Clownfish TV: Audio Edition
Hollywood is NEVER Going to Be the Same Again...
There’s no going back for Hollywood. The pandemic and the strikes have been a one-two punch for studios, and production is down 40%. Expect even MORE outsourcing and MORE belt-tightening. Then we talk about the impending IATSE strike, and how this could theoretically lead to yet another shutdown. Hollywood’s golden era is OVER and it’s never coming back. ➡️ Tip Jar and Fan Support: http://ClownfishSupport.com ➡️ Official Merch Store: http://ShopClownfish.com ➡️ Official Website: http://ClownfishTV.com ➡️ Audio Edition: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qJc5C6OkQkaZnGCeuVOD1 Hollywood is facing significant challenges and may never return to its previous state due to the pandemic, potential strikes, AI integration, and competition from tech companies and streaming platforms. 00:00 Hollywood is in trouble and may never recover from the pandemic, with production down 40% and potential strikes looming. 01:19 Entertainment workers are considering a strike due to concerns about lack of AI protections in new contract language, as AI integration into creative products becomes more prevalent. 04:15 Hollywood is permanently changed by the pandemic and tech companies buying up studios, leading to a decline in the industry as tech moguls cut costs and jobs without agreements with writers and actors. 05:56 Hollywood is facing the threat of AI taking over roles, leading to a decrease in quality and originality in productions. 08:48 Hollywood’s production spending and global film and television productions are down significantly, and the industry is unlikely to return to its previous state due to decreased viewership, potential strikes, and studios cutting back on spending for streaming services. 12:20 Hollywood is experiencing a decline in jobs as productions are outsourced, while content creation is no longer limited to Hollywood and competition from platforms like Netflix and YouTube is putting strain on LA’s entertainment workers. 15:39 Hollywood is forever changed due to outside forces, with studios taking advantage of strikes and the pandemic to maximize profits, leaving many aspiring actors and filmmakers uncertain about their future. 16:57 Hollywood will never return to its previous state. Subscribe for more discussions. About Us: Clownfish TV is an independent, opinionated news and commentary channel that covers Entertainment and Tech from a consumer’s point of view. We talk about Gaming, Comics, Anime, TV, Movies, Animation and more. Hosted by Kneon and Geeky Sparkles. Disclaimer: This series is produced by Clownfish Studios and WebReef Media, and is part of ClownfishTV.com. Opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of our guests, affiliates, sponsors, or advertisers. ClownfishTV.com is an unofficial news source and has no connection to any company that we may cover. This channel and website and the content made available through this site are for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. These so-called “fair uses” are permitted even if the use of the work would otherwise be infringing. #Hollywood #Streaming #Disney #News #Commentary #Reaction #Podcast #Comedy #Entertainment #Hollywood #PopCulture #Tech
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If you guys are unfamiliar with Clownfish TV, please check out the video versions of these episodes on the Clownfish TV YouTube channel. And also on the Clownfish Gaming YouTube channel. Please subscribe for more podcasts. Check out DRes. That's our other podcast. The episode will begin in a couple of seconds. Thanks for listening. [Music] Hey guys, welcome back to Clownfish TV. This is Neon. I'm not here with Geeky Sparkles in this video. We're going to talk about Hollywood. Things not looking too good for Hollywood. We've got another impending strike, possibly maybe, with IOTCE. And we're going to talk about how Hollywood never recovered from the strikes. According to the rap, US and TV film productions down 40% from pre-strike levels. We're going to talk about that. And IOTCE, having a problem with AI, they might not sign this deal. I don't know yet. I don't know what's going to happen, but everything has changed. Everything has changed. The pandemic has definitely rattled Hollywood forever. I don't think it's ever going to be what it was before. Hollywood looking for some other options now to make content and people going elsewhere for content. Let's talk about all of this. Because this, of course, was the most exciting news to happen this weekend. Before we get into it any further, please subscribe. For more pop culture news, views, and rants, guys. No woo-hoo's in this video, Geeky's not in it. This has come from the rap. We're going to talk about IOTCE, and then we're going to talk about Hollywood not recovering from the pandemic. I said that these IOTCE artists are voting no on their next contract because of AI. They said that they don't have the right, I guess, to refuse AI. Members of the art director's guild are raising alarms. The protections related to AI and the latest IOTCE bargaining agreement do not go far enough to protect the future of their professions. The set designers counsel a craft committee within the ADG. See, this is confusing. A craft committee within the ADG recommended that IOTCE members vote against ratifying a deal. Now, for those of you who don't know, IOTCE is basically everybody. I guess it'd be the below-the-line workers. These