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submitted 1 week ago by Interstellar_1@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/196@lemmy.blahaj.zone

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[-] shneancy@lemmy.world 83 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

"taking the money creators would have made"

fun fact! this is not how the entertainment industry works.

The actual creators have long been paid for their work when a film/series releases, the only people who profit from the sales are those who own the IP, which is usually the production company (and the actors sometimes, if they decided to take a gamble and agreed on recieving royalties instead of signing a fixed contract. Or rarely the director, if their name alone can sell a film)

unless it's like a fully indie film, self made, self produced, and self published, people who made the thing never see the sales money

& there is very little inbetween those two extremes, only thing that comes to my mind is works either commissioned by, or sold to a streaming service (& most of the time creators lose the IP rights if they do that).

so far the only exception to all this bullshit that i know of is Nebula

[-] MirthfulAlembic@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

While they are still insufficient, residuals do exist. It's why SAG and WGA went on strike last year, since streaming residuals were (and to a degree still are) garbage. It's not as directly tied to sales as if they received points, but with Hollywood accounting that's a risk. Though if you're talking about Nebula, maybe this is more about YouTube creators which is a different can of worms.

[-] shneancy@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

Well, they're negligible enough that the fact they exist wasn't covered anywhere during my filmmaking degree, and i took all the extra business/law modules :')

And it was just the writers & actors right? What about all the editors, audio mixers, audio recorders, camera men, gaffers? riggers, vfx people, script supervisors, storyboard artists, props & costumes department, even runners! There's just so much work to be done by so many people to bring a script to life, and we're yet to hear of an editor/camera op/runner who lucked out by being a part of an accidentally famous billion dollar film and then never had to work again. Apart from producers, directors, actors, and writers sometimes - everyone's work, though essential for audio visual media to exist, is rarely rewarded with a share of the profits it makes

Nebula has been slowly surpassing just "rebranded youtube content" so to speak. They've started financing films and plays like for Abigail Thorn, and they're still true to their founding ethos. It's no longer just higher quality youtube content, and i do hope to see them one day become more widely known and popular

[-] MirthfulAlembic@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

They are very much as a whole not negligible. They can be--people can get checks for cents sometimes. But they wouldn't go on strike and sign a deal if it never amounted to anything. I'm not even in the industry and have a passing familiarity with the concept; I've just been reading about it and listening to people from it for years.

DGA also has residuals in their contract. IATSE might for some roles, but you can't feasibly give everyone involved in a production residuals. The point of residuals is to hold over people in roles that are very fickle and can go years between jobs, like everyday working actors and writers. If you're going years between jobs getting hired for craft services, your food might just suck.

It would be great if everyone could get a share, but that's not realistic. Big productions can have thousands of people who work on them. Having to send the carpenter on a film a check for two cents yearly would create insane administrative overhead. There has to be a line somewhere.