Kerry Butler: "Lincoln Center, make a deal with unions and broadcast your archive recordings"

I know we've been endlessly discussing this, but I think it's nice to see it's also something actors would like to see happen.

"For years @LincolnCenter has been doing high quality recordings of #Broadway shows. Why not make a deal with unions to broadcast them & pay everyone involved? Retweet if you would want to see the original cast of (insert fav bway show) live. @DisneyABCTV @netflix @ActorsEquity"

http://filmedonstage.com/news/186-kerry-butler-quotlincoln-center-make-a-deal-with-unions-and-broadcast-your-broadway-archive-recordingsquot

For the reasons exhaustively rehearsed here, not.gonna.happen. As I have posted multiple times, the unions are the least of the impediments.

I know Lincoln Center would never publicly respond to these posts, but omfg it's so annoying. This literally cannot happen. It's not possible. It's so frustrating that these actors just think it can. It can't.

https://twitter.com/jimmyludwignyc/status/1265654287239127041?s=21

Around what year did they start video taping their productions? Does anyone know?

Kad said: "I think Butler and others are conflating the Lincoln Center archives with the broadcast tapings of Lincoln Center productions.

The archives are NOT broadcast-quality recordings. And, frankly, I don’t know how much of their archive is even digitized."

That's actually not true. The archive recordings these days are usually filmed with 4-5 cameras and are edited very well.

TaleofTwo said: "Kad said: "I think Butler and others are conflating the Lincoln Center archives with the broadcast tapings of Lincoln Center productions.

The archives are NOT broadcast-quality recordings. And, frankly, I don’t know how much of their archive is even digitized."

That's actually not true. The archive recordings these daysare usually filmed with 4-5 camerasand are edited very well.

"

I personally would still not describe it as 'Broadcast Quality' based on the most recent recording I have seen (The Visit, 2015). I mean, it's certainly professional, good enough and watchable but it wouldn't compare to the quality that is coming out of Broadway's video recording sweatshop (London), or the rare Broadway recording that is made (at least in recent times). I can easily imagine a desire from creatives involved to want to spend more time on post-production rather than just airing 'as-is'.

Anyway, even if it's impossible to go back and release these recordings - I hope that this crisis will motivate people to think about how Broadway video recordings can be made in a more economically-viable way in the future. Broadway is becoming less relevant for not catching up with this. Yes it's the 'theatre' and it's 'live' but times are changing. The people being hurt most are actually the performers & creatives who cannot showcase their work to a wide audience. With the amount of alternative content available in my opinion Broadway needs an audience more than an audience needs Broadway!!

Updated On: 5/27/20 at 03:43 PM

I'm confused, is Kerry Butler planning to pay everyone in the union involved? Because otherwise, what would the Lincoln Center Archives have to benefit from this? Unless Netflix or Disney+ or Hulu or some other streaming platform is lining up to buy the rights to all of these, or Lincoln Center Archives are setting up a platform to charge folks for it, then why would they ever do this?

Since the New York Public Library is chartered by the New York State Education Department, the "simplest" route would be to establish regulations that force the library to make the content available for online streaming. Since contracts are the domain of state law, the NYSED can more easily deal with the already questionable access restrictions to the collection that are in place. Since the collection is a research collection, no additional compensation is necessary or required to any of the performers or creatives.

Of course, that doesn't resolve the physical hurdles into actually making the collection available, or the financial aspect of the infrastructure to set up and maintain it. But this is all academic anyway, as the NYSED taking it up is more improbable than the other hurdles that currently exist. But it would technically be the simplest.

The last video I saw was the original cast of THE SECRET GARDEN and it was beautifully filmed. I would love to see that again!

bwayobsessed said: "I mean I get they can’t just practically release everything but you’d think they’d be able to something like the National Theatre or what ALW was doing where they do one show a week and then it gets taken off YouTube (or PBS?). I get they have to get all approvals but say you got an actor like Kerry to campaign her coworkers to pass their approvals, I think it could be done gradually as say a fundraiser for the Actors Fund."

As I have said over and over, the problem is not the unions, it's the authors, many of whom are dead on the shows people are pining for.