Une part des revendications des scénaristes actuels porte sur le travail caché mais aussi sur les conséquences quand à la formation.
Je reposte cet article car il me semble être une très bon résumé de la période actuel
Things are naturally worse for those on the industry’s lower rungs. Writers on the staffs of hit shows used to be comfortable between jobs because they earned residuals from reruns. But those checks have shrunk for streaming shows made under the cost-plus model. And now that TV seasons are typically only six-to-ten episodes long instead of the traditional 22, even writers of successful series might find themselves out of work for much of the year. Some have taken jobs in retail or driving Lyfts.
One high-level agent says that studios regard the WGA’s demands — for higher minimum pay and staffing requirements, among other things — as simply incompatible with the way TV is now made: “The Writers Guild, delusionally, is harkening back to a day when there were 25 episodes of Nash Bridges a year and repeats and residuals. Back-end payments existed because Europeans were willing to watch our garbage, and Americans were willing to watch repeats of that garbage on cable at 11 at night. The real issue is that the medium changed. Instead of getting a job as a staff writer on CSI: Miami for 46 weeks a year, now it’s a 25-week job working on Wednesday, which is a better show. That’s just progress.”
But this so-called progress may have long-term consequences. Fewer weeks of employment mean that many entry-level writers are not receiving the training they need to advance through the ranks. Staff writers are now rarely invited to sets or editing rooms to learn the skills that would someday help them create their own series.
“Television has turned into a hyperspecialized Model T assembly line where everyone does one particular tiny job,” says Schur. “You focus really hard on screwing this bolt into this piece of metal, and that’s all you do. And as a result, nobody’s learning how to make a whole car. The battle now is to figure out which patches we can put on the process so that in five or ten years, people will still know how to make TV.”
Marko a posté un article passionnant sur Hill Street Blues et en le lisant on voit comment une telle série ne tient pas du miracle mais parce que des scénaristes ont bossé et appris durant une dizaine d’année sur d’autres shows. Il y a une formation.
Tiens X-Files est très connu pour avoir était un centre de formation pour des nombreux scénaristes de séries à succès des années 2000/2010. Pas de Breaking Bad sans X-Files par exemple. Et ça parce que Carter travaillait et formé des scénaristes qui montait peu à peu les échelons en apprenant le métier