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Imagine a real solution designed to bring session work back to Los Angeles.
Situated in the capitol of the entertainment industry Southern California has many of the finest recording musicians in the business. Yet, as many of you are aware, we are losing enormous amounts of work to recording venues in Seattle, Prague, London, Bratislava and other cities worldwide. Our aim is to reverse this current trend, and bring this work back to you.
We are New Era Scoring (NES), a consortium of music industry professionals. Comprised of composers, musicians, engineers and contractors, NES has taken the challenge of creating new employment opportunities for session musicians, as well as revitalizing the recording industry as a whole here in Los Angeles.
Our solution is simply to emulate the successful methods these other cities have employed to lure recording work away from us. As a group, we can successfully compete and stop the flow of work to destinations outside of Los Angeles, and make it easy for L.A. based clients to record right here!
Here is a recent excerpt from Film Music Magazine:
"It's business as usual," said one major Seattle film score executive who asked that his name not be used in this article. "Fox, Sony, all the studios continue to call us to see how they can record their scores here with our highly experienced orchestra. We continue to work on film and television projects, as well as video games which we've always done well with due to our location.... The studios are happy to work with us, and we're happy to work with them. We're making sure these film scores are recorded by American union musicians, and that's something we feel very good about."
Seattle indeed does feel very good about the fact that Hollywood film studios are hiring them, and this trend will NOT change unless we are all able to offer these companies a financially viable way to keep this session work in town.
New Era Scoring is responding to this current crisis by working with composers and film/television/trailer/video game companies. NES has a business plan in place to approach companies that have a set precedence to record either out of state or do secretive “dark dates” in town. We are not approaching companies that do full union dates, thereby not encroaching on musician’s opportunities to have all the benefits of union work. Some in our industry believe the only way to lure these companies back is to do away with “special payments” altogether, the argument being that is the main reason companies like these go elsewhere to record. NES strongly supports musician benefits such as “special payments” when union work is available. However this work is diminishing more and more and we do NOT see this trend reversing its course.
We are offering these clients a world-class orchestra and magnificent recording venues right here in the Los Angeles area. To that end, we are currently enlisting AFM members who understand the present reality and elect to become Financial Core musicians, in order to effect this change. What is Financial Core?
Financial Core
(Fi-Core for short) is a right granted by the Supreme Court and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that allows workers (not just musicians) to work non-union jobs, and still work union jobs. Basically, you become a “core dues paying” member with regards to the union. You retain all financial union benefits (including "special payments") when you are hired on a union session, and you may legally work non-union dates without concern for fines or penalties.
NES has done extensive research on how we can collectively effect change in this legal and right way to bring work back to Los Angeles. We’ve determined that the only way to change the status quo is to communicate the necessity of the Financial Core option. We have enclosed a great deal of additional information to further inform you.
Enclosed are three additional PDF attachments. The first contains detailed information about the Financial Core option and FAQ. Second is an opinion letter from the NES legal team explaining the national law on this matter. The third is a simple form you can send in to your local in order to change your status to “Fi-Core”.
With recording studios/scoring stages closing, and session work diminishing, the time to act is now. NES is only interested in Fi-Core musicians for our session work. If you elect to change your status to “Fi-Core”, or if you are an existing “Fi-Core” musician, please contact us immediately at newerascoring@gmail.com., so that NES can consider you for our upcoming and future session work. Be assured, all correspondence and inquiries with us will be kept strictly confidential.
We welcome your participation going forward in this exciting and important opportunity.
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