Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, George Lucas On Seesmic

The stars and creators of the latest Indiana Jones movie answers questions via the microvlogging community Seesmic.

Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur explains:

The original idea was to have journalists around the World ask private questions to the actors and they would answer in private, as a way to give access to them. Instead of a fully private interview, most of the conversation has been public during about two hours but there were also many private videos which were posted and answered by journalists.

This experience illustrates how video on the net and Seesmic can be a fantastic way to get our community closer to celebrities and ask them questions directly. They would not have accepted live and the asynchroneous Seesmic format worked very well. They took many more questions from journalists that they would have in face to face as Seesmic passwords were distributed to journalists around the world.

It’s an interesting experiment, and one that is likely to bring a tremendous amount of awareness to the Seesmic community. Seesmic is currently in alpha testing. Join me there! My username is "TanjaB".

From SAG President Alan Rosenberg

SAG President Alan Rosenberg recently sent an e-mail to the membership explaining what is being brought to the table as the union returns to negotiations tomorrow with the AMPTP. Below are the points:

The main outstanding issues remain the same as they were in early May:

Middle Class Actors: Actors and background actors are struggling to stay in the game. While management has said they have money to spend here, we want to make sure it’s spent in ways that make a real difference: increases in minimums, including major role, mileage, schedule and money breaks, and more coverage for background actors, for example.

Clips: We have said no to management’s demands of you to give up your right to consent to the use of clips containing your images.

DVD: We simply want the employers to pay your Pension & Health contributions on top of your residual, instead of taking it out of your share of DVD revenues. The entire eligible cast shares only 1% of that revenue. You shouldn’t have to pay your own P& H contributions out of that percentage.

Force Majeur: The SAG contract has longstanding provisions for down periods when a project goes out of production because of an Act of God or strike by another union. We have said no to management’s proposal to wipe away pending claims and to force you to negotiate these rights by yourself

New Media Jurisdiction: SAG wants to cover ALL new media projects, no matter how low the budget. We should not allow major studios and networks to produce non-union new media projects without SAG actors because they have low budgets.