Michael Hall: From ShoHawk Media, this is Filmmaking Footnote, with your host, Michael Hall. You’re listening to episode 9.
This is the show where we give you the best filmmaking and production information so you can make the best project possible, without having to spend a bunch of time or money at film school. Let’s do it.
What’s up, guys? You’ve got Michael Hall here. I am the host of Filmmaking Footnote. I hope you’re having a wonderful day. Really quick, before we jump into the show, I wanted to apologize. I was re-listening to the show from a couple days ago, when I was talking about talent agents. I kept referring to Ari. He was an example I used from the television show Entourage, yes, terrible example. I kept referring to him as Ari Emanuel. His name in the show is Ari Gold. Ari Emanuel is actually a real talent agent who inspired Ari Gold. As you can see, silly mistake. My bad. Yeah, go look up Ari Emanuel, he’s actually really interesting.
He inspired the character Ari Gold on the show and then his brother is actually Rahm Emanuel, who is currently, in 2017, as I record this, Rahm Emanuel is the Mayor of Chicago and also served under Obama in the White House. I think he was the Chief of Staff for a while for Obama. Very, very powerful family. Really interesting.
Today, we are talking about AFTRA. Its longer name is the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. AFTRA was a union that was around for about 70 years. AFTRA started back in 1937, and this was a couple years after Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act. What the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 did was a statute for United States labor law, which guarantees basic rights of private sector employees to organize into trade unions and engage in collective bargaining for better terms and conditions at work.
What that means, if you’re unfamiliar with a trade union, a trade or a labor union is when an organization of workers gets together. If they’re in the private sector, a group of employees can get together to achieve a goal of getting higher wages, or protecting the integrity of the trade, improving safety standards. Trade unions were, during the Industrial Revolution, they were really important to set standards in the United States, to really force employers to set high quality standards for employees and workers.
What that Act from 1935 did was basically say, “Yes, we want to open the door for more unions to form and come forward.” That laid the groundwork for AFTRA. That Act was passed in 1935 and in 1937, AFTRA was formed. It was actually called AFRA at the time. It stood for the American Federation of Radio Artists, at the time. This was before they incorporated television into the union. At the time, it was just radio artists who needed a union. They came together in 1937. “They” meaning the radio artists came together to form the union of AFRA. This was to really push things like safety standards, when performers were working. Then the other big thing was getting a standardized wage across the United States for the talent involved in radio.
1938 was the first time that AFRA was able to negotiate its first collective bargain agreement on a nationwide scale, with NBC and CBS, and any of their affiliates, which is a big deal. In the 1930s, NBC and CBS, that was radio. Since they were able to negotiate these terms with NBC and CBS, it really set the tone for … Well, the rest of the NBC and CBS affiliates would fall in line. It really set the tone for the rest of the networks out there as well.
This established a wage increase, a scale wage increase of 125%, for union radio talent. That was a really big deal back in the ’30s and the ’40s, when radio was … That was the dominant way that people were getting their entertainment. Then, in the late ’40s and the 1950s is when television started becoming more accessible to American people, to the American people. That is actually when AFRA went out and incorporated television into their union. In 1952, AFRA merged to create a new union with the Television Authority. They created the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. From 1950 until 2012, the union then became known as AFTRA, because it represented both talent in radio and talent in television.
AFTRA was a very popular and influential labor union for the 70 years that it existed. At the same time, actually founded a little earlier, was the Screen Actors Guild, which you may have heard of before. It goes by SAG for short. The frustrating thing during this time period for these artists, a lot of artists who would work for both television, radio, and do films, the thing that was frustrating for them was that they had to belong to two different unions. As technology has gotten better over the years, more and more artists have become all-encompassing. They don’t just stick to radio, they don’t just stick to films, they don’t just stick to television. In keeping up with the times, in 2012, both SAG and AFTRA decided that it was in the talent and the union’s best interest to merge together to form one union.
In 2012, the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA merged together to create SAG-AFTRA. That’s the current union for talent working in film, television, radio, video games, podcasting. Anything, you name it. They are going … If they’re working in America and it’s a union project, they will go through SAG-AFTRA.
There are a lot of projects that are non-union, meaning that they use talent that is not within SAG-AFTRA. That’s completely legal to do. I’ve worked on quite a few shoots and campaigns where we used non-union talent. But, most big budget films, or video games, or projects use SAG talent, because most of the time, big actors and actresses, and big-time talent belong to the union, because they want to have guidelines for their working conditions. With productions, things can get sloppy sometimes and you don’t always want to put your faith in … You want to trust the crew that you’re with but you don’t always want to put your blind faith in them.
It is good to have this union to have in the back pocket. If things aren’t going well, talent can go to the union and say, “Uh oh, the set isn’t safe, I don’t feel good.” Then they can also do things like negotiate salary. They’re really looking out for the talent, which is great.
All right, you guys, thank you so much for listening today. If you are interested in how to make money as a filmmaker, we put together a free guide that you can download by going to filmmakingfootnote.com/free. You’ll be able to download this encompassing guide that takes you through how to make money as a filmmaker.
Thank you guys so much for listening today. I will see you back here tomorrow for the next episode of Filmmaking Footnote. Have a good one.
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