An update from Local 47 President John Acosta

Many of you have expressed a desire to know the next steps planned now that the Motion Picture/TV Employment Task Force report was delivered back in April. I urge you to read the officer reports in Overture to stay up to date on all that is going on, but I’d like to take this opportunity to bring you squarely up to the minute on where we are with progress.

Immediately after the members and Executive Board approved the Task Force recommendations, I delivered them to AFM President Ray Hair and the International Executive Board. We highlighted the video games recommendation, urging that the International Executive Board (IEB) meet and match the London terms for video games forthwith. President Hair has agreed to provide the necessary flexibility to modify the current video game agreement to include soundtracks, a tiered rate for larger orchestral sessions, and broad use rights, which in essence brings the AFM in line with what video game companies can expect in the UK. The one area of continued discussion is whether or not the AFM will allow composers to sign the agreement. We believe the AFM should allow composers to sign on a trial basis and will continue to drive this point.

Next, this July VP Rick Baptist and I will be on the Agenda for the IEB meeting. At that meeting we will urge adoption of the full set of Task Force recommendations, which include creation of a Music Library agreement, adjusting the Sound Recording agreement to match London rates and streamlined new-use provisions based on percentages of licenses, along with other items. For a better understanding of what else is in the Task Force report please see the summary in the members-section of the Local 47 website.