Writers' Rights In The New Interactive Media:
A Summary Of A Recent WGA Symposium

The Writers Guild of America, West, in its Writers' Rights Day symposium, tackled an increasingly hot topic for writers and producers today -- the pitfalls and potential represented by the new so-called "interactive" media.

The definition of new media is necessarily loose at this point, encompassing as it does everything from interactive computer games to CD-ROM, multi-media to databases, and, as one symposium speaker put it, "all kinds of jabberwocky."

Many of the forms these media will take have not even been invented yet. Thus, the Writers Guild's slogan for the evening: "In chaos lies opportunity."

As addressed by the symposium speakers, the opportunities presented by these new media seem to fall into two main categories: financial and creative. And so do the pitfalls,

Creatively, the current chaos is good news for writers, according to Ashley Grayson, founder of an independent literary agency in 1976 and currently a computer publisher. -Grayson emphasized that, "in this business we're making it up as we go along, and that's the best possible environment for a writer."

Because every producer would like to produce the first new megahit, Grayson said, and no one knows what it's going to be, opportunities are waiting for writers who are willing to learn new skills.

The ones who figure out how to merge graphics, text, and user manipulation to create a new kind of drama, will dominate a field that needs "one Einstein, two Edisons, a couple of Frank Capras, a handful of Picassos and a Stephen King" to show the way to exploit its full storytelling potential, Grayson said. Budding multi-media geniuses should definitely apply.

The new media are not limited to providing entertainment, however; they can be educational at the same time. Roger Holzberg, director of Knowledge Adventure, Inc. Film Group, provided tangible evidence of this.

He showed the Writers Guild audience his latest completed computer software project, a multi-media version of Speed, an IMAX movie that examines humankind's desire to go ever faster. Holzberg described the project as "a lot of fun," and used a computer to demonstrate the simulations, sound effects, games, quizzes, and modules that allow a user to play with the idea of speed from every angle. Holzberg said his goal was to "steal as much as I can from the SEGA and Nintendo market, and teach them that learning doesn't have to be boring and horrible."

As an example of the potential for cross-pollination in this field, he described his next project. It is to be based on the book The Discoverers. "First written by Daniel Boorstin," Holzberg said, "it was very successful as a novel and is just being released as an IMAX movie, also written by John Boorstin." Thus, The Discoverers could mark the first instance of a book, a movie, and a software title being marketed simultaneously.

Holzberg's background, which combines screenwriting, directing and design, serves as an example of the types of skills the writers/software designers of the future might well need in this field.

In addition to the thrill of leading the way in a new field, writers should also expect some frustrations. Among them are the lack of a standard format for playback and the limitations of the button-pushing mechanisms for user manipulation. Clicking a mouse on a picture of a button is not a particularly exciting way to access the wonders of multi-media. As Grayson put it, "there has to be a better way."

If the creative side of the electronic media field is exhilarating and frustrating, so too is the financial side.

One good thing is that, as Grace Reiner, Director of Contract Administration for the Writers Guild, pointed out, "we have a lot of provisions which we believe apply to the technology."

For example, if a company planning to do a CD-ROM on dinosaurs wants to include some text from the script for Jurassic Park, "that's a publication right," Reiner said. In theatrical films and original television, the writer owns all publication rights. If they want to do that, they'd have to negotiate with the writer to acquire those rights."

"On the other hand, a company may want to make a video game from Jurassic Park wherein the user has many alternative mazes by which to get out of the park. In that case, the company would probably use the entire movie but would add some scenes to create the mazes." This, Reiner said, would be tantamount to a video release of a theatrical product and would be covered at the standard percentage: 1Ú2% of 20% of the gross.

"If the gamemakers use just an excerpt from a covered motion picture, there would be a one-time only excerpt payment.

"Unfortunately, if they sell 4 billion of them, we still have the one-time-only excerpt use," she said.

"I think here we're to catch up to the technology, because the technology is moving faster every step we take," she pointed out, but even in unusual situations "I've got a really big book and I can fit it in somewhere."

"For example, if an excerpt from a covered motion picture is used, but then altered or "morphed," to give game players the interactive ability to change some element," Reiner said, "I would fit it in as merchandising rights, for which the writer gets 5% of the absolute gross the company gets from the manufacturer."

"In television, however, if a writer writes an original story in teleplay, the writer owns the merchandising rights," she added. "Which means, ostensibly that the company could not produce the property as a game . . . without the writer's permission."

The bottom line, Reiner summarized, is "we merely fit into our Guild agreement what the media are doing. We're stuck in the present with the provisions as they stand, and only through further negotiation will we be able to cover all the areas the technology is moving toward."

And what about people developing projects directly for the multi-media market itself?

Joel Block, director of industry alliances for WGA West, indicated the situation right now is pretty ambiguous.

"Basically," he said, "it's sale day for producers." He explained that "a producer who wants to hire a WGA member and become signatory to the WGA and produce an interactive program, basically needs only to sign a one-sheet agreement which obligates that producer to pay 12 1Ú2 % pension and health contributions."

He said he hoped that "given the current uncertainties in the economics" of these forms of media that producers "will view the one--page agreement as fairly user-friendly for them to employ writers."

In other respects, compensating writers in the interactive field is more complicated. Block illustrated this by posing a series of questions facing writers negotiating a contract.

"If they're writing for a particular platform, for example, CD-ROM for IBM platform, what rights does the producer obtain in addition to being able to produce a disc for that platform? Does that also mean they'll be able to convert to the Macintosh Apple platform? Once there's going to be communication through a cable box or converter box through the television set, is that going to be another permitted use of the producer of that same interactive title, or is that a reserved right that the writer will get extra compensation for?"

Or, as Grayson put it: "The agency advice is: don't sell your electronic rights as a package."

Part of the problem, Block said is that "no one really knows how to peg the money." No one knows what the E. T. of multi-media is going to look like, who the first Spielberg of the new media will be or even what form the delivery system will take.

Moreover, it's difficult for a writer to gauge how much work a particular project will entail. In television and motion pictures, writers are used to terms like "treatment" having a certain well-defined meaning on which they can base their expectations of compensation.

However, when an interactive producer asks for a treatment, he or she may be referring to "the development of a design document that has more levels of direction in terms of how the project is going to proceed than a film or television treatment," Block explained.

He emphasized that the key to obtaining effective protection of writers' rights in this emerging field will be communication among writers, their agents, attorneys and the WGA so that members can learn from each other's experiences. He urged members not to keep the terms of their deals secret as they're being negotiated and added that the WGA would like to be a central clearinghouse for information, especially as to what reserved rights writers are retaining.

It fell to Keynote Speaker Harlan Ellison to sweep aside all questions of mere money and get right to the philosophical heart of the matter. In his occasionally caustic way, Ellison sounded a cautionary note.

"Computers," he said, "have nothing to do with art, they have nothing to do with writing." They may make the process of writing easier in some respects, "because you can make mistakes and reorder them, you do."

"And this," he added, "has produced an awful lot of bad movies and bad books." Technology may make the tools of the artist more accessible to us, but it does not necessarily give us the ability to use them wisely.

"Art should not be easy," he said. "Art is a function of the imagination and as such has to come from the soul of the writer, from the heart of the writer and it has to cost you something," he continued.

And he left the audience with a final warning: "You cannot learn ethics from a computer. You cannot learn integrity from a computer."

In a day when all of Hollywood is angling to get a piece of the multi-media market, it may be wise to keep Ellison's warning in mind.