Tonight's General Membership Meeting

The first TAG membership meeting of 2014 had a lively crowd asking a lot of questions ...

There were several hot topics, among them:

* Shortened work schedules: "We now have to pose out animation to the voice tracks, build a rough animatic, draw layouts, and the schedules are insanely short." ...

Animation employees' non-responses to TAG's annual wage survey: "We need the shop stewards to go around and get each member of their crew to fill out the survey form. Or have everybody write their classification and weekly wage and throw it into a hat. Anonymously." ...

Animatics: "Aren't animatics a thing the Editors Guild does? Why are board artists doing them? Shouldn't we be telling production people editing isn't our work?" ...

Craft meetings: "What's going to be discussed?" [What we can do now to help artists work situations; begin work on 2015 contract proposals; short schedules; long employment tests; Work definitions for different job classifications.] ...

Questions and answers went on for over an hour. Business representative Steve Hulett (me) gave a report on the state of the industry. Work in television continues to be robust, and there has been selective hiring in feature production after a lot of layoffs during 2013. DreamWorks Animation TV continues to grow its staff as it prepares new Netflix series. Other television divisions at other companies are subcontracting some shows to outside boutique studios, most shows done under a union contract.

After the meeting adjourned, many members stayed to discuss industry work situations, and what TAG members can do in coming months to make work better.