And if you do get paid for your ideas/writing during the strike, that is considered scabbing and you will be barred from the WGA for life, as per this email from the Blacklist:
And, because a lot of people don’t understand this bit, this is about you selling your ideas or writing to US-based TV studios or movie studios who are part of the AMPTP. There is no strike against book publishers. Nor audiobooks, graphic novels, or poetry publishing. Or just writing.
Read the above from the WGA.
Important additional note for early career filmmakers and students (like me!):
For pre-WGA writers (i.e. people who want to join WGA but cannot yet qualify / still earning early-career credits) - this FAQ by an authorized WGA representative is very helpful.
2. Upload student films to YouTube, Vimeo, Patreon, or your personal social media
3. Create indie films for *under $20,000*(“micro-budget” films)
–>unlike WGA members, pre-members are still allowed to actively write and film. We are not “pens down.”
4.Submit micro-budget films to film festivals
5. Send spec scripts to agents, sign with an agent
What you CANNOT do is sign any production or distribution deals. Nor can an agent submit your film or script to producers, streamers, studios, or distributors on your behalf.
This prohibition includes “major indie” studios unaffiliated with AMPTP, such as A24. Note that this is a key difference between WGA and SAG-AFTRA!
SAG-AFTRA allows student and early career actors to continue to submit reels and audition for non-AMPTP films. WGA does NOT want student writers to do this with our scripts. The WGA rep in the article gives good sample messaging if any studio or producer is interested in your script or self-published films. Emphasize that you would love to work with the studio after the strike is complete and WGA terms have been met, and you will reach back out at that time.
Essentially: as a pre-WGA member, you are allowed to do your film class homework! You are allowed to write scripts and film them yourself. You *are* allowed to self-produce, self-publish, and self-distribute your work on platforms that do not pay residuals (i.e. social media, etc).
You are NOT allowed to contribute to the pipeline of content that AMPTP studios and major streamers profit from. Do not submit or sign any deals for your scripts, nor for distribution of your independently created films.
__
Eta: direct questions and answers - this is most relevant to student + early career filmmakers.
MovieMaker: And that’s also detrimental to the agent, because they’re also going to lose money on you.
Christopher Kyle: Yes. The only thing I would say is, I would guess that agents have time on their hands right now. It may be a good time for an aspiring writer to send them a script to read. Because they may have more time to read it.
MovieMaker: Is that considered distasteful or tacky or anything?
Christopher Kyle: Tacky to sign with an agent? We’re not we’re not in conflict with agents. So if agents want to use this time to find clients that they’re then going to market in the future, I think that’s fine. But you know, they can’t start that marketing until after the strike.
MovieMaker: Got it. Okay. And there’s no conflict at all with using screenwriting platforms for coverage service?
Christopher Kyle: I don’t think so, unless their coverage service is somehow sponsored by one of the signatory companies, which I can’t imagine is the case.
MovieMaker: I get emails from contests that say, basically, “Here’s your chance to pitch your ideas to managers and agents” or to “pitch your ideas to producers.” It sounds like pitching to managers and agents is fine, but pitching to producers would clearly be out of bounds.
Christopher Kyle: Correct.
MovieMaker: Can independent filmmakers seek investors or crowdfunding during the strike?
Christopher Kyle: As long as the investments aren’t coming from a signatory company.
MovieMaker: Can independent filmmakers enter their films and film festivals during the writers strike?
Christopher Kyle: Yes, but as I said before, if they put their film in a festival and it leads to an offer of sale or option from a company that we’re striking against them, they wouldn’t be able to take advantage of that without running across the rules.
MovieMaker: So if Netflix or another signatory reached out to you and said, “We love your film, we want it,” what is the proper response? Is it no response? Or should you say, “Let’s talk when the strike is over”?
Christopher Kyle: That’s what you should say. “I really appreciate your interest in my work. I’m in solidarity with the striking writers. As soon as the strike is over, I hope to have this conversation with you then.”
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TLDR version - pre-WGA writers can write scripts, post scripts to Blacklist or social media, pitch agents, sign with agents, create mico budget films, post films to social media or your online portfolio, submit films to festivals, get direct funding for films (via Patreon, Only Fans, or Kickstarter)
The only things you cannot do are: pitch to, meet with, actively write for, or sign with an AMPTP signatory studio or streaming service.
Hope this helps others, it definitely clarified things for me 😁
I used to work for a call center and I was doing a political survey and I called this number that was randomly generated for me and the way our system worked was voice-activated so when the other person said hello you’d get connected to them, so I just launch right into my “Harvard University and NPR blah blah blah” thing and then there’s this long pause and I think the person’s hung up even though I didn’t hear a click
And then I hear “you shouldn’t be able to call this number.”
So I apologize and go into the preset spiel about because we aren’t selling anything, etc. etc. and the answer I get is
“No, I know that. What I mean is that it should be impossible for you to call this number, and I need to know how you got it.”
I explain that it’s randomly generated and I’m very sorry for bothering him, and go to hang up. And before I can click terminate, I hear:
“Ma’am, this is a matter of national security.”
I accidentally called the director of the FBI.
My job got investigated because a computer randomly spit out a number to the Pentagon.
This is my new favourite story.
When I was in college I got a job working for a company that manages major air-travel data. It was a temp gig working their out of date system while they moved over to a new one, since my knowing MS Dos apparently made me qualified.
There was no MS Dos involved. Instead, there was a proprietary type-based OS and an actually-uses-transistors refrigerator-sized computer with switches I had to trip at certain times during the night as I watched the data flow from six pm to six AM on Fridays and weekends. If things got stuck, I reset the server.
