Ron Moore of BattleStar Galactica on WGA Strike
Jpoz was nice enough to link me to an article that I found extremely interesting. Apparently, when The Resistance webisodes were initially pitched to the writers, actors and directors of Battlestar Galactica, all groups were told that they would get no money from these episodes placed online. Now really. No one gets paid for these? There are advertisements on the webpage where these videos are displayed. There are advertisements at the beginning of the clip that you have to watch before viewing the webisode. So, the studio is making money off of placing these webisodes online, but they don’t want to share the profits with anyone. Anyway, I believe they managed to work it out, but these are the kind of issues the writers are trying to address by striking.
Here’s the quote from Ron Moore:
“I had a situation last year on Battlestar Galactica where we were asked by Universal to do webisodes [Note: Moore is referring to The Resistance webisodes which ran before Season 3 premiered], which at that point were very new and ‘Oooh, webisodes! What does that mean?’ It was all very new stuff. And it was very eye opening, because the studio’s position was ‘Oh, we’re not going to pay anybody to do this. You have to do this, because you work on the show. And we’re not going to pay you to write it. We’re not going to pay the director, and we’re not going to pay the actors.’ At which point we said ‘No thanks, we won’t do it.’”
“We got in this long, protracted thing and eventually they agreed to pay everybody involved. But then, as we got deeper into it, they said ‘But we’re not going to put any credits on it. You’re not going to be credited for this work. And we can use it later, in any fashion that we want.’ At which point I said ‘Well, then we’re done and I’m not going to deliver the webisodes to you.’ And they came and they took them out of the editing room anyway — which they have every right to do. They own the material — But it was that experience that really showed me that that’s what this is all about. If there’s not an agreement with the studios about the internet, that specifically says ‘This is covered material, you have to pay us a formula - whatever that formula turns out to be - for use of the material and how it’s all done,’ the studios will simply rape and pillage.”
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