nothing about working with unions is simple, there are legalities and contracts that have to be navigated.
neither blizzard nor the union is going to do that so some non-union rando who has no experience but can totes act, I swear, can get hired in place of union actors.
Of course Iâm not saying that. Iâm saying that they should pay them. They should stay within union contracts but I think that an open casting call would be good PR for the community. Heck a member of the community council agrees with me that there should be an open casting call.
this would be radical ngl but to train a unprofessional to a professional might be a mountainous task.
that being said, 1000% into the idea. just because it might be hard dosnt mean it wouldnt be a awesome community thing.
I mean, I can see it occasionally as a sweepstakes of some sorta. You get 1 or 2 lines. I just imagine that typicallyâŚpeople trained to do something for a living typically are better at it than nobodies.
I feel like Iâm a parent explaining why we canât have ice cream for dinner. Yes, it would be cool, but itâs just not practical for reasons that youâre willfully ignoring.
The initial fee for joining SAG-AFTRA is $3000, plus $231.96 annually, plus 1.575 percent of covered earnings up to $1,000,000.
And you canât just up and join for the lulz. You have to have booked union work. Voicing a character in WoW could count as union work, but then you have to go to the union office and provide your pay stubs. Itâs also a bit of a catch-22 - they have to hire union actors, but actors canât join the union until theyâve been booked and paid.
So Blizzard would either be handing people a bill and a chore for voicing a character paid at rates that wouldnât cover someoneâs joining-the-union fees, or they could fund the dues basically out of a sense of charity. The latter is probably what theyâd do in an extraordinary, Make-a-Wish situation. Otherwise, there are probably people whoâd pay over $2000 to voice a character in a video game, but they could do that at any time - look for work until they book a union job, join the union, go to an open casting call or get talent representation to hook an audition up for you, get the role.
Why wouldnât Blizzard just hire experienced talent for less hassle (or less financial detriment to the fan, or less financial detriment to them) instead? I could see them doing it as a one-off move if there was a really good reason, like the Make-a-Wish kid, or a contest, or an anniversary event PR thing or something, but regularly?
Yes sweetie. We canât go to Disneyland every week because mom is a big meanie doo-doo head, and not because we live in Ohio, and she earns minimum wage, and dad went out for cigarettes in 2009 and took the car.