Guilds, Gaiety, and Global-AI-zation
The actor life is full of surprises....
Last week, I went to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for an event. As my spouse and I were watching TV (well, I say “watching,” but of course, not really – we were both on other screens at the time), I caught the tail-end of a TV advertisement voiceover. And I knew I had heard those words before… But nay, nay, and thrice nay….! I had said those words before. We thought back, and remembered that about two months ago, I had submitted a voice recording of the very same script to my actor agent back in London. The casting directors had specified a native USA voiceover, and specifically: a performer who is not a member of SAG-AFTRA, nor based in the USA. I knew why they’d specified this (I’m diving into the reasons below) – but it was still a bit of a shocker to hear and see this clearly national TV advertisement!
I am a member of the United Kingdom actors’ guild/union, Equity (not the same as Actor’s Equity in the USA), but I am not a member of SAG-AFTRA. The guild is usually abbreviated to its acronym, “SAG,” but its current form is a result of the merger of the Screen Actors’ Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, in 2012. There are a few compelling reasons for my non-membership, but the chief reason is that once a performer is a full member of SAG, that performer cannot do non-SAG contracted projects. There is a sort of “in-between” status in the industry, known as “SAG-eligible,” for someone who has fulfilled all the requirements to become a full SAG member, but has not joined – sometimes for this specific reason. As Iowa and the Midwest are not the TV and film production hubs of the country, generally the multimedia projects actors do around here are not made by the huge entertainment conglomerates that SAG is usually dealing with. Thus, the local projects are extremely rarely SAG-sanctioned. If I did join SAG, I wouldn’t be able to do most of the acting work available in this area of the country at all.
This nationally-broadcast advertisement I saw was cast outside of the USA with non-SAG actors, presumably because the producers did not want to deal with SAG regulations, which are very prescriptive and detailed. They are a guild after all, so I can hardly blame them for protecting their members. This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this avoidance of SAG rules and regulations on the United Kingdom side of things: producers and production companies will often go to South Africa to film, representing USA locations, helping to avoid SAG (and the other American entertainment unions’) rules by avoiding filming in the USA. South African cities can represent USA locations because their streets are on a grid system, and it’s still easy to communicate because English is the lingua franca. When I was working as an actor in the UK on big TV or film productions made for USA cinema distribution or VOD platforms, my contracts were always UK Equity union-approved, but not usually SAG-approved.
So how do I get acting work? From time to time, I receive a casting call from my agent in London as I described, and from my “local” agent, in Nebraska. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become standard procedure to request a self-tape from the actor first – video or audio. I got a gig from my Nebraska agent a year ago right now. It was a local market TV advertisement for a convenience store and gas station chain. My Cornhusker agent is totally conversant with SAG and Actors’ Equity rules, but it hasn’t really come up in our professional relationship yet…. and I suspect doesn’t come up very often with his other clients, either. Generally, the local ad agencies or production projects send him a casting call, and he passes the information along to me. There is not nearly as much of a use here for casting directors exploring the casting directory, and/or the casting directors sending the casting calls out to agents, as it’s done in a major media center of the world such as London. It’s a good feeling to be able to have an agent on both sides of the pond, and to have the ability to send a resume with the most appropriate agent’s contact information, to the various casting calls out there on the web that I see on my own. It also helps to avoid the cheaters and chancers, on the (hopefully) rare occasions that I can’t work out what’s a scam on my own. I did a self-tape for a local larger-regional TV advertisement, just about two weeks ago. I haven’t heard anything from my agent, which is standard when the clients aren’t interested (natch). But the filming dates are still a little way off, and hope springs eternal…. !
I suppose I should be grateful that the casting calls are still going to real human actors. Just this week, SAG has made announcements for their members, arguing for more protections regarding the use of AI/Generative AI. And this may work for actors on the national level. But I’ve already seen and heard GenAI creeping into local television ads – for the moment, they are still recognizable as not real humans doing voiceovers, and not real human animators or artists making the images. Last year (2024), when I was working on how to tackle the responsible use of GenAI for documentary and factual productions with the Archival Producers Alliance, I said to my colleagues, “any new tool tends to cause disruption,” and we as humans have to adapt. Just in the same way that UK productions can’t be blamed for filming in South Africa doubling for the USA, pursuing profit in a globalized system – nobody can be blamed for avoiding time-consuming regulations or unnecessary expense; nor for using all the tools and money-saving options available.
And the ad in question I saw in Sioux Falls….? It was for a travel brand…. very reminiscent of globalization, indeed!