A joke in the visual effects industry is that someone hears you work on films and asks you what movie made you cry. The artist will say in theaters or in the office.
The industry is in a state of disrepair. It exploits artists using short-term contacts, chases tax incentives across the globe, and creates an environment where production studios are treated with a deference that comes at the expense of the artists. It's a machine designed to destroy people. It's working well.
In a series of phone interviews with sources within the visual effects industry who have worked on multiple titles, io9 heard a lot of complaints about working conditions that visual effects studios impose on their staff Due to the small size of the industry and the fear of being blacklisted, all the VFX workers in this story are referred to by pseudonyms. If they reach out, this piece will be changed.
Life of Pi won the Academy Award for Best Special Effects. The studio was nominated in the same category for the movie. The company was forced to file for Chapter 11 just eleven days before the Oscars.
The director of Life of Pi made a big change to the tiger in the movie, so Rhythm and Hues had to redo a lot of their work. It cost them a lot of money to do it, and they were already working on a thin profit margin, that it bankrupted them. The studio went bankrupt before the Oscars.
There is a song called "life after PI."
Every other production company hires studios to make visual effects. In order to work for Marvel, or any of the five or so production companies out there that are offering big-budget VFX work that keeps VFX studios afloat, studios continuously underbid each other in order to appeal to an increasingly- small client base.
This works the same way. The production company sends a list of shots that need visual effects. Studios could get a description of an alien spaceship. The process of creating an estimate for the bid is more of an art form than a science.
It is a race to the bottom. When production companies say they need work done, the studios undercut each other so much that by the time they get that contract, they're lucky to break even. These studios are forced to operate at low margins.
They have so many projects going on that they have to hire studios all over the world. The assumption that other countries will be exploiting labor loopholes and tax incentives is one of the reasons why underbidding is occurring.
The UK doesn't have any paid overtime in any industry, and because they don't have to legally pay anyone overtime, when they bid a show that might cost them 15 million dollars to do the work, a UK studio might say. If they work 200 hours a week in London, it won't affect the studio's bottom line.
Sam, a senior visual effects artist, has worked on six superhero movies. The London companies are terrible. The British companies that I have dealt with have been very bad.
The location of tax incentives drives down bids. If Marvel spends $10 million in a location with a 30% tax credit, the government will pay $3 million after the invoice is paid, so it only costs the company $7 million to purchase $10 million dollars worth of work. This is an oversimplification but it is how it works. Instead of bidding $10 million for the shots, which is what it actually costs to produce the work and make a profit, a company without access to these credits will bid $7 million in order to underbid a studio with favorable incentives.
The artist said he had seen the books. The profit margins for these houses are very low. After all that, the studios will bid for the next project.
When Kevin Feige unveiled the massive film and television slate that would make up Phase Five, you could almost hear the groans from the visual effects artists.
Phase Five was going to dominate a lot of his friend's career for the next 10 years, according to his friend, an artist. You see all these timelines for films, and you think it will never stop. We're all sick and tired of superheros at times. He said that studios rely on superhero work in order to survive. The studios are feeding from the same trough because the work is so plentiful. Where do you think the studios will end up?
We hear more about the treatment of the studios by the company than any other company. Conrad is a production assistant who has worked on multiple Marvel projects. Sometimes you have a good working relationship with them and other times you don't.
A lot of artists wanted to work for Marvel. It was nice to work on a movie. The films gave studios and artists a lot of power. It helped drive down the bid prices. It was exciting when David began working on the projects. Being a part of the process of making a movie was something I was still interested in. He admits that there are quite a few long days at this point in his career.
David describes the project as one of his favorites. He agrees that the process of the company is not consistent. It was the worst time for the movies to come out. The release was bumped up by a month, but they didn't tell us. I remember being on the floor with my team and one of my artists came to me and said, "Hey, you see this?" and then he showed me the article about the release date being bumped up a month."
The film's release date was not told to the visual effects team. David went to his supervisor, who didn't know anything about it. When they got back to the studio, they said that they hadn't told them. We were told by a press release that we had less than a month to work on them.
