[AMPTP] gave us yesterday, in that 'groundbreaking AI proposal', they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day's pay, and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation.
— duncan crabtree-ireland, chief negotiator of SAG-AFTRA (video source)
At one moment in the Q&A, Fran Drescher said "We're not curing cancer here, this is a collective artform!" That is just this entire moment in entertainment labor summed up. I mean, honestly, fuck you. People are making film and television so that people can enjoy film and television, not just have a hose pointed at them marked "content" that they can guzzle down. If you want to have movies with crowds (or any movie at all not set in an abandoned field), you need to pay people to do that. It isn't just a checkmark on a list, it's part of caring about what is in your frame, just as much as anything else you are trying to say on film.
It is disgusting there is such a remove from the basic building blocks of production and the boardroom that anybody could see a proposal like this as reasonable! People feed their families doing background work! It keeps them afloat till their next project! So many actors I know get their health insurance and pensions through those jobs! And you have the resources ALREADY IN PLACE to keep all of that! What is even the fucking point of doing this shit at all if you cannot even respect the most basic tenents of the business? I hope the studios rot.
