Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/618780
leading an army, you would not go out and take people into the field without doing re- connaissance. You would not go out without being prepared. 6. What are some of the seminal negotia- tions you've been a part of for the Guild? Every negotiation has a particular character to it. For instance in 2002, we blended the agreements. It took us two negotiations to do it. What is blending the agreements? It was dealing with the fact that, if you made a dramatic show and you shot it on tape, you had one set of conditions and, if you shot it on film, you had another set of conditions. There was absolutely no rationale in the world of the 21st century for that to exist any- more. But dealing with that was not simple. And in the last 15 years, we had two major economic negotiations about health care [2004 and 2010] where we've had to do a tre- mendous amount of research with outside experts, do a lot of forecasting, and we had to engage in a restructuring of the health plan to try to better buttress it for the future. Most members don't think about it but, if they did, they would probably go, 'yeah, that was re- ally important.' And, importantly, there were the negotiations about new media from 2007 to the last negotiations in 2014 where we negotiated the first agreement for SVOD for the industry. Basically, almost every aspect of production for new media that exists in this industry today is a product of research, study, and negotiation by the DGA. They were very specific things that were negotiated in the context of a broader move to bring the Guild agreements in alignment with the conditions of the time. 7. How does the Guild run on a day-to-day basis? If you look at the Guild's history, the elect- ed leaders have overwhelmingly been ac- tive participants in the craft of directing or members of the directing team. So how do 1 0 Q U E STI O N S you run an institution of this complexity and size when your leadership is so defined? You must have leaders who are respected in the craft and who have a connection to the membership, yet they must be able to do their craft and lead, so how do they do that? They do that by hiring a highly skilled pro- fessional staff that understands and accepts that the policy of the Guild is made by those elected, and the role of the staff is to help ad- vise about policy, and to implement policy, and implementing policy involves operating the Guild. And while I speak to the president quite frequently, anybody who thinks that the president of the Guild is here every day mak- ing decisions operating the Guild is wrong. But anybody who thinks that the Guild is not guided by the decisions of the president of the board, is kidding themselves, too. 8. What do you think members overlook about the Guild? Many people think the Guild is something