The film is called Avenger's Compound and was created by Weta Digital.
The worst example of a lot of the problems in the industry isMarvel. If it was bad, sometimes it wasn't, it would be one thing. They are consistent that they are as bad as you will get.
From his very first day on the project, he said, we were working overtime and weekends. It was a long time since I was nailed to my desk. He chuckled as he said it.
They didn't know what they wanted the set piece to look like. Concept art was being done. He said something. Before you start working on the pieces that will eventually be combined to make up the shot, you should first nail down the concept art. The entire sequence had already been passed through the entire line. You have lighting renders and effects simulations. All of this is ready to go, but still hasn't been approved.
This is part of the process and isn't a coincidence. Many sources said that the films were shot in such a way that they were able to change everything up until the very last minute. The stuff that is practical doesn't go through touch-ups. H says there is nothing you can do to make a plate look realistic. That doesn't get commented on. Everyone says that the visual effects look bad. You should have seen the plate. You should have seen what was handed to us.
Up to the final days before the film's release, there will be changes. The first Doctor Strange movie didn't have final visual effects. After the movie came out in the UK, they were working on it. The film was released in Hong Kong on October 13, 2016 and in the UK on October 25, but the work on the visual effects was not done until October 28, when it was released in the US. With many production companies asking for more and more changes closer and closer to the delivery deadline, the individual artists are put under immense pressure, causing them to work massive amounts of overtime in order to accommodate these shifting goal posts.
The Doctor Strange movie was made by Framestore.
I didn't have a day off for over a month. The days were not eight hours long. Sam spoke about how long it took to work on a show for a comic book company. The show was reshot a month before it was due to start. We had shots in at the end of December for the show that was due at the end of January.
These stories are common when you talk to visual effects artists, and usually end with the same conclusion: Kevin Feige's decision to have an entire movie decided by a committee of people, from producers to executives and directors, to Kevin Feige himself is a chronic lack of vision that plagues
H said that feedback on dailies and sequence comes from executives and producers that aren't in explicitly creative roles. The entire sequence was blasted apart by someone who shouldn't be in the process. Why do you think this is a good idea?
Sam had the same experience. He makes a skeptical noise and says that he doesn't want to look at your spreadsheets.
All of this input hurts the vision, muddies the direction, and cracks apart the production line. As more and more people are brought in to provide input, the changes snowball across the entire project, causing hundreds, if not thousands of hours of work to be redone at any number of studios. Someone didn't like a shade of blue or they needed to change a suit design to increase toy sales.
Many sources said studio culture was the main factor in whether or not artists had to deal with this kind of nitpicking. Sam said that the power dynamic is skewed towards the comic book company. The house has to figure that out.
The lack of direction is the main pressure point for many artists. He had to redo a logo on a suit almost every week. The studio was asked to make two versions of the shot because they didn't know what they wanted. When we watched the movie, we discovered which version they chose.
It took two or three weeks to build out a huge sequence that was scrapped within a week. He said that the vision would change completely. I understand that. The final product should be in the directors' hands. You need a direction to go in from the artist's point of view. They have a very harsh way of communicating with the vendors. You should be getting constant revisions from them.
According to sources, this constant vision shift is driven by the egomaniacal ability to demand changes and see them acquiesced to, rather than considering the kind of changes that will affect the story. H said that nobody is holding the company responsible. They don't pay attention. They said, 'Fuck you guys.' We can change as much as we want, but you have to deliver it. Sam said that an actor was filmed in a practical suit and the studio decided it was the wrong suit. You have to replace their whole body, and leave their head in every shot.
studios can't hire more artists during crunch time or risk going into the red if they don't adjust the bottom line of the bid Continually asking for adjustments, changes, and edits to the shots is called getting "pixel-fucked", because the edits to shots become more and more minute until artists are literally editing a singlepixel in a shot and sending it off for re-approval. Every time an artist gets fucked, it costs the studio money.
