#poor hammers

[ringosmistress]

[hyakunana]

POV: Even with advantage and buffs, your local folk hero just rolled 1 in Intimidation

[noxx-33i]

this thing is so stupid anf FAT

[thelaurenshippen]

finally taking the time to read through the SAG agreement summary and oof, I hope they have an AI town hall soon because...well, there are things to discuss!

so, in case folks are curious, here are my immediate takeaways from the deal as a SAG actor, a SAG producer, and person who is not any kind of expert but spends a lot of time being skeptical of contracts I sign. this is a summation/commentary, not a holistic breakdown of every point, nor even an in-depth discussion of the points I do talk about. and it is, of course, in no way legal advice or voting advice.

this post is already maybe the longest post I've ever written on tumblr (lol) and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. to be clear, nothing I'm saying here represents how I'm going to vote, how I think other actors should vote, or my be-all-end-all stance on a particular issue. this is me reading through, flagging what concerns me, and asking myself questions. and I'm here to take your questions too! though of course my expertise is limited.

(what?? something I wrote got annoying long?? in my tumblr? it's more likely, etc. huge write-up after the cut)

the good

self-tape stuff: this is one of the more niche/the thing that the general public will find least interesting, but they've put in a lot of provisions to make sure self-tape auditions have limits (# of pages, no stunts, no nudity, doesn't have to be professionally shot, etc.) which is amazing because these types of auditions have gotten out of control since the pandemic. this feels like a great gain

data transparency: in no world did I think the streamers were ever going to agree to any data sharing with either the wga or sag so even though the data is limited, this still feels huge to me.

folks who sing and dance will be paid for both of those things now, which is great

they've added MLK day and Juneteenth as holidays (about time)

a performer cannot be required to translate their own lines

principal performers are required to be given hair and makeup consultation or reimbursed for obtaining their own services - this seems like a small thing, but it's being put in here pretty much entirely because HMU services have generally been appalling when it comes to textured hair/a variety of skin tones. there's also stuff in here about working to hire more diverse HMU artists

it looks like it's going to be easier/provide a path for folks getting IMDb credits even if they're not credited on screen

miscellany: there's a bunch of gains in wage increases, P&H increases, relocation fees, franchise language etc. that all seem good to me, though my limited knowledge on those subjects prevents me from going in depth on them.

this is not important, but it tickled me, there's a term to replace all instances of "telegraph" in the contract with "email & text" which like...why has it taken us thirty years to do that lol.

the "...hm..."

intimacy coordinators: oof. when I watched the press conference SAG gave, I was fucking thrilled when they said that the new agreement required folks to hire intimacy coordinators for nudity and simulated sex scenes. that was almost reason enough for me to vote for it tbh - not requiring it is the exact reason I voted no on our last contract. however, reading the contract summary now, the exact language is: "Producer must use best efforts to engage an Intimacy Coordinator for scenes involving nudity or simulated sex and will consider in good faith any request by a performer to engage an Intimacy Coordinator for other scenes. Producer shall not retaliate against a performer for requesting an Intimacy Coordinator." this....sucks. "best efforts" and "good faith" are not the same as "required". IMO, an intimacy coordinator is the same thing as having a stunt coordinator or, like, any number of health and safety requirements. OSHA doesn't say you must "in good faith" put your "best effort" to providing fire exits. it's great that performers can request coordinators for any kind of scene, and this is still the strongest language we've ever had in a contract but....c'mon guys.

residuals: look, I can't speak to these new terms in any concrete way. there are increases, there are bonuses for streaming success, there's a whole thing about a fund regarding those successes that I need explained to me more in depth, but overall, it looks like we made some in-roads here. as someone who employs actors under digital distribution contracts that has no residuals (podcasts), I know how genuinely cumbersome the unholy trifecta of "views-success-profit" can be (as in views do not equal success, success does not equal profit, etc.). I also have no sympathy when the majority of companies dealing with that cumbersome trifecta are massive media conglomerates. anyway, long story short, idk if this is good enough, I'm hoping to attend the next info meeting sag has.

