The Hollywood Reporter has posted that AFTRA has approved the contract with the studios by 62%. Not exactly overwhelming but enough to get ratify the contract and keep members of that union (many of which are also SAG members) able to remain on the job. AFTRA is a "sister" union of SAG that broke away over disagreements on how the negotiations with the studios where being handled.
"Clearly, many Screen Actors Guild members responded to our education and outreach campaign and voted against the inadequate AFTRA agreement," SAG president Alan Rosenberg said. "We knew AFTRA would appeal to its many AFTRA-only members, who are news people, sportscasters and DJs, to pass the tentative agreement covering acting jobs. In its materials, AFTRA focused that appeal on the importance of actor members' increased contributions to help fund its broadcast members' pension and health benefits."
It’s pretty clear that SAG isn't done and they will continue to hold a hard line to get what they want but it does reduce their bargaining position as they remain the only holdouts. I doubt they are winning any friends either since they are asking for concessions beyond what the writers and directors agreed to pretty much confirming my opinion that actors consider themselves the most important part of Hollywood and thus should get more. In this day and age of tech and the quick rise and fall of stardom, I disagree with that notion.
End result is a strike is in the best interest of nobody and I doubt at this point that even if SAG sent out a call to strike to its members it would get the approval numbers (I think 75% of the membership) needed. What happens next is unknown as SAG has not formally rejected the last proposal from the studios but given every indication that they intend to.
In regards to Transformers, this just means the status quo remains. Since no strike, the schedule (whatever it is) remains the same. If a strike does occur, Bay can now simply work with AFTRA members and film around scenes that require the SAG leads until they become available. The issue isn't the filming schedule itself, the issue is giving ILM and Digital Domain the time they need in post-production to complete the special effects. If worse case scenario occurs (a long term strike), I imagine Bay could simply use stand-ins to at least give the FX teams the footage to work off.
The way I see it, short of a 6 month or more SAG strike, the AFTRA deal pretty much insures that Bay should be able make his release date for Transformers 2.
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While Actors are important so are the MANY different crew people, agents, and the myriad of other professionals working behind the scenes to make the production happen. Films, TV Shows, Music Shows, Album Recordings, and the like, are a GROUP effort, NOT an individual effort.
ReplyDeleteOne concern I have is this: why is ILM and Digital Domain seemingly waiting until the last minute to do all the render work for the robots? In my opinion, after learning from TF1 that it takes 38 HOURS to render one frame of animation, and you've got 24 frames which equals a second, then you can imagine the amount of TOTAL time they'd need. Maybe ILM and Digital Domain already have started working on the effects and rendering of the robots - I sure hope they have by now - IF Bay is to meet his June 26, 2009 release date.
If not, it won't hurt me to wait until 2010. IF that happens, it will be an interesting summer as you'll have TF:ROTF as well as a TRON sequel (YAY!!!!).
If Bay can't meet the Summer 2009 deadline then he should target Fall 2009, surely not delay it a whole 12 months just to absolutely make it a summer blockbuster. November or December 2009 would be a good release date as well, no?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, ILM and Digital Domain need the final approved scenes and Bay can't have it until having completed shooting. Also there will surely be many different beta-stages cuts released internally and not all of them will have full quality CGI rendering, simply because full quality it's really expensive and time consuming.
Nowadays they probably won't be using wireframe CGI to test scenes on screen with selected viewers but they will still use lower quality/resolution rendering to save on costs and will go full rendering only when a scene has been fully approved to be included in the final cut.
You have a point about ILM & Digital Domain: I guess at this point, all they can really do is at least have the pre-vis animations cut and at the least the robot figures drawn and rendered, and maybe that's about it - until the final approved scenes are approved.
ReplyDeleteThen again, I would love to be a fly on the wall at ILM and Digital Domain, and I wonder how much overtime the ILM guys get. WOW!!!!Their paychecks will probably be pretty good.
I'm gonna work there one day. My goal is to be one of the best compositors, and eventually VFX Supervisor at ILM. Big goals, but I will get them, 1 day...
ReplyDeleteHey highdefw:
ReplyDeleteIf that is what your goal is, and if that is what you're set on doing, you can do it. Wish you the best of luck.
As far as the whole strike thing, even though the possibilities may seem decreased, we aren't out of the woods yet. If necessary, I'm willing to wait another year for TF:ROTF, especially since they've already had to re-script and re-shoot some stuff. If it means a better movie, I can wait.
He'll make the date, no worries, it's what he does best, pushes people and goes really fast to make sure what he says or is ordered to do is done. I'm sure there are tons of people already taking June 25th off to get the 800 show, i know i am
ReplyDelete