The direction of the movies is unpredictable. In one scene, the work is sharp and realistic, but two minutes later, it looks choppy and rushed. It is in many cases. Because of the way that Marvel directs the vendors, very few of the studios that they hire are able to produce work of the caliber that they can. All of their films could be considered animated films because of the amount of visual effects they use.
About half of the work that is being commissioned right now is probably Disney and its subsidiaries. If they want to stay in business, they need to keep the good vibes going.
It is difficult to know when things got bad for the industry. Sources said it would happen. There is a frog. Specific projects that became flashpoints for the industry were remembered by others. There were three Pirates of the Caribbean films in 2007. The game of thrones starts in 2011. Life of Pi was released in the year 2013).
Disney made a lot of demands on the VFX studios, who were able to pull off the project despite the huge time crunch. We were never going to get more than this amount of money or this amount of resources because they finished Pirates of the Caribbean. That is exactly what occurred.
There is a film called Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
The production companies push unrealistic deadlines. In the same amount of time that you would be given to do a single movie, you have to turn around an hour-long, film-quality visual effects, times ten, show. You are most likely not working with what you need when you go in.
The last season of Game of thrones had six episodes and was released on Sunday. They hadn't made up their mind about what they wanted, so we were working overtime to finish each episode.
There is too much being asked of the studios for no additional compensation. Imagine if you asked for a different pizza, with garlic knots, and it would take 20 minutes to get to your house, instead of the usual 10 minutes. You would be charged more if it could be done. For no extra charge, you shut up and deliver when you are asked for more. There is no such thing as a good client. There isn't
Sam said that studios that protect artists from these demands are very rare. The studios act like pass-throughs. The clients attitude is that the problem is the artist. Problems that result from poor planning are only worsened if the studio doesn't moderate it. The company has some responsibility. The client shouldn't be asking for crazy things.
The support positions at studios tend to be full time. They wouldn't feel any pressure because they wouldn't have to work 16 hours a day to get the work done. They would be happy to say that you have to stay. They weren't the ones who stayed. Artists on the front line are being burned out. More than a lot of other positions.
It isn't just the fact that artists are being asked to work on the same thing over and over, or coming from the 12-hour days during crunch time, it's also the fact that studios are chasing incentives all over the globe.
Do you remember those tax subsidies? Fuel worker exploitation is one of the things they help. Contractors are brought on board on a per-project basis for six to nine month contracts. When Ontario begins to offer a 30% tax incentive, visual effects studios will move to Canada. If you want to work in visual effects, you have to move to Canada.
Ren says that because of the tax subsidies, Los Angeles is too expensive to work in. The artists are forced to move to Canada. In Los Angeles, the artists had a physical computer, but they were unable to control it remotely. They are now Canadians. Artists are forced to follow the money as they are chased by the studios. They lose their visa if there isn't a contract. Many are forced to take contracts at subsidy-chasing studios regardless of their conditions, work or family.
He has moved across borders four times in the last 10 years. A friend who lives in Los Angeles rents apartments in different cities for the duration of their contract, according to a source. To be a visual effects artist in Hollywood is to become a digital nomad because the studios are able to exploit tax loopholes in order to convince big production companies that they can do it better, cheaper, and faster.
The problems in the studio feel incestuous, according to the man. There is a lot of the same filthy. There are the same problems in the same company. Regardless of the toll that these films have on the mental and physical health of the artists, the studios keep making money, and the movies keep coming out.
Sam said that someone got sick while working on a show and they had to come in to finish their shots. On a Sunday this is the weekend. A person comes into Sam's office and asks if he knows how to resuscitate a patient. An ambulance was called after the artist collapsed at their desk.
Most studios have a cry room where people can go in and cry for 10 minutes and then come back out and do their job. H said, "I have had artists who have had H.R. step in and say, 'We have to take you off this show because it's unsafe and we're concerned for your safety.'" There have been fistfights in the studio. People just reach a point where they can no longer see their family. Across the industry, that is standard.
There was a time when David was in the studio working with another artist. He just broke. I can tell because we are in the late lab doing renders at two in the morning and he just sits there and ponders. He didn't come back after leaving that night. You don't have letters to the supervisor. He just walked away.