the bad

the new hair/makeup provisions are explicitly for principal actors. while I hope it leads to better, more inclusive HMU services all around I haaaate that this implies supporting or background actors (who oftentimes also have to sit in HMU) don't deserve the consideration. (then again, background actors are usually required to do their own HMU/bring their own costumes, but for productions where that's not the case, the same HMU provisions should apply IMO)

as with every contract, there's language that could be stronger, clarity that needs to exist, and important things missing - but this isn't the final contract and I'm not a lawyer, so I'm gonna leave that stuff to the experts.

but, "lauren", you say, "what about all the AI stuff? where does that go?" well, reader, I was planning on including that in the above but it's the hot-button issue right now and I think it's wickedly complicated, so I wanted to break it down separately, after I had a chance to point out all the good-bad-in-between stuff that's not getting talked about.

a note: in my career, I've learned there's two big things to keep in mind when reading a contract you might sign:

what is the worst case interpretation of this language (thank you to my lawyer, prince among men, for teaching me how to do this in practice (that said, anything I say here is not legal advice, he'd also want me to say that lol))

what are you willing to lose/compromise on/what are the limits of your pragmatism? contracts are not about a company giving you everything you want out of the goodness of their heart - it is always a compromise. pragmatism has to be a part of the equation.

so, with that said, I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here, and a) try to find the good/the pragmatic and b) catastrophize the worst case scenario. but first, it might be handy to look at this SAG infographic for some basic definitions. let's go.

the AI good

a ton of stuff here requires consent. that is not a small thing, and the consent continues even after your death (whether it was a yes or no; though this can be complicated by your estate/your union)

the language does establish that the consent must be a separate signing from the employment contract, even if its in the contract, which is great (but more on that below - timing matters)

actors often do get paid for use of their digital replicas, though it's different based on the use/type of replica.

the actor must be provided with a "reasonably specific description of the intended use". this language is vaguer than I would like, because it allows producers to decide what "reasonably specific" and "intended" means - there's always going to be some vagueness when it comes to this specific thing, but a good start would be for producers to require not blanket consent, but conditional consent for each significant use of digital replicas.

if the replicas are being used in other mediums, that must also be consented to, thank god.

replicas cannot be used in place of background actor counts on a given day - if I'm understanding this correctly, this means a production can't just have a bunch of fake background actors by themselves, they have to engage real people up to a certain number first (which in this new contract is 25 for TV and 85 for movies). we're already filling in background with digital people or copy-pasting of the same crowd over and over and have been doing so since at least the late 90s, so it's good we're continuing to put up boundaries around that.

the AI "...hm..."

it's unclear (to me) when an actor can be asked to consent. IMO, everything is meaningless if the consent is happening as part of regular contract negotiations. these things have to happen when - and only when - the actor has already been engaged in a role and feels empowered to say no

the use of independently created replicas (replicas pulled from existing footage, not created by the actor) being allowed without consent under first amendment reasoning - this is obviously concerning a lot of people bc first amendment arguments are so broad. that said, there's a pragmatism part of me that understands this is already happening/has been happening for a while and used in ways I think are perfectly fine - I was just watching the new episode of For All Mankind (one of the best TV shows right now!) and it's an alternate history, which meant that in the opening scenes of this season they had some bonkers good deep fakes of Al Gore saying stuff he never said. I think that's okay to do in a fiction show that imagines a different US history! "but Lauren", you might be saying, "Al Gore isn't a member of SAG!" are you sure? are you positive? because I'm pretty certain he is - he was in several episodes of 30 Rock, way more people are in SAG than you think (every NPR reporter for instance), and the two worst presidents we've had in the last 50 years (yes, those ones), are both definitely members of SAG (even if one is dead). now, the other side of this is that public figures like politicians are under a different social contract than actors, and if they wanted to sue, they could, unlike the average SAG actor who might have their image abused. this is why this is in the "hm" column - deep fakes and parody/satire/commentary use of replicas is already here and there's always going to be a 1st amendment argument to make, so we need to figure out how best to limit those and protect the most vulnerable.