are people that are not directors, not writers, not actors. This is everybody else that helps actually make the movies. We had, of course, the strikes last year, and now these other workers are talking about going on strike as well. Anyway, in a memo, the council compared the AI protections unfavorably to those won by the writers Guild of America and SAG after last year's strikes. While actors were able to maintain the rights of their own images and identities and choose to be replicated or not, the memo read, in a new contract language, we have not been given any protections relating to our individual processes when designing, building models, illustrating, or creating documents. I don't know if you're going to be given that. I mean, it's the new reality. I don't know if these corporations are going to agree to that. I don't know if Hollywood's going to agree to that. This week, tens of thousands of entertainment workers will vote on the latest IOTCE bargaining agreement. It contains significant gains on compensation and set safety, but on the issue of AI, concerns persist for members of local 800, the art directors Guild. These provisions look like they were just written by the employer and signed without any pushback, says an industrial designer, Matthew Cunningham, who worked on Aquaman and some other movies, has spoken to federal legislators about the threats AI poses to his profession. They don't really reflect the scope and impact this technology is going to have in our livelihoods. It's not going to stop Matthew, and this is coming from somebody who's spent a good chunk of his life working as an artist, working as a graphic designer. It's not going to stop. You can slow it down, but companies are going to look at AI, and yes, as cheesy as it can be, and as potentially skeevy as it can be, because we don't know where they're getting the data from, the art from, the music from, whatever, it's not going anywhere. It's going to be integrated into pretty much every creative product. We're already seeing it with Adobe. It's going to get harder and harder to avoid it. And companies that are hurting, and we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about how production has never, never returned to normal after the pandemic. Companies that are hurting are going to resort to doing everything they can do to save money. I mean, that's the reality. Old Hollywood is dead. It's over. And you can point to the pandemic and the strikes. It was kind of the one, two punch as what was kind of the kill shot for it, because I probably shouldn't say that, give them what happened this weekend. But you know what I'm saying? Like, it's, it's, there's definitely a difference. And it's not coming back. Hollywood is never coming back the way it was. I mean, look, it's tech companies are buying up all the studios. tech moguls, like Amazon and Ellison over at Skydance. It's never going to come back to what it was. And a lot of people are not going to continue to work in the industry. I mean, this is just the way it's going to be. This is Zach Berger, the lead creature designer for Avatar the Way of Water, also published a social media thread outlining why he was going against it. He explained he was part of the task force for the ADG that constructed proposals that both acknowledged AI's proliferation, but attempted to protect members jobs to to his dismay. He did not find any trace of those proposals. The task force had assembled in the tentative agreement. Look, Hollywood. Now run by tech moguls, right? Hollywood is using the opportunity to get rid of people and processes that were bloated that did not make money. Everything's, everything's had a reset. And even these deals that, that they signed, the writers guild and, and the actors, like they signed these deals and they never said that they weren't going to use AI. They just said that we'll put some safeguards in place or whatever, you'll be compensated. And then like sag after immediately after they signed the contract, hurried up and they started cutting deals to sell some of their members voices. You know, so you can theoretically have, you know, God rest casey case him, but if casey case him were still around or his, his family told him that his voice could be used. He'd be voicing shaggy and Scooby-Doo forever. Like, yeah, they would never need another, another shaggy and that's, that's kind of where we're at right now. At the very least, we should be getting protections that match the WGA. He wrote, he said the WGA contract prevents writers from being forced by studios to use AI in their writing. Okay. A labor union that represents film, illustrators allowing an automated illustration machine into the workplace is not something I should have to argue against, but the threat to members doesn't stop it. Just illustrators were just the scenario in the coal mine. Look, look what was just the coast did. They basically said, yeah, we're using AI deal with it. You know, it's going to speed things up. Do, do I think it's always ethical? No. Do I think it's, it's here to stay. Absolutely. There's is part of the creative process now for better or worse. You don't have to like it. You can hate it. I'm not completely sold on it. And I do wonder where they're getting, getting the images from, right? That's a huge issue. But like they're going to look at and be like, we could hire this person who wants to draw everything by hand and take months to do some, you know, paintings or we could hire this other person that just is essentially a bot farmer and you can crank out all kinds of art. And this person is a really good prompt writer or they do the basic work and then the AI takes it from there. And that's probably what the workflow is going to look like. I don't think it's going to be, I mean, this is my personal opinion as someone who's seen the beginning of CG animation, the beginning of, you know, artists, 2D artists using tablets. It's going to become a tool just like an art tablet where it's going to be just expected. It's going to be expected that you work digitally because it's faster, it's more efficient. It's going to be expected that you work with AI because it's faster, it's more efficient. And at the end of the day, these companies want to make money. That's all they care about. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I say at least writers have the ability to refuse AI systems. We as designers don't have that. Well, what are you going to do? Photoshop has AI built into it now. And they're going to be like, yeah, you got to use what everybody's using. A lot of artists have had and will continue to have their styles and artistic identities taken and absorbed into these systems. The result is going to be very derivative output that's going to affect the quality of these productions. Well, it already is. It already is like all the Marvel movies look the same. I'm just saying like it's, I understand the concerns 100% I get it. I don't think they care. That's, that's the truth because let's talk about this. Hollywood is never going to go back to normal. It's never going to be what it was. This article says the impacts of Hollywood's cutbacks and production spending. It's coming from the rap again. The impacts of Hollywood's cutbacks and production spending are being felt as the number of global film and television productions are down 20% from 2022 and 40% in the US. According to a new report by a production and technology research company, Pride Pro. The report was published in the LA Times that found that Hollywood Studios spent 11.3 billion on productions in the second quarter of 2024 down 20% from the same period 2022. And that was during the pandemic. So it's not just the pandemic. It's the strikes. Look, we told you this was going to happen. People are like, oh, for sure, just anti union. I'm like, no, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen. The deals, the way those deals were written, they reward the top performers. And I think a lot of these studios green lit a lot of things that they kind of had buyer's remorse about, but they had to go through with it because of contractual obligations. Now they have it out. Now they're just like, yeah, we're going to reward the top performers and we're going to pay people who work on, you know, like house of the dragon or something. You're going to get paid more because you're actually bringing the views. The rest of you, you're not going to get, you're not going to get paid very much. And we're just not going to green light more shows that nobody's going to watch. And there were several series out there. You start to look into numbers and like a good chunk of what is green lit on Netflix doesn't get watched, a good chunk of what's green lit on Disney Plus or HBO Max doesn't get watched, which is why these companies took write downs. They're like, nobody's watching this stuff, or at least not enough people are watching this stuff to warrant the amount of money that we're spending on it, right? So, yeah, this isn't good. The figure is up around 30% from 2023, but that can be attributed to anticipation of and the start of the Writers Guild of America strike last May, even when compared to the strike summer, the number of feature film productions have started worldwide has dropped. Everything's in flux right now. I mean, again, we've got studios hanging on by their fingertips getting sold, paramount. That's a big one paramount in Skydance. And we've had many, many box office bombs and many, many streaming shows that did not perform. And a lot of people are just going back and watching old TV shows, old movies. They're not watching the new stuff. Industry insiders told the rap that they believe one factor in the decrease in production has been the anticipation of this strike by IOTC or the Hollywood basic crafts that would force productions to shut down. So they're expecting another shutdown. They think that it's not going to go through. Throughout Q2, IOTC was in lengthy talks with studios on a new mutual bargaining agreement, reaching a deal at the end of last month. That was like a tentative agreement. Members of the crew, Workers Union will vote to ratify the new contracts next week while we're already having problems, aren't we? Basic crafts meanwhile are in the midst of negotiations on their own contracts. They said even if the contracts are ratifying, the more productions return to pre-strike levels is unlikely. As studios are cutting back on spending to make their streaming services profitable. For several years, the entertainment industry benefited from an arms race among the studios as they tried to fill their fledgling streaming services with a diverse array of original films and TV shows, and a lot of that stuff just did not perform. But the new period of austerity in Hollywood has led to a significant drop in employment opportunities for the industry's workers, particularly in Los Angeles where union members are struggling to keep