Posts by rodgerd
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What are TV broadcast fees like for major films?
Getting worse as more people head to the torrentmobile, I expect.
(I hope no-one carping about actors' residuals would be undermining the business model they depend on in such a way!)
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Until they see how incredibly Middle-Earth like the UK is, it having been the actual place Tolkien wandered around in when he was dreaming it all up.
The actual place Tolkien grew up in is the site of abandoned steel and glassworks. The bits the EU have funded the clean-up of aren't too gross, but it's all (ex-)industrial conurbation now.
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Surely the point of unions is to raise working conditions and wages above the absolute minimum that one would work for?
Sure, so long as bragging about the political heft of a Winter of Discontent doesn't ultimately get you Thatcher and your members on the dole queue.
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That's quite a pointed piece, nzlemming.
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This has become a real problem, and I don't think it actually helps get roles for NZ Equity members. It just makes production companies think there must be easier places to work.
Well, it's not like New Zealand is teeming with internationally-known starts of the sort that cause financiers to stump up the cash necessary to fund movies.
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Ultimately, Unions are democratic institutions responsible directly to their members.
Well, except the documents dug up here would appear to indicate that AE isn't.
But certainly, in principle, I'd agree for the most part.
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Nice, Brendon. Can you work something about the Templars and Freemasons in there as well?
Brendon, you clearly know nothing about the film business
He doesn't even know how ACC works for contractors, despite claiming to have been one.
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Given that Peter Jackson had tried to make sure the films would be made in NZ since he genuinely likes working here and he has considerable loyalty to the local industry it's very hard to see why he would conspire against himself to have the films made overseas.
Or he could long ago have take the option of fucking off overseas, a la Donaldson (no relation), Ward, Tamihore, or Karl Urban, rather than working out ways to pull work back into NZ. I'm sure he profits handsomely from it, but it's hardly the easy option.
And now, on Labour Day, public sentiment is such that there will be large anti-union rallies. Ouch.
Well, anti-AE, perhaps, but yes, AE have certainly done a bang-up job of acting like every almost negative cariciture of unionism. About the only things they haven't managed are links to organised crime.
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I can't figure this one out. Why would Simon Whipp care if Oz actors have to speak in an American accent?
The only way that action makes any sense is it MEAA is so completely in the pocket of SAG that it is doing its bidding within Australia. Am I missing something there? Does anybody have another explanation?
There's been a few people who have opined in the PA threads that Jackson's worthless to New Zealand because he doesn't make "authentic" New Zealand films[1]. It strikes me as a frankly bizarre idea, but it's not unique.
Beyond that one can only guess at motivations. Cluelessness? Maintaining power being more important that working for actors? Who knows?
There are plenty of non Equity actors now motivated do the same. When the new union clearly represents a far more credible % of NZ actors than EA has ever claimed, the committee will be confronted with the true limits of their mandate.
That's great, but so long as AE are the outfit that international unions will (apparently without question) blacklist productions for, the go-to guys for working Visas, and get to be the ones to control and ticket-clip residuals, the latter of which have been indicated is the case presently, it doesn't really matter what the actors themselves think; the AE executive will be what matter.
From a link posted in t'other thread:
For them direct action had been a reckless adventure resulting in lost wages, criticism in the rural press, and diluted employment options. Many of these resigned from the union because of the inept manner in which the dispute was handled.
Hmm.
[1] Whatever they are.
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The lack of transparency and voting in the original part of the saga, and the suggestion dug up here that there is still basically no requirement for the membership to be balloted, and possibly no way for the membership to hold the executive to account gives me the shits.
I would hope not a single person here who was outraged by the "Dictator Brownlee" is anything less that furious about this.