alteration: with this language, a project can digitally alter without consent if the script and performance stays "substantially" the same. again, this language is too mealy-mouthed. I don't know that I have a huge problem with a line of dialogue getting replaced with a digital version of that actors voice if, for instance, a word was mispronounced, or wind garbled the sound or whatever - yes, it would eliminate the need for ADR, but if we put some limit on it like..."if there are more than 5 lines in a given episode/movie that require digital alteration in the service of clarity, the actor must be engaged for an ADR session or paid for the digital replacement" then I could see this being workable. I'm also personally okay with things like costumes being digitally altered but, again, we need limitations on that. digital altering cannot replace the art of costuming but, for instance, if a costume needs to be altered to include a hate symbol or something, I think that's fine (example: I have friends who worked at the VFX house for an alternate history TV show that involved a lot of Nazi costuming and set design - a huge part of that VFX house's job was to put swastikas in places, rather than props making nazi flags. I'm okay with that!) but again, these fringe cases do not a compelling arugment make, and this contract language can be interpreted too broadly for my comfort! like everything else in this "hm" category, I need to see the final contract language to decide.

the AI bad

there's a bunch of circumstances in which actors don't get paid for creating their replica/use of it and those circumstances are too broad for my taste.

synthetic performers - this is just awful. no. no, we should not be allowing AI to generate entire actors. just............no. there's some language about the producers having to talk to the union if the synthetic performer is "used in place of a performer who would have been engaged under this Agreement in a human role" but this doesn't apply to non-human characters so....wouldn't that be all roles?? leaving the producers room to be like "this role has to be synthetic, we never would've cast a human!" is bullshit. also, even if we're having AI create a magical talking unicorn whole cloth (which, like, also no, we have artists for this), that unicorn still needs to be voiced by a human person. this whole section is a disaster.

the exceptions to consent for digital alteration are bad-bad. I talked about the potential ADR replacement above and that has a whole host of issues with it that I didn't even get into, but I can see the argument. the rest are very troubling:

there is an exception under "any circumstance when dubbing or use of a double is permitted under the Codified Basic Agreement or Television Agreement" - okay, so does this mean we can replace dubbing artists and stunt performers entirely? this section is about digital alteration, but who's to say alteration couldn't turn an actor broadly miming a fight into an entirely digital, expertly performed fight that usually a stunt double would have done? with AI translation technology, does this mean we're replacing VO artists for dubs entirely? bad!

similarly, "Adjusting lip and/or other facial or body movement and/or the voice of the performer to a foreign language, or for purposes of changes to dialogue or photography necessary for license or sale to a particular market" - Justine Bateman has a great twitter thread on the terrible puppetry potential of this but I want to draw attention to the particular market bit - we all know that selling to china is such a huge part of studios' strategies that they'll remove entire scenes or lines around queer stuff. to me, this clause makes all of that so much easier. I know the argument here is going to be "we can replace swear words and license it for kids!" which.......sure? fine? but, uh, we already have ways to deal with that? and the potential for abuse here is terrifying to me. with all the digital alteration stuff too, there's just so much icky implication for the beauty/body standard to get so much worse.

if a background actor’s digital replica is used in the role of a principal performer, they'll be paid as if they actually performed the days for that role, which, sure, but uhhhh why are we saying it's okay for a digital replica of a background actor to suddenly be a leading role!?!?! I can't think of anything more demoralizing than going to set to act in background (a job I've done! an important job! a fun job a lot of the time! but creatively limited) and then getting a much bigger role (the dream!) and.....not being able to, you know, act that role or be in scenes with other principal actors or do the thing that you've dedicated your life to doing. nightmare stuff.

woof. there's so much more to say but I'm going to leave it there. these are the concerns I'm going to go into SAG's meetings with, and the concerns I'll be considering as I decide how to vote. I know there are things I didn't address and very possibly things I misinterpreted or misrepresented - if you're an actor, I highly recommend a) reading that Justine Bateman thread and b) attending SAG's meetings to ask questions and express your concerns. and I'd love to hear what y'all think! my ask box is open.

