In a previous post, I wrote about the Writers Guild of America labor union, which most professional screenwriters end up joining sooner or later when they do enough work on guild-signatory projects. But what about all the writers that work on non-guild projects and don’t have the protections of the WGA in place?
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Conditions Precedent
At the very beginning of most entertainment contracts, there’s an important section called the conditions precedent. It tends to get overlooked because there are way more interesting sections like the compensation, credit, and perks like premiere tickets, but the conditions precedent is a critical area that shouldn’t be ignored.
Basic Definitions
In order to make sure everyone’s on the same page for these blog posts, I think it’s important to outline some definitions that will be used frequently in my posts. A lot of these are taken from the Writers Guild of America‘s (WGA’s) Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA), with some other thrown in. Please keep in mind these are just general definitions and many will be elaborated upon in later blog posts.
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is the labor union for professional writers of audiovisual material. It represents the interests of its members by collectively bargaining with producers and production companies to create a set of policies and minimum requirements that protect the working conditions of its writers. These include, among other things: defining the types of writing work performed, the minimum pay for that work, how writing credit is determined, benefits like pension and health plans, and a host of other little details.
Submission Releases
So you’ve beaten the odds and actually received a response from your query letter, cold call, etc. asking you to send in your material for consideration… but then the company gives you a submission release to sign before sending in your work. Depending on the document the company uses, a submission release might be a simple 1-2 page form, or a long, dense legal document that’s several pages long.
Power Dynamics
In order to have any kind of proper conversation about business matters, we first have to understand how negotiations work. And in order to have any kind of proper conversation about how negotiations work, we first have to understand the power dynamics at play.
Finally Stepping Into The Last Decade
So here it is, at long last. After much deliberating and planning, I’m finally jumping into the blogosphere! I’m pretty much the polar opposite of an early adopter at this point, but I decided to start blogging now for a very specific reason.
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