network pays for the shows, gives them to viewers, and makes its cash back through advertising. Which regrettably brings us to the most wonderful thing TiVo does: It enables you to ignore the commercials that keep the whole system running.

Twenty percent of American homes now contain hard drives that store movies and television shows indefinitely and allows you to fast-forward through commercials. These devices will probably proliferate at a significant rate and soon, almost everyone will have them. They’ll also get smaller and smaller, rendering the box that holds them obsolete, and the rectangular screen in your living room won’t really be a television anymore, it’ll be a computer. And running into the back of that computer, the wire that delivers unto you everything you watch? It won’t be cable; it will be the Internet.

This probably sounds exciting if you’re a TV viewer, but if you’re in the business of producing these shows, it’s nothing short of terrifying. This is how vaudevillians must have felt the first time they saw a silent movie; sitting there, suddenly realizing they just became extinct: after all, who wants another soft-shoe number when you can see Harold Lloyd hanging off a clock 50 feet tall?

Change always provokes fear, but I’d once believed that the death of our beloved television would unify all those affected, talent and studios, creators and suits. We’re all afraid and we’d all be afraid together. Instead we find ourselves so deeply divided.

The Writers Guild of America (of which I am a proud member) has gone on strike. I have spent the past week on the picket line outside Walt Disney Studios, my employer, chanting slogans and trudging slowly across the crosswalk.

The motivation for this drastic action — and a strike is drastic, a fact I grow more aware of every passing day — is the guild’s desire for a portion of revenues derived from the Internet. This is nothing new: for more than 50 years, writers have been entitled to a small cut of the studios’ profits from the reuse of our shows or movies; whenever something we created ends up in syndication or is sold on DVD, we receive royalties. But the studios refuse to apply the same rules to the Internet.

My show, “Lost,” has been streamed hundreds of millions of times since it was made available on ABC’s Web site. The downloads require the viewer to first watch an advertisement, from which the network obviously generates some income. The writers of the episodes get nothing. We’re also a hit on iTunes (where shows are sold for $1.99 each). Again, we get nothing.

If this strike lasts longer than three months, an entire season of television will end this December. No dramas. No comedies. No “Daily Show.” The strike will also prevent any pilots from being shot in the spring, so even if the strike is settled by then, you won’t see any new shows until the following January. As in 2009. Both the guild and the studios we are negotiating with do agree on one thing: this situation would be brutal.

I will probably be dragged through the streets and burned in effigy if fans have to wait another year for “Lost” to come back. And who could blame them? Public sentiment may have swung toward the guild for now, but once the viewing audience has spent a month or so subsisting on “America’s Next Hottest Cop” and “Celebrity Eating Contest,” I have little doubt that the tide will turn against us. Which brings me to the second stage of grief: anger.

I am angry because I am accused of being greedy by studios that are being greedy. I am angry because my greed is fair and reasonable: if money is made off of my product through the Internet, then I am entitled to a small piece. The studios’ greed, on the other hand, is hidden behind cynical, disingenuous claims that they make nothing on the Web — that the streaming and downloading of our shows is purely “promotional.” Seriously?

Most of all, I’m angry that I’m not working. Not working means not getting paid. My weekly salary is considerably more than the small percentage of Internet gains we are hoping to make in this negotiation and if I’m on the picket line for just three months, I will never recoup those losses, no matter what deal gets made.

But I am willing to hold firm for considerably longer than three months because this is a fight for the livelihoods of a future generation of writers, whose work will never “air,” but instead be streamed, beamed or zapped onto a tiny chip.

Things have gotten ugly and the lines of communication have broken down completely between the guild and the studios. Perhaps it’s not too late, though, for both sides to rally around the one thing we still have in common: our mourning for the way things used to be. Instead of fighting each other, maybe we should be throwing a wake for our beloved TV.

Because the third stage of grief is bargaining.

And bargain we must, because when television finally passes on, there will still be entertainment; there will still be shows and films and videos, right there on a screen in your living room. And just as the owners of vaudeville theaters broke down and bought hand-crank movie cameras, the studios will figure out a way to make absurd amounts of money off of whatever is beaming onto whichever sort of screen.

And we’ll still be writing every word.

This is a wise man. He seriously cares about the next generation, for which I thank him.

[Kitarii]

Yeah, he sums up the situation well, I understand what's going on better now.
A very worthy cause!
I just hope it all gets sorted out soon...

[Darkflame]

yes, he puts it nicely.
Really,not getting anything from i-tunes which people pay for directly is even more inexcusable.

[ChaosFish]

I love this strike - it's like an ARG, the people who make ARG's are involved, and it isn't fake.

http://www.hollywoodtoday.net/?p=3074
http://unitedhollywood.blogspot.com/

YouTube, etc... it's fun.

[Darkflame]

All those flat payments

Dont give them flat payments then, you muppet.
Give them a percentage.

[Gustav Sweden]

I hate this strike! I haven't been able to watch The Office (US) for several weeks now!

[Darkflame]

Looks like the latest news from IGN points to the strike going on a very long time.
They just arnt offering the writters the same as tv (eg, a percentage), and the flat fee offer is just stupid.

The earliest shows will be back is feb, and short of the studios giving in, they are going to get in deep shit when their advertising contracts come up for renewal.
(which are normaly based on how good the upcoming shows look, and thus how many people will watch).
===

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GggokNW-4c



http://www.pencils2mediamoguls.com/

Half million and counting.

[ChaosFish]

Originally Posted by Darkflame

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GggokNW-4c

Nice

Originally Posted by Darkflame

http://www.pencils2mediamoguls.com/

Half million and counting.

Cool, but I cannot believe they still haven't fixed that site!

Come on, image source: file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator/Desktop/United%20Hollywood/e-chart.jpg ??

[ChaosFish]

Someone suggested that now is a good time for the writers to sign a deal with Internet companies like Google, and work for them to make shows for Internet distribution.

That would be awesome + it would piss off the big TV networks. Hopefully Darkf's prediction is about to start coming true.

[Darkflame]

We can but hope.
Sadly money is still an object.
We can have more online tv shows...and an extended strike will see that happen.
But it will take a long time to reach the budgets of fairly cheap shows like KyleXY, let alone 4400, let alone Heroes, and no where near Lost.

In the meantime, we gota keep our eyes out for more stuff like Sanctuary.
Shows which can be fun, but are mostly bluescreen based.

An influx of writters might get us some really well scripted stuff online, however.

[ChaosFish]

By the way, Lost also uses bluescreen a lot. Most of the flashbacks are done this way.

[Darkflame]

Lost also spends millions an eppisode maintaining its location

I have no problem with bluescreen use. (heck, I loved Sky Captain and the World of Tommorow ).
However, I think it may be a problem that will hold it back from being mainstream just yet.
A lot of people might dismiss a show due to its low-budget methods before giving it a chance.

[Kitarii]

What exactly does bluescreen mean?

[Kobold]

The actors play in front of a blue screen, which can be easily cut out and replaced with the desired scene's background in the post-production of the movie. It's a pretty out-of-date method of movie recording.

[ChaosFish]

Yeah, the screen doesn't have to be blue, just a color that isn't present anywhere else in the scene. Then the video is going through a filter and this color is replaced with transparency.

I don't know if it's really outdated, as long as cameras are involved I think blue screen can be useful.

[Kobold]

Originally Posted by ChaosFish

I don't know if it's really outdated, as long as cameras are involved I think blue screen can be useful.

Well, it's only what I've heard from a film freak I know (who uses it).