Acting Producing Writing

Watch this (Streaming) Space!

Like many, many other people, I had hoped that the end to the WGA strike would lead to a quick negotiation with SAG-AFTRA in its wake. Unfortunately, the AMPTP has evidently walked away from the negotiating table because learning nothing is… a power move? I’m not sure. Anyway, I am already speculating on what the future will bring, because even though we’ve heard a lot about how streaming isn’t the most lucrative business model ever…

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Producing Writing

Ghost Light on the Sound Stage: Tentative WGA Deal Being Reviewed

So I’ll have a longer post in October as previously mentioned, but for those seven or nine people actually getting some updates about the strikes from this blog, a tentative deal has been struck between the AMPTP and the WGA as reported various places. As you’ll see in the article linked above, there are several procedural steps that are not perfunctory that involve the WGA West and East boards validating the deal and then, importantly,…

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Producing

Swift Karma in the Entertainment Industry

The Hollywood strikes continue and have no end in sight as I mentioned in my last post. So, with that “no news is bad news,” I thought I’d share some good news for this Labor Day. Now, I’m more of a Tom Swifty fan than Taylor Swift fan, but besides knowing that “girl can write a song,” I appreciate how she’s taken the “with great power comes great responsibility” challenge seriously. You see, she’s made…

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Acting Producing Writing

WGA/SAG-AFTRA Strike Update

So, it’s August and both the screenwriters and the screen actors are still striking. The WGA is meeting about returning to the negotiating table this Friday, but that doesn’t mean their strike is ending and, at the time of me writing this, there’s no news on AMPTP talking with SAG-AFTRA (though per that article, they’d be happy to). I’ve gone back and tagged all my relevant posts about the strike(s) for ease of reference, but…

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Acting Producing

When Actors Ain’t Got Time for Your Drama, Ya Done Wrong

As of Thursday, July 13th, SAG-AFTRA is on strike, joining the WGA, which has been on strike since the beginning of May. Considering I posted about that strike, it made sense to post about this as well, but boy howdy has there been a lot in the past 10 days or so. In terms of overall covereage, Alissa Wilkinson, over at Vox, has one of their excellent explainer articles. Kim Masters and Matt Belloni banter…

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Producing Writing

What do Hollywood Business Models have to do with the Writers’ Strike?

Yes, I am continuing to follow news about the Writers’ Strike and, yes, given my previous posts of Adam Conover videos, there was really doubt I’d post a video with Adam Conover talking about the Writers’ Strike? (I mean, he was one of the WGA folks in the negotiating room): One of the arguments you hear early in the video goes something like this: That got me thinking about how the studios are defining “profitable,”…

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Producing Voiceover

The Wild (and possibly Sheb Wooley) Origins of the Wilhelm Scream

Based on the news I read this weekend, there was absolutely no reason I was not going to share the glorious discovery of the original recording session that gave the work The Wilhelm Scream. You can learn a great background of the Wilhelm Scream on Mental Floss from 2018, recently updated with this latest news. Jim Vorel has a good article on the news for Paste, an article also referenced by Luke Plunkett for Kotaku…

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Producing Writing

The Anthropology of The Expanse

How I managed to miss this article last year is something I chalk up to the vast depth of the Internet, but still: I love The Expanse and part of that ardor is absolutely the multi-layered world-building. Those of you who have checked out my space opera Rogue Tyger and its ever-growing “Encyclopedia of the Imperium” will not be surprised at that fact. So I was all into this article by James Hoare for The…

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Producing

Nothing Gold Can Stay: Prestige TV Edition

Facebook is happily showing me posts from 10 years ago, which –more often than not– relate to The Broken Continent: a fantasy web series I and others produced back before you would instantly ask “what streaming service is the series on?” That would all begin to change in 2013 as the likes of House of Cards and Orange is the New Black made the industry take notice of “streaming” in ways it hadn’t. Honestly, considering…

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Producing Various and Sundry

How The Mandalorian’s sets go beyond Green Screen and Old-School Rear Projection

As some readers know, despite focusing more on audio fiction these days, I still am keenly interested in how films are put together, especially when it comes to speculative fiction stories… as they almost always employ some tricks to show the fantastical with as much thrift as craft. Last year, I learned more about how the latest version of Dune departed from traditional blue and green screens. I’ve heard a lot about the “virtual sets”…

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