[vigilantempathy]

Love how Nandor canonically wants some guy to rail him while he watches Guillermo pull his pants down.

[leclerrari]

“I’m so sorry, but I suffer from short-term memory loss”. Those who have never seen Nemo probably won’t understand the reference, signed in this case by the very charming Dory. A reference that I use to address a problem that seems to afflict many “fans” (the quotation marks are not used by chance) of the pinnacle of motorsport. Following the - extraordinary - victory of Carlos Sainz, in fact, I found myself reading various comments which, rather than praising the Spaniard’s performance, preferred to bring out how “Ferrari renewed the contract of the wrong driver”. None of these were journalists from Marca, much less from AS. I’m talking about long-time Ferrari “tifosi”, regular visitors to our platforms, who have pointed out that Leclerc has only won two races more than the mistreated Sainz. Consequently, getting off the wagon of the person who was about to win in Bahrain, at the steering wheel of the red car, in his second appearance wearing the Cavallino suit, or in Austria, before being escorted out by Max Verstappen, or in Singapore, again in 2019, before he was subjected to an undercut by his own teammate. Getting off the wagon of the person who achieved two podiums with the SF1000, of the person who was on the verge of winning in Silverstone at the steering wheel of the SF21, a car with which he even achieved two pole positions (how can we forget the one in Monaco, lost without even having the chance to race). Of the person who was mocked by a Virtual Safety Car in Jeddah in 2022, the year in which his power unit broke while he was dominating both in Barcelona and in Baku, the year in which he was the victim of the worst of treasons in Silverstone and of strategies bordering on embarrassment, as in Monte-Carlo and Budapest. Of the person who was vice World Champion in 2022, of the one who before the 2024 Australian Grand Prix was returning from seven consecutive front rows, of the one who collected 23 pole positions: only Michael Schumacher, in Ferrari, did better than him. Carlos, unlike Charles, has always been able to be in the right place at the right time (Singapore 2023 and Australia 2024) taking advantage of the circumstances like no one else has and, certainly, of the not excellent weekends of his teammate, which unfortunately for Leclerc have coincided with the very rare failures of Red Bull and Max Verstappen. This, for those who suffer from short-term memory loss, was Charles’ fault, this is the reason why Ferrari would have “renewed the contract of the wrong driver”. This is what has led many to get off the wagon of the monegasque, a wagon that they will soon be forced to chase on foot. On the other hand, “those who don’t have a good memory must have good legs”.

— Alessandro Morini Gallarati for Hammer Time Magazine

[bibannana]

Qui-Gon *looking at a sign while stroking his beard*: It's a sign from the force.

Mace *blinks and re-reads the sign*: Uh no this sign is from a bar? About half off drinks??

Qui-Gon *inputting the co-ordinates of the bar*: A truely compelling sign.

Kit *turning the speeder around*: Has me convinced.

Plo *shrugs*: Completely convincing.

Taglist: @soliloquy-of-nemo @nekotaetae @staycalmandhugaclone @jiabae @sexy-rex

[watertribe-enya]

@jess-the-vampire

A comic about Hunter finding Biscuit in the closet where Belos locked the little guy in

[francy-sketches]

hotd twitter is turning me into a reddit atheist istg

[blue-mood-blue]

I’ve given it some time and some thought and, while I am not going to call him that, I think I can forgive the name Eustace. It has grown on me (slightly) by positive association. My boy cannot help what they (the world and also his father) have done to him, so I will be strong and also supportive.

“Winner” though.

“Winner” is gonna be a hard sell.

But I was thinking about it, and there is a situation where I would buy that as a last name, particularly in this universe and for this family. This is Blaise we’re talking about, whatever his name will eventually be, and he knows Von Karma. He knows Von Karma and Von Karma’s Perfect, Shiny, No-Loss Record, probably because Manfred has made a point of bringing it up every time they’ve seen each other for the past however-many years, which I’m certain has been plenty. 

Every time there’s a new case, probably.

That’s a lot.