up with the high cost of living. Struggle has been compounded by the exodus of productions to other states and countries in search of more generous tax incentives. And we're going to talk more about this. I'm hoping to get fresher Luke back on. We're going to talk about where this leaves animation because a lot of these animation productions are being moved to Canada. They're being moved overseas. Skydance are hiring, but they're hiring animators in production people in Spain. A lot of these productions are being outsourced to South Korea. Some of them wind up in North Korea by way of South Korea and China, but that's a whole nother issue. You know what I'm saying? So like the days of getting a job in the animation industry or even just in general in Hollywood and moving to LA and parking it there for decades, those days are over. It's over. Like it's Hollywood's broken forever. It's never going to be what it was before the pandemic. Everything has changed. Hollywood is basically just a town like any other town that produces content for streaming services and video and mobile devices and whatever. I mean, that's the truth. The glitz and the glamor. It's all gone. You know, it's gone. That is not going to come back. Now, the upside to this is that if you live outside of Hollywood, you live outside of that bubble. You actually have the opportunity to be able to produce content as well. You can live in another country, produce content, get picked up by a Netflix and your stuff can become as big. If not bigger than the stuff that Hollywood's putting out. We're seeing this a lot with the South Korean shows, like Squid Game. We're seeing a boon for anime productions. In fact, I guess it's getting harder and harder to be able to secure the time of a studio because they're so busy. Cranking out anime now, whether or not they're people are being paid fairly. That's, you know, I'm saying, I has a whole other issue, but like you can literally live in the middle of nowhere. You can live in like Idaho or Wisconsin or something and start a production studio and get your stuff seen. You can start a YouTube channel and get your stuff seen and then have, you know, a deal with Netflix or something like that. You know, it's possible. That's the new reality. We're going to have smaller groups of people producing content. I mean, look at Mr. Beast. I mean, I know he's got quite the machine underneath him because he's a YouTuber, but it's nothing compared to the typical staff that works on a Hollywood production, right? You know, he might have a dozen people or something working with him. I don't know how many people he has, but it's nothing like that and he's probably making more profit. You know, so that's what's going on. They said LA remains the top driver of production employment, even ahead of rising competitors like New York Atlanta, Chicago and Albuquerque. The new competition along with the rising costs and the toll the strikes have taken on have taken on the financial reserves has put LA's entertainment workers under new strain. Yeah, that sucks. I mean, it sucks for them. I'm sorry, but it's just like, this is the new reality and I really am imploring people to take a look around you and be like, where is everything going to be in 10 years? You know, do I need to make moves now to make sure that I'm not homeless in 10 years because a lot of people, especially a lot of younger people are going to be on their backs, looking at the ceiling being like, what the hell happened? I don't know what happened. I moved to Hollywood at a school. I went to Cal Arts or whatever and I was promised a rose garden and it didn't, I joined a union. I did everything I was supposed to do, right? And there's no career for me in Hollywood and it's just, you know, outside forces. Everything has changed. It's all changed in these studios. They're going to take advantage of the strikes. They're going to take advantage of the pandemic and they're going to they're going to try to maximize their profits. That is, that is where we're at, guys. So yeah, Hollywood's never going to be the same. We'll see where we're at in five years. I mean, if you had told me five years ago that this is where things were going to be, I would have laughed. I'm like, all the Disney movies are making a billion dollars and everybody's making money and there's like all kinds of streaming shows. Yeah, here we are four years later. And it's just like, yeah, everything's broken. Half the studios are for sale. They're liquidating assets. They're, you know, it's like, it's never going to go back to what it was. So I'm going to wrap it up. Please subscribe. We'll talk later. Thanks again for listening. More news and videos are available on our website at www.clownfishtv.com. And on our YouTube channel, clownfishtv, you can buy official merchandise clownfish comic books and more at shop clownfish.com. If you like this show, please consider subscribing and leaving us a positive review on iTunes and other podcast platforms. If you're looking to help support this show financially, go to clownfishsupport.com. If you'd like to sponsor an episode of this show, send us an email at business@webrief.io. This podcast is a production of clownfish studios LLC and webrief media proudly made in Pittsburgh, USA. Feeling overwhelmed? Contact the 988 Colorado mental health line. Free confidential and immediate emotional support is available 24/7. Call or text 988 or chat at 988 colorado.com. No concern is too small.