At the General Membership Meeting of April 28, 2014, several motions were adopted requesting the Local to provide various data to the membership.
Local 47’s responses to Motions 3, 4 and 5 have been posted in the members-only section of our website. Log in to your member account to view the responses and reports.
“Listen up, Lionsgate!” — The Listen Up! campaign hand-delivered more than 12,000 petition signatures to Lionsgate Entertainment’s Santa Monica headquarters May 13 calling on the company to uphold industry standards for musicians and end its practice of offshoring film scoring work. Helping with the delivery were L.A. County Federation of Labor Executive Secretary Maria Elena Durazo, Santa Monica City Councilman Kevin McKeown, and Pastor Bridie Roberts of Clergy and Laity for Economic Justice. Lionsgate executives accepted the petitions but refused to meet with the musicians.
Petition calls on Lionsgate to uphold industry standards and end practice of offshoring film scoring work
SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA (May 13, 2014) — Today members of the American Federation of Musicians made a special delivery at Lionsgate corporate headquarters in Santa Monica of a petition signed by over 12,000 supporters of their Listen Up! campaign. Los Angeles County Federation of Labor Executive Secretary-Treasurer Maria Elena Durazo, Santa Monica City Councilman Kevin McKeown, and Pastor Bridie Roberts of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice were present to support the musicians and be part of the delivery delegation.
“L.A. is the entertainment capital of the world,” says Durazo. “Working women and men in our communities demand that working musicians get treated with the same level of professional respect as other workers. Today, we are asking Lionsgate to listen up and do the right thing.” Continue reading
National campaign seeks to bring motion picture and TV film music work back home
by Linda A. Rapka
Musicians in Los Angeles, Atlanta and New York kicked off the nationwide Listen Up! campaign April 10 seeking fairness for musicians working in the motion picture and TV film industry.
AFM President Ray Hair speaks out against film-music offshoring at the Listen Up! campaign launch in Los Angeles.
Led by rank-and-file members of the American Federation of Musicians, the campaign calls upon the entertainment industry to stop the offshoring of film and television music scoring and to ensure musicians’ work is valued by all companies at the same professional standard as other cast and crew. Continue reading
Mayor Garcetti beams as he accepts his AFM Local 47 Honorary Membership card. Photo by Kori Chappell.
AFM Local 47 hosts the mayor in a ceremony to thank him for his support of Los Angeles musicians
LOS ANGELES, California (May 5, 2014) — The musicians union of Hollywood hosted Mayor Eric Garcetti in a ceremony last week naming him an Honorary Member of the American Federation of Musicians Local 47.
Mayor Garcetti personally attended the event at the Local 47 auditorium the evening of April 28. The members of AFM Local 47 thanked the mayor for supporting local musicians with his endorsement last September of our ListenLA campaign (listen-la.com), which highlights and promotes film and TV music scoring by union musicians. The membership also expressed their appreciation for Garcetti’s efforts to fight runaway production and keep film and TV work in Hollywood in supporting new legislation aimed at enhancing California’s production tax incentive program. Continue reading
AFM Local 47 names Los Angeles Mayor an honorary member
by Linda A. Rapka
AFM Local 47 proudly welcomed Mayor Eric Garcetti to the April 28 General Membership Meeting to name him an honorary member of the musicians union in recognition of his dedication to our city’s musicians and for his efforts to keep film and TV work in Hollywood by fighting runaway production.
Local 47 Secretary/Treasurer Gary Lasley, “American Idol” music director Rickey Minor, Mayor Garcetti, President Vince Trombetta and Vice President John Acosta. Photos by Kori Chappell.
AFM Local 47 and The Musicians Credit Union will close early at 12pm on Friday, April 18, 2014 in observance of Good Friday
photo by Larry Mah
Live from Capitol Records, the musicians of the 86th Academy Awards performed remotely on Oscars night for the second year in a row.
Located just a few blocks away from the ceremony held at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, the orchestra was again led by William Ross. Continue reading
Photo by Aaron Poole/© A.M.P.A.S.
by Linda A. Rapka
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented the first live concert of the year’s Oscar-nominated music at UCLA’s Royce Hall Feb. 27, three days before the 86th Annual Academy Awards.
Alternating between performances of the year’s nominees for best original score and best original song, the historic concert featured the 80-piece Academy Symphony Orchestra comprising some of Los Angeles’s finest studio musicians.
AFM President Ray Hair speaks out against film-music offshoring at the Listen Up! campaign launch in Los Angeles.
WESTWOOD (April 11, 2014) — Yesterday Los Angeles-area musicians held a press conference and rally across from the Regency Theatre in Westwood as part of a nationwide kickoff for Listen Up! – a campaign for fairness for musicians working in the motion picture and TV film industry.
The campaign calls out the motion picture-TV film industry for treating U.S. musicians unfairly by offshoring movie soundtrack recordings. Many offshored soundtrack recordings are made for films funded in part by U.S. taxpayers. At the Listen Up! kickoff event, musicians who are members of the American Federation of Musicians and its affiliated Los Angeles Local 47 were joined by representatives from the AFL-CIO, and other labor, faith, and community leaders to call on the film industry to stop offshoring film scoring work. Continue reading
In the booth at EastWest Studios in Hollywood March 22 for one of the final episodes of “Mad Men” – engineer Jim Hall, composer David Carbonara, contractor John Rosenberg, and orchestrator Geoff Stradling. Photo: Linda A. Rapka
Composer David Carbonara fell in love with “Mad Men” years before anybody knew about the show.
He met screenwriter Matt Weiner in 1998, and the two became fast friends over music. In 2001, Weiner handed Carbonara a speculative script for his pilot about a show following the exploits (professional and otherwise) of overly confident womanizer Don Draper, head of the creative department at a growing Madison Avenue ad agency in the 1960s. Weiner told Carbonara if the show were ever picked up, he would do the music.
Read the full story at listen-la.com.