It takes a long time to get the work done. Is that a basic three-second shot of Robert Downey Jr.? It's likely 50 hours. David gave an explanation. There is a shot in a movie that can feature a lot of characters. He can't find a number. Dozens of studios and hundreds of people. All of them are likely working overtime, with moving goalposts, being nitpicked by executives, and being pressured to work in locations that benefit the studio's bid.
There is a fault between the production houses and the studio. The bar for how studios treat visual effects artists is low. A lot of people would like to say that major production houses aren't putting artists under pressure. They're not working for the production houses. The pressure that the production houses put on these studios is not taken into account. There is a problem with the entire movie-making machine.
The movies have been around for a long time. We have only been using film and computers for thirty years. We are artists and we are scared. No-one will work with us again if we do something wrong.
Sam said that unionizing was against them. By the time you get enough people to sign cards and hold a vote, there might not be enough support to form a union.
Many sources want the industry to organize into a union, but artists are not sure how to do it. It would put a lot of power in the hands of the artists if individual shops were to be unionized. Others think that a larger, comprehensive trade guild would be a better way to deal with clients who are too much for individual studios.
The chance is high. If a shop is unionized, it means that artists can demand more money, better working conditions, and limit the amount of control clients have to demand changes, which will make big production companies less likely to take a bid from that studio. If an artist from a union shop tries to get work somewhere else, there is nothing that a studio can do to prevent them from looking at their union history and not hiring them. The entire industry is at risk of being blacklisted.
Digital domain for black widow
It's a team effort It is a specialized trade that requires high tech equipment and software to produce results. If you want to sell yourself as a studio, you have to sell yourself to a studio. Getting denied entry into any of those studios is terrifying. Not being able to make a living creates a huge power deficit.
None of my sources were willing to use their real names in this article, and every one asked Gizmodo toonymize which projects they worked on. Two sources who were supposed to be part of the investigation backed out due to the fact that studios had cracked down on artists talking to the press since agreeing to be interviewed for the article.
H said that it became a blame game. All goes to the top. We don't have enough time or money to do the work in a way that we can afford. Teams have been sleeping at the office because of the long drive home. It is not as easy to find a studio with better working conditions as it is to find a studio with a project that is overwhelming. The production houses are responsible for the responsibility. It's a company as large as Marvel. The race to the bottom is forcing people to have a realistic schedule and budget. We are living in late-stage capitalistic hell, but they are making a toxic environment for people.
The nature of the industry makes it inevitable that you will get burned out. Conrad made a statement. The studios don't care, according to Sam. A lot of kids come out of school wanting to work in film. It might not be enough to describe what happens to some artists. In service to the studio, Ren has seen mental illness, physical illness and suicides.
A few hours of overtime is not the whole story. There is constant pressure, constant stress, and constant demands to do your work better. Most of the studios don't bother with this pressure. It's worth burning out a few artists to make the client happy.
David said a lot of people think we just hit the button. They don't realize how much work it takes to make something happen. Every single movie has artists creating custom graphics and animations. It requires trade training, intimate knowledge of specific software, and artistry in order to be successful.
Everyone in the production studios gets a boost from the idea that Tom Holland is in a Spider-Suit. They want you to think that the cityscapes in Doctor Strange are created by a computer that does all the work. It's not a conspiracy, it's not a cover up, it's just that these companies are taking advantage of the constant devaluation of their product and giving it to the artists who make that product possible. Ren said that the business is disorganized. It iscustom. It is like making something that has never been done before.
Is it possible that Marvel is doing something wrong. They are simply operating the way they always have; by driving down the bottom line wherever possible and facilitating a working relationship with vendors that allows them to take advantage of the institutional security of the artists under their employ.
Even though the movie magic machine is supposed to run, it shouldn't excuse them from the punishing working conditions that they impose on other studios. The machine needs to be changed with a focus on the wellbeing and development of the artists that actually do the work that makes people laugh, scream, and cry in theaters. If the blockbuster industry keeps going the way it is now, it will break. It takes movies as we know them.
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