Tribune. We are young filmmakers, we have made one or two feature films, and we want to address ourselves to those who intend to build the world of tomorrow. We are writing to you because a virtuous model for authors and for creation is being dismembered. And that no one seems to take the measure.
Over the past thirty years, the rights paid to filmmakers by the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers (SACD) in return for a television broadcast of their works have enabled each broadcast author to live between two films and initiate new writing.
The making of a cinema film takes us about four years of work. However, writing a screenplay does not give rise to any salary, only an advance on rights. The exploitation rights are therefore our only remuneration. A pre-purchase on Canal + ensures minimum copyright allowing people to live for eighteen months on minimum wage conditions. A film which passes for the first time on France 2 or France 3 gives rise to copyright allowing to live between ten and thirteen months at the minimum wage.
On a subscription-based video-on-demand platform, there is currently no amount assurance, everything is in flux, as the quantity of works offered and the number of views change constantly. But it is estimated, for example, that a pre-purchase on Netflix would ensure a minimum fixed part allowing to live between three days and two weeks at the minimum wage.
A cinema film first broadcast on Netflix after a theatrical release, which would accumulate half a million French views, would allow, depending on the context, to live four months at the minimum wage. The same film passing on Netflix after being broadcast on another channel, for the same number of views, would make it possible to live for about a month and a half at the minimum wage.
This fragmentation is the result of a plethora of works to which an old principle of remuneration calculated on a pro rata basis is applied. Thus, the more works there are offered on the platform … the more the remuneration drops for each author.
Announced disaster
The uberization of the majority of fiction and documentary filmmakers is underway, marking the end of a protective model for individuals, their social rights and their fair remuneration.
However, the French have never paid so much each month to access our works (cinema tickets, purchases of screens and tablets, pay channels, Internet subscriptions, to platforms or to viewing services. and video on demand…). And the platforms have never done so well, the health crisis having amplified their deployment.
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