For those following the SAG and WGA strikes there’s new shit a-brewing, this time targeting background actors (aka extras).
Some may know that one of the issues SAG is fighting is that studios want to take virtual scans of background actors and use them in perpetuity (meaning forever) without any additional compensation to those background actors. So you would just see a bunch of AI generated humans in future movies based off of a background actor that worked one day.
This is already shitty because working as an extra for 3 days on a union set (if you receive a union voucher each day) is one of the main ways to qualify for SAG eligibility. This means that a lot of actors working background do not yet have union protection and likely do not have an agent or manager to protect them. Disney has already allegedly told background actors to do this on the set of Wanda Vision: https://www.avclub.com/wandavision-background-actors-say-disney-scanned-them-1850709900
There is one main company that supplies background actors for major union and non union productions. Central Casting. They love to brag about their very long influence in the industry – in old movies dating back to the 40s you can hear jokes about hiring extras from Central Casting.
Central Casting has been including an electronic document for all actors in their database to sign as part of onboarding. Signing it gives Central Casting the right to use your images, your videos, and YOUR LIKENESS in perpetuity, forever. They would OWN your likeness. Instead of it being a studio supplying the AI background actors, it would be Central Casting instead.
Receiving any work from Central Casting in the future is conditional upon signing it. No signature = no extra work = no extra income for union actors trying to make health insurance minimums, no union extra work for pre-SAG members.
SAG already reached out to Central Casting to tell them to stop. Central Casting refused.
Edit to say: this is not new. It’s part of actors onboarding and is called the Photo, Image, and Video Release. It’s phrased to sound like you are just giving them permission to use your image and video for CC’s website and promotional purposes. But the actual language is much broader. It’s only recently being brought up as a point for discussion because some casting directors (who are generally supportive of the strike) started pointing it out.
Central Casting is owned by Entertainment Partners which is also a giant software conglomerate and owns a lot of the software used to organize background casting and pay actors. https://www.ep.com/company/about-us/
I work with kids. These kids are at my program before and after school, and then some of them have sports/dance/music sometimes all of the above before they finally go home, eat dinner, and go to sleep. Then rinse and repeat everyday, and games and more classes on the weekend, etc.
I’m all for extracurriculars, but this turns into the teen who is not only in the school play, but they’re on the newspaper, the football team, and seven different clubs. In college they take double the courseloads, and then once they graduate…what?
They work themselves raw because they arent used to downtime. They’ve been told they can always be doing something, and they don’t know how to relax. This turns into the adult that has anxiety because there’s nothing left to clean, the adult that desperately wants to watch that TV show but can’t force themselves to sit long enough for it.
Then they turn into the moms and dads who spend all their free time ferrying their kids to extracurriculars.
Like, these kids don’t know what downtime is? I told a kid I did nothing last weekend, and he looked at me like I was crazy. He asked what I was doing this weekend and I said “Probably sleeping, mostly,” and he actually gasped. Then he rattled off a bunch of things I could do, to which I had to stop him.
“No, you don’t understand. I plan on sleeping. I’m booked.”
“But you could–”
“Nah. I’m just gonna rest.”
It was as if I had said a bad word or something. I asked what he does when he gets sick, and he says he goes to practice anyway. I asked him what he does if he doesn’t feel like going, and he said he goes anyway. I asked when he takes time to rest, and he said when he sleeps at night.
Bring back lazy Sundays. Bring back Saturday morning cartoons. Bring back the idea of relaxing and soaking in your day before moving into the next thing. Bring back the right to breathe, the right to rest.
Bring back mental health days, and taking a break. Bring back taking a walk or watching a show or setting a timer to remind yourself to stop cleaning and relax.
If you’re running at 100% all the time with no time to recharge, then your battery is going to die spectacularly, and probably at the worst possible time.
Mood
Society is trying to burn us all out. Tell society to fuck off.
Go take a fucking nap. You’ve more than earned it and you deserve it.
We HAVE to recharge. Our bodies, our minds, our everything requires it.
My dad told me when I was young that the way to take a vacation is to work on something different and I thought, and still think, that that’s the most obscene idea anyone’s ever told me to my face.
>a wild therapist has entered the chat
I can’t tell yall how much of my practice is teaching people – teenagers and adults – to do nothing. To stop. To rest. To turn off.
Folks are so resistant. A lot of the time, people don’t think they deserve it. A lot of the time they don’t know how. A lot of the time they don’t think they’re allowed.
I only have my own experience to pull from. I spend a huge amount of my time on fucking around. Lazing. Chilling. Sloth. It drives my family CRAZY that I don’t care to push that hard. I just don’t. I never have. I love it and I prioritize it. Fuck everyone else. I used to feel bad about that and sometimes still do.
But last night I was at My Local working on catching up on my patient notes so I could have my whole weekend off to sleep late and write fics and recover from the week with nothing more pressing than laundry and the server I’ve known for a decade was like “Keep working hard, it’s what you do.”
And I said “Yeah, thanks!” Because I do work hard.
How much time I take to myself doesn’t negate the hard work I do. In fact? The amount of time I take is why I can work so hard.
Everyone around me is burning out. Everyone. A big part of why is because they don’t feel like they’re allowed to take that time.
Fuck that.
You hear me? Fuck. That.
If your space is clean of the kind of mess that will attract insects and it can wait? Let it wait. You need to rest. Because the rest is what lets you work hard.
You only have so many spoons. You will run out if you don’t let yourself take the time to replenish.
It’s not a matter of deserving. It’s a matter of necessity.
If you do not schedule maintenance, your equipment will schedule it for you.
Jurassic Park failed because people want to go home for the weekend and get fair compensation for their labor.
They’re older than Florida. The Floridian peninsula is the solidified runoff of the Appalachians that got caught on some coral. It’s why we’re like this, I think. You don’t stand a chance of being normal when you were created by the shed skin of an elder god draping itself over a hollow skeleton. You’re always going to be a little Off.