Blaise seems pretty easy going on a day-to-day basis (on the surface) (usually), but that’s got to get annoying eventually and never let it be said that Blaise will miss out on an opportunity to escalate a situation. Also he’s the Chief Prosecutor. Also he keeps waving around that lighter like he’s threatening to burn the office down, do you really think whoever is in charge of legal name changes in the unnamed, unholy conglomeration of a country these games are set in is going to argue against his decision? That paperwork is going through just as soon as it can be processed at the speed of “fast” lest whoever is throwing up red tape finds themself at the wrong end of a little accident.

The next time Manfred Von Karma walks through his office door to brag, Blaise will have the pleasure of tapping his brand-new nameplate and the satisfaction of watching the prosecutor scowl. Winner, right there in the name! Just like it says on the tin! Undeniable! Yes we are just a couple of shining success stories, aren’t we Manfred, just a shame that you have to toil over that reputation to keep the Von Karma name perfect whereas all I have to do is make sure no one makes a typo, am I right! Incredibly, infuriatingly annoying, a constant source of joy until that perfect win record is eventually tarnished.

(Plus, free bonus psychological warfare on his son! Win-win all around. Appropriate, what with the name.)

(I also like to think that later, once all of the dust settles after a tense few years in the legal world, the new Chief Prosecutor helps put through another name-change document: “Sebastian,” with his mother’s maiden last name.)

[korynith]

I know this is normally a mostly ffxiv blog but I saw the Ghost movie last weekend and you're about to get spammed with Ghost stuff. I do not apologize in advance.

[crehador]

brother crab's summer 2024 parting thoughts: a bunch of stuff

i've been falling behind on jotting down my thoughts this season and if i don't do it fast i am 100% going to forget what i watched lol so here's a bunch at once

tasuuketsu:

YEAH. GOOD. PLEASE. LET IT BE OVER

unfortunately this isn't actually over but you know what it is? bad. it's bad. worst death game series in A While. there are some... maybe? faintly compelling ideas here? but the execution is just a mess. the cast lured me in but i should have been more discerning umu

what's worrying to me is it feels like it could have ended in ep9 but then propelled itself straight into an incredibly unnecessary second arc (i mean in fall fairness the first nine episodes were also unnecessary) and there's still no episode count on anilist. i pretty much never drop anything but if this somehow ends up being two cour i might bounce

it's so so so rare for me to not have something good to say about a series but... yeah. not good

boku no tsuma wa kanjou ga nai:

if i turn my brain off this is a pretty cute, funny, and fun show! i had my reservations at first but after a few episodes wound up enjoying it quite a bit

if i think about it even a little it becomes completely frustrating to me that this show doesn't get deeper into the psychological and moral aspects that could have been explored here, which isn't fair to the show because that's not really what it set out to be

to its credit, it does kind of get into that sort of thing. not too deep, but in ways that were reasonably satisfying to me. i guess my mehness comes from the fact that this premise would have been more interesting to me if it had been played as a psychological/existential horror instead of a romcom, but again that is not the fault of the show itself, it can be whatever it wants to be

and seriously, decent romcom! mamoru is especially adorable. just leave your brain at the door

shikanoko nokonoko koshitantan:

i will admit that no episode of this was as gut-bustingly hilarious as the first episode to me, like it came out the gate strong and maybe floundered a bit along the way

but overall i still enjoyed it immensely! i'm a fan of surreal, absurdist humor, and while i wouldn't say this is one of the best in the genre (there are definitely better) it was a fun ride

the girls were great and i'm also a huge fan of a) narrators who get to be funny little assholes too and b) toriumi kousuke so the narrator here was a double win for me

[vaugarde]

okay so as a gen 5 stan who does adore the story in bw and bw2, and now that gen 5 has experienced both a vicious hatedom that wouldnt hear a single positive thing about the games, and now a super protective fandom that insists they were perfect and had zero flaws... can we admit now that the bw1 story at least was. a little mid.

[lilianhuas]

[kply-industries]

He tried to escape his gif prison, and has only managed to damage it's quality! FOOL!

[t3acupz]

hannibal when he’s asked if he will condemn cannibalism