The company handled everything from low-end data (hotel and car reservations) to flight plans and tower information. I was weighed every time I came in to make sure it was me. Areas of the building had retina scanners on doors.
During training. they took us through all the procedures. Including the procedures for the red phone. There was, literally, a red phone on the shelf above my desk. “This is a holdover from the cold war.” They said. “It isn’t going to come up, but here’s the deal. In case of nuclear war or other nation-wide disaster, the phone will ring. Pick up the phone, state your name and station, and await instructions. Do whatever you are told.”
So my third night there, it’s around 2am and there’s a ringing sound.
I look up, slowly. The Red phone is ringing.
So I reach out, I pick up the phone. I give my name and station number. And I hear every station head in the building do the exact same. One after another, voices giving names and numbers. Then silence for the space of two breaths. Silence broken by…
“Uh… Is Shantavia there?”
It turns out that every toll free, 1-900 or priority number has a corresponding local number that it routs to at its actual destination. Some poor teenage girl was trying to dial a friend of hers, mixed up the numbers, and got the atomic attack alert line for a major air-travel corporation’s command center in the mid-west United States.
There’s another pause, and the guys over in the main data room are cracking up. The overnight site head is saying “I think you have the wrong number, ma’am.” and I’m standing there having faced the specter of nuclear annihilation before I was old enough to legally drink.
The red phone never rang again while I was there, so the people doing my training were only slightly wrong in their estimation of how often the doomsday phone would ring.
Every time I try to find this story, I end up having to search google with a variety of terms that I’m sure have gotten me flagged by some watchlist, so I’m reblogging it again where I swear I’ve reblogged it before.
But none of these stories even come close to the best one of them all; a wrong number is how the NORAD Santa Tracker got started.
Seriously, this is legit.
In December 1955, Sears decided to run a Santa hotline. Here’s the ad they posted.
Only problem is, they misprinted the number. And the number they printed? It went straight through to fucking NORAD. This was in the middle of the Cold War, when early warning radar was the only thing keeping nuclear annihilation at bay. NORAD was the front line.
And it wasn’t just any number at NORAD. Oh no no no.
Terri remembers her dad had two phones on his desk, including a red
one. “Only a four-star general at the Pentagon and my dad had the
number,” she says.
“This was the ‘50s, this was the Cold War,
and he would have been the first one to know if there was an attack on
the United States,” Rick says.
The red phone rang one day in
December 1955, and Shoup answered it, Pam says. “And then there was a
small voice that just asked, ‘Is this Santa Claus?’ ”
His
children remember Shoup as straight-laced and disciplined, and he was
annoyed and upset by the call and thought it was a joke — but then,
Terri says, the little voice started crying.
“And Dad realized
that it wasn’t a joke,” her sister says. “So he talked to him,
ho-ho-ho’d and asked if he had been a good boy and, ‘May I talk to your
mother?’ And the mother got on and said, ‘You haven’t seen the paper
yet? There’s a phone number to call Santa. It’s in the Sears ad.’ Dad
looked it up, and there it was, his red phone number. And they had
children calling one after another, so he put a couple of airmen on the
phones to act like Santa Claus.”
“It got to be a big joke at the command center. You
know, ‘The old man’s really flipped his lid this time. We’re answering
Santa calls,’ ” Terri says.
And then, it got better.
“The airmen had this big glass board with the United States on it and
Canada, and when airplanes would come in they would track them,” Pam
says.
“And Christmas Eve of 1955, when Dad walked in, there was
a drawing of a sleigh with eight reindeer coming over the North Pole,”
Rick says.
“Dad said, ‘What is that?’ They say, ‘Colonel, we’re
sorry. We were just making a joke. Do you want us to take that down?’
Dad looked at it for a while, and next thing you know, Dad had called
the radio station and had said, ‘This is the commander at the Combat
Alert Center, and we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks
like a sleigh.’ Well, the radio stations would call him like every hour
and say, ‘Where’s Santa now?’ ” Terri says.
For real.
“And later in life he got letters from all over the world, people
saying, ‘Thank you, Colonel,’ for having, you know, this sense of humor.
And in his 90s, he would carry those letters around with him in a
briefcase that had a lock on it like it was top-secret information,” she
says. “You know, he was an important guy, but this is the thing he’s
known for.”
“Yeah,” Rick [his son] says, “it’s probably the thing he was proudest of, too.”
So yeah. I think that might be the best wrong number of all time.
Not knowing that you have a villain inside you, a hero, and a bystander is a lesson that everyone should learn.
What is the quote from Jingo, by Sir Terry Pratchett, to the effect of “when someone does something terrible, we want it to be one of Them, because if it isn’t Them, then it is Us?”
“It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.”
Jingo. 1997. Pratchett, Terry. NY, London, and Ankh-Morpork: Harper-Collins. p. 205
okay but the BEST part of the first study discussed (conducted by an autistic person!) Is that it shows that while easy, calm, mutual communication and social interaction is often more natural between two autistic people than it is between an autistic person and a non-autistic person, it is ALSO like this when an autistic person encounters a non-autistic person who imitates the autistic individual’s behaviours- neurotypical parents copying autistic children’s play, for example, apparently receive more positive engagement from their child- which is SERIOUSLY FUCKING IMPORTANT and VERY VERY GOOD because it is, once again, scientific evidence that bullshit like aversion therapy and enforced conformance and FUCKING “quiet hands” aren’t “”“”“solutions to the autism problem”“”“” and that “”“”“problems”“”“ with autism don’t stem from BEING autistic, but rather, from how NON AUSTISTIC PEOPLE TREAT AUTISTIC PEOPLE.
IE, once again, there is nothing bad or wrong about being autistic
ALT
