Why the Writers and Actors strike is important for everyone.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) have now joined the picket lines forming an Alliance against the people that hold their life's work in their hands and this is history making in progress.

Why you should care about this strike?

1. This kind of strike hasn't happened in 60 years.

2. This is a crossroad in time to change that might change the future of the entertainment industry and have a ripple effect on other industries.

3.  The majority of writers and actors do not make a proper living wage because they are essentially gig workers.  Not all of them are million dollar plus talent.  That is a small percent.

4. This could affect change in other industries besides the entertainment industry.

5.  Human rights and sustainability.

I have a Union permittee for Makeup although I do not work in film for my living I am trying to finish a documentary independently.  Although this doesn't stop me from making films it will still affect me in ways that don't connect to the actor/writer strike.   I am a part of a Union but in the Ontario Public Service so I know how important it is for Unions to fight for the rights of the workers.

In this case the fight is about more than just money, benefits or working hours.  It's about the right to make a living with your talents and likeness.  It's about the studios trying to save money by being able to use someone's likeness over and over without having to pay the actor and a crew to show up on location.  Sounds great for a studio but remember the ripple effect if an actor is "cloned" in a film or series.   There won't be the following jobs or industries that also make a living from film/tv productions.  

Here are some of them.

1. Camera crew
2. Lighting crew
3. Sound Crew
4. Makeup Artist
5. Hair stylists
6. Catering
7. Prop houses 
8. Local businesses for florals, food, clothing, greens, rentals
9. Post production
10. Administrative staff
11. Accountants 
12. Lawyers
13. Musicians

you get the picture... I could go on.

AI is not perfect and basically pulls from already recorded knowledge and is only as good as the information that it is given or the person operating it.  It can't make up original ideas and content would be affected.

How would you like it if you posted your image to social media and a studio lifted that image and put it into a film as a character and made a slight change and you were not notified or compensated.  That's what could happen to you and the actors.

In the writers case they will just put in some details and let Chat GPT or whatever create a script that might be a copy of something else and could be boring and at the least not very original.

This strike is important to get right because it's the future of the writers, actors and the industry as a whole.  Currently with the strike on production has come to a halt so all the people working on productions can't work.  Industries that supply the productions aren't making money.  Theatres and streaming and networks aren't going to get new content.

It will also affect me in September when the Actors usually come to the Toronto International Film Festival.   My job is to escort the films Entourage around the building at the festival.  No promotion allowed means no actors that will be there and no publicists, photographers, videographers, film festival staff and most likely a reduction of ticket sales for TIFF.   Although Tiff is International it's the big celebrities that attract patrons from all over the world to buy tickets to the festival.   They will still be able to have a festival because it's only SAG/AFTRA but it will be most likely reduced similar to the pandemic days of the festival.   My team did not do the lockdown years of the festival.

So that's just the tip of the iceberg.  Yes you won't have anything to watch and lots of people won't make money.   So what?  Well what is your job?  Your industry could be affected by the ripple effect of the economy or what's really important is the replacement of your jobs because the Corporations choose AI over hiring human beings.  

Look at the war in Ukraine which is being fought with sophisticated weapons which are AI driven.  Not that we want people to go back to the battlefields but that's where a lot of this started.

The automotive industry uses more and more AI each year.   I am not saying technology is bad as a whole but there are consequences to the use.  Think of what happens when the power goes out?  What about the time when Rogers Communications whole network went out for a day.  What happens when an autonomous Uber vehicle fails.

Technology fails just as much as human error.  How many times has your phone or computer failed?  

Yes technology can be used in dangerous situations or remote areas or to reduce repetitive injuries but in the wrong hands it can also have a huge negative affect.

I have been watching a lot of news stories and listening to podcasts and watching documentaries and when the people that were the ones to create some of these technologies start waving a cautionary flag you have to stop and take notice and think about future decisions before they are irreversible.

Some films to check out:

1. IRobot
2. Minority Report
3. Artifact Girl
4. Megan
5. Her
6. Ex Machina
7. AI Artificial Intelligence
8. The Social Dilemma
9. Unknown Killer Robots
10. Code Bias
11. Black Mirror
12. Replicas

I had a little fun with the image to show how the image can be created and just sub in anything.  How will you know if anything is real?  I just used emojis for fun but this could happen with anyone's likeness and made to say or do anything.

Does this not make you think about freedoms, privacy, human rights, power, going too far?