Made with certain parts of my brain, and my two opposable thumbs.
As both the SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guide – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the WGA (Writers’ Guild of America) are on strike and the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) refuses to negotiate, we’re probably wondering what the studios’ end game actually is.
Apart from the quest to make so much money they can use it as mattress stuffing.
I have friends in the industry who are mostly in crew and VFX (but also a couple of actors), so I can tell you right now that the life has never been glamorous. At all. It’s exciting, heck yes, but the novelty wears off after a few years. They’re trapped in a gig economy with no promise of a steady pay check. They might make some sweet, sweet money one year, and go into a lull and not work for years after that.
Crew wind up working in dreadful locations (too hot and surrounded by bugs, or too cold and in danger of getting frostbite), working very long hours (load in times of 6.00AM and load out times of 10.00PM or later are not unheard of), for very average amounts of money because they’re below the line on a film budget.
Working in VFX sounds like a nightmare. People sit in front of computer all day, pushing out shots while they’re get hassled by everyone. The higher-ups view their carefully crafted sequences and then (cover your eyes everyone) the higher-ups indulge in a bit of pixel-fucking. I’d never heard of this term before, but apparently it involves multiple directors or producers or others starting off with the phrase, “I love it, buuttt....” and then telling you that they think the blue of the sky is too blue and you should make it less blue. Which shade of blue? Who knows. They’ll leave it up to you, so they can come back in three days time and tell you that the sky looks wrong because it’s not blue enough.
Actors lives aren’t exactly alluring either (unless they’re in the elite company of the very few who are at the top of the ladder). Even well-known actors are aiming for a solidly middle class existence. A surprising chunk of their pay gets trimmed off the top by their agents, along with various other fees. The actor pays tax on the full amount, even if 10 – 40% of their pay has already gone to others.
In a nutshell, the studio execs sell the world a lie. Hollywood is pushed as the dream factory. And working in the dream factory is amazing. This was never really true and it’s even less true in modern times. Today the execs are mostly people that regard content as a product. Like a cheeseburger. If they could just figure out how to make the cheeseburger as cheaply as possible, in a consistent manner each time, then the product will make a profit with zero downside.
As Silicon Valley becomes increasingly involved in the industry, the execs seem to have pivoted to a ‘tech bro’ attitude. Why pay anyone when people are just producing a widget? The AI and various bits of software will do the actual work. In this model writers and actors aren’t talented creatives – they’re just like the people who work at Amazon warehouses (no insult to the people who work hard at Amazon) or Uber drivers (no insult to the people who work for Uber). The software on their phone/device tells them what to do, and they go do it. If that’s the direction the executives are working towards then the novelty of working in Hollywood will wear off, much like it did for Uber drivers. Once Hollyweird loses its glamour, people will do other things and only agree to be a writer if they’re desperate. Which means the studios will not be getting the best of the best.
On a positive note, as anyone who works in IT knows (and I’d be one of those people), it’s rare for any software project to be delivered on time, on budget and without defects. The execs in Hollywood have never been near an IT project in their lives. As long as IT has been running, it’s always been a bug-filled hellscape that runs on a wing and a prayer. The executives can’t just plug all of their requests into a cloud AI instance being shared by all the common people (and other studios) out there. They like to keep secrets so they’ll have to move their AI model in-house. And they’ll need one instance per studio. And infrastructure (cue the massive server room and expensive air conditioning), and security to prevent people accessing the server room, and a team to deal with things like production databases where you store the widgets and AI generated ideas. And people who ensure the wonderful AI is up and running 24-hours / 7 days a week. And ongoing license fees on a yearly basis to support everything. Studio executives have no idea have much they will be screwed over by Silicon Valley once Silicon Valley convinces them that it’s the right way to go. One wrong move and someone can accidentally wiped out a studio’s entire production database containing all of those dumb ideas, and all of those widgets – and the backups never worked. It’s been that way since 1973 and it’s exactly the same today.
It won’t cost $150 million to produce a movie any more. They’ll ensure writers and actors are paid peanuts. Directors will probably be tossed out of their jobs entirely (don’t worry – we’ll use an AI to determine what to do). Instead it will cost them $300 million every year in operating costs alone. They’ll spend money on extremely expensive enterprise licensing agreements, on infrastructure support, and on staff to support their brilliant AI. All while their AI, who doesn’t know what a human actually is , pumps out an endless stream of shit while supported by a dedicated AI team that needs their own building and a thousand employees just to keep it stable.
And Hollywood will come crashing down into a sea of overly engineered mediocrity that nobody wants, thus killing the entire industry.
Then again, maybe the AMPTP reconsiders their stance and avoid venturing into the darkest timeline.
Enjoy the following examples of databases and systems being breached and burning various companies to the ground. (Scroll down the comments on the GitLab comments to see someone talking about Toy Story 2 almost getting wiped out completely in similar circumstances.)
Good luck, Hollywood!
