Doug Freeman is a 68-year-old set designer and art director in Sonoma who has worked in the film industry for over 50 years. He supports the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike as a union member, believing the union will not give in to studio demands. The strike centers around demands for higher pay for streamed content and regulations protecting actors' images and writers' work from the use of artificial intelligence. Some fear that major studios may increasingly use computer-generated images and AI to reduce costs at the expense of human actors and creators.
Doug Freeman is a 68-year-old set designer and art director in Sonoma who has worked in the film industry for over 50 years. He supports the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike as a union member, believing the union will not give in to studio demands. The strike centers around demands for higher pay for streamed content and regulations protecting actors' images and writers' work from the use of artificial intelligence. Some fear that major studios may increasingly use computer-generated images and AI to reduce costs at the expense of human actors and creators.
Doug Freeman is a 68-year-old set designer and art director in Sonoma who has worked in the film industry for over 50 years. He supports the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike as a union member, believing the union will not give in to studio demands. The strike centers around demands for higher pay for streamed content and regulations protecting actors' images and writers' work from the use of artificial intelligence. Some fear that major studios may increasingly use computer-generated images and AI to reduce costs at the expense of human actors and creators.
MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 2023 North Bay Business Journal 5
STRIKE Left: Rocky
Capella is continued from page 4 an actor and stuntman. He IN OUR OWN BACKYARD believes the studios are On a relaxing weekend day, you’ll find seeing green Sonoma art director and set designer in terms of Doug Freeman, 68, throwing nuts across money saved his shop’s patio to the birds and squir- with the use of AI. rels. Freeman is using the downtime A longtime in his Jet Sets business to prepare for a SAG member, yard sale. Capella says Freeman has been in the movie indus- holding out for the end of the try for more than 50 years, working on strike is worth such film projects as “American Graffi- it based on ti” and “Towering Inferno” to “Magnum his principles. Force” and “Star Trek IV.” COURTESY PHOTO He attributes his background to get- ting his career off the ground. His father worked in lighting and his grandmother in costumes. Freeman got his start in the business as a teenager hauling cable for the 1968 movie “Bullitt” starring Steve Below: A McQueen. statue of “It’s a small niche, but I love what I an alien stands at do,” he said. the entrance Freeman manages the set design to Doug of high-tech events as he awaits the Freeman’s outcome of the SAG-AFTRA strike that prop warehouse in by some accounts could last through the Sonoma on year. Aug. 7. As a Screen Actors Guild member, CHRISTOPHER CHUNG Freeman supports the union for howev- THE PRESS er long the strike goes on. DEMOCRAT
“(The union is) not going to give in.
They can’t,” he said. “I might have been affected because I could have a cool project, but they’re not calling. So who knows?” The actors and writers, who are part of the Writers Guild of America, are negotiating over two major issues be- sides pay: Payouts for streamed content and a defined artificial intelligence (AI) policy that protects the creative work of writers and images of actors. The WGA is requesting the studios “regulate use of artificial intelligence” that may not “write or rewrite literary material.” The union said the studio alliance rejected the proposal. “It’s here. Big Brother is here,” Freeman said, taking aim at the po- tential that major movie studios have in “making a lot of money” and using computer-generated images to make more at the expense of actors.
IT’S GETTING REAL
AI has become a hot topic for a variety of industries in which workers feel their jobs are threatened. Almost half of Americans (45%) express concern about the impact of AI on their jobs, according to poll results published this month in the Los Angeles Times. “They can pay them $300 a day, then have their likeness forever. It’s totally