Comments on: Are visual effects today just too darn boring?

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:36:09 +0000

Maybe it’s because the people who do the innovating, the software developers, are treated like garbage. The artists wouldn’t have jobs if it weren’t for them, yet they do the most thankless job in the world, people steal their software, and say “What’s wrong with that?” Their told to stop bothering people with their upgrades and incessant innovations. A little bitter maybe.

By: caveman

caveman — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:11:34 +0000

I think the vfx industry will consist of a few giant shops backed by movie studios to take on big chunks of work, and a whole bunch of small facilities to feed on bits and pieces of leftovers or low-end tv work. Most semi-large to mid-size studios will be squeezed to death by movie studios and all gone.

In the meantime, millions of students are flushed out of career colleges into the vfx market to be exploited by various shops by offering a big movie credit but low pay.

So that leaves all artists a question, how do you adapt to this situation? Everyone has different answers, but so long as you have a job that allows you to maintain your life and/or family, which probably means everything to you in the end.

By: meat puppet

meat puppet — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:18:27 +0000

This line sums it up nicely. Executives and managers commit their companies to huge risks while protecting themselves from personal consequences. Meanwhile employees feel the pain when things go bad. I think we’d be better off in the long run if we heard more howls of “I’m ruined!” from executive offices. Personally I feel that VFX should be brought back in house to the production studios. Keeping a staff of 50 – 100 VFX artists should be standard practice and only outsource to smaller studios on a per project basis as needed. This model of ILM does 20 shots and whisky tree does 6 and image movers does 10 all on the same film is for the birds and clearly it’s not working.