Two actors unions and the U.S. advertising industry said Monday they agreed to extend a contract covering commercials on TV, radio, the Internet and other new media by six months through March.
The extension gives the Screen Actors Guild extra time to finish stalled talks with Hollywood studios over a contract covering prime-time TV shows and movies that expired in June. Actors continue to work under the terms of the old deal.
Both the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists held a six-month commercials strike in 2000 that drove work overseas.
The extension comes on top of a two-year extension agreed to in 2006.
At that time, the advertising industry and the unions commissioned Booz Allen Hamilton to study new compensation models for performers to deal with the shift of ads to the Internet and other new media. The study was completed early this year.
In March, SAG and AFTRA acrimoniously ended 27 years of joint negotiations with studios over movies and prime-time TV shows in a spat over jurisdiction and the makeup of the bargaining team.
SAG and AFTRA have yet to decide formally whether to jointly bargain on the commercials contract.
The ad industry is represented by a joint committee of the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
SUPERLATIVE Signs Director Claudia Abend For Spots and Branded Content
Latin American director/editor and documentary filmmaker Claudia Abend has joined SUPERLATIVE for her first U.S. representation spanning commercials and branded content.
Abend's empathetic docu-style POV has garnered several international awards for the documentary films Hit (2008) and The Flower of Life (2018). Her spotmaking credits include such brands as Procter & Gamble, Nestle and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. SUPERLATIVE has already worked with Abend, together producing a new ad campaign for digital agency Tinuiti and The Honest Company, a consumer goods corporation featuring eco-minded products.
“We found Claudia through her poignant documentaries on the festival circuit,” said SUPERLATIVE creative manager Stefan Dezil. “We are excited about her textured narratives, emotional storytelling, and her powerhouse long-form storytelling abilities, currently on her third feature film. As SUPERLATIVE continues to build our brand after premiering our latest films at Sundance and SXSW, Claudia is the kind of multidimensional artist we are excited to partner with on branded content and beyond. Fluent in English and Spanish, her reel shows real prowess with infants, food and skin products, families both young and old. Great visual storytelling and inspirational doc work.”
Abend began her career in her native Uruguay, studying film and editing in college. “My dad would show me films like Citizen Kane,” she said. “I love cinema and became an editor. It was here that I learned all about communicating human emotion.”
From the get-go, Abend hit it big as a documentary director, teaming with Adrianna Loeff on Hit, a movie chronicling pop artists of Uruguayan music. Abend took home a Best Editing... Read More