This coming monday is something I am looking forward too! There is going to be our own little Visual Effects townhall meeting online. Should be interesting to see what everybody thinks. Before this all started I saw a “letter” that Lee Sranahan posted on the Huffington Post. I saw it because I have been really monitoring what all was going on with our Nation’s Health Insurance Reform which keeps getting called Healthcare Reform. Whole other topic.
Here is the “open” letter to James Cameron that Lee posted. Check it out here!
This is important to all us because it just isn’t limited to Visual Effects workers but also motion graphics artists, editors, game developers and more. I have mainly worked in the commercial Visual Effects world with some regional film work. In fact, I am doing a bunch of motion tracking this evening after I finish this blog! I do have lots of friends in L.A. that work for several major FX houses over the years so I get a plenty of insight. Unfortunately, Lee wrote this letter to the guy who owns a very successful shop that uses the same formula that all shops use. You can call it exploitation if you want. Honestly, it is just “Hollywood.”
A lot of the older guys that I know were not fans of a union or guild for the industry originally. I never have been myself for various reasons. As CG Artists our rates were awesome and it was a different environment. As a freelancer, the equipment and the necessary software were ultra expensive. A SGI full loaded with Wavefront or Power Animator would cost you well upwards of $50K and made it an industry that was hard to get into. Schools couldn’t afford to teach our disciplines. You had high fixed costs so you had high rates. The amount of people that were capable of doing animation, compositing and other visual effects chores was small. We could see what the guild and union situation for traditional animators was and the limits that it put on salaries and also the work ethic that it produced. We wanted no part of that. We had a “free-market.”
In the letter Lee mentions that “our love” of making movies takes over and is a reason why people get in the industry. It definately is. Even back in the day you would take on “special” projects because you believed in them or you got a kick out of it. We do it still today! Hey, I am going to be doing a short in a few weeks for the 48 film race and not making a dime. Why? We’ll be a group of filmmakers that are getting to have fun at our trade for a bit. The “real reason” we got in the business. The love of filmmaking!
The current state of our industry is that it is now long hours with little pay for those entering the field. They are exploited. Who’s fault is this? It is both sides from my experience and it always will be. A union or guild could help and maybe it is time for one. What I see from a former design/animation company owner is that the industry has gone down a path I saw over a decade ago. This path is why I decided to get out of the company and go freelance. Even here in Dallas we could see where the visual effects world was going to go. Toy Story made 3D animation sexy and more Visual Effects driven movies followed suit as well. You have all sorts of people wanting to enter the marketplace and make “modern” movies.
The first issue I saw in the market was the lowering cost of tools. Lower costing packages started to exist and PCs/Macs became way more powerful. You didn’t need a purple supercomputer to do what we do anymore. You could have a very competitive tool set that in ways could rival larger studios. One of the reasons I went freelance! A major factor that still exists today in the freelance world is that competitors use pirated software. Having little or no cost for your software gives you an advantage. I know of a few instances here in my own market where people have been busted for this. Even for motion graphics you will run up quite a bill for all the necessary software. These lower cost tool also made it where schools could afford to teach a new group of talent. The downside of this is that a very limited field now would have a surplus of workers.
The second trend is that talent was starting to take low rates just to get to work “on” projects. This happens everyday in L.A.. Lee is correct in that lots of artists will sacrifice time and money to be a part of that “Movie Magic.” As long as people are willing to do this we will face this issue. There is no regulation of rates so newer workers are at the mercy of their “field of competition.” The environment becomes where this is an expected norm. To “get in,” you do what it takes! You work long hours that you don’t bill for and what you do bill is a fraction of what you should be getting paid. But you gotta make the cut and this is the world you live in. Every CG artist for themselves! They don’t worry about the impact – just “getting in the door.”
Now this happens everywhere. I don’t know how many times I have bid on a job and someone puts in an insanely low bid just to “get in the door.” I always hear this remark by new people in the business.
“I’ll bite it on the first one. We’ll make the money back on the next project!”
Maybe you’ll get lucky and that ideology will pay off. I am betting it won’t! In most cases, you have successfully “trained” your client on the price that they should expect to pay you. Just like the worker at the visual effects shop – he/she has unwittingly set a market price for our work. In my world, I just wish the client luck with their new “low cost solution” and move on. I can’t count the amount of times I get called back in last minute to fix a mess that their “low cost solution” created for them. So I don’t mind. The visual effect shop moves on to the next CG artist in the line.
People need to charge for what they or worth. Plain and simple. I always have and I don’t have a problem finding work.
Another problem that is out there, is everybody wants the sexy job. They want to be a “key” animator. I am a compositor by trade and that used to be an often overlooked job in the industry. If I did a good job you probably wouldn’t ever notice! I would say I have removed elements from scenes about three times as much as I have added them. That isn’t the job people want, it doesn’t stand out. They want to “stand out” and be an animator.
I think it is just like acting. Lots of people want to become the big movie star. Well those jobs are limited and the talent pool in L.A. gets gigantic. I always loved the term of “being a big fish in a pond rather than just another fish in the ocean.” I know several successful animators, compositors, special effects and matte painters. These guys all are extremely talented and are paid very well. Some are full-time employees which gives access to healthcare and benefits, but most are contractors. They move from shop to shop because they have skins on the wall. New guys don’t have history and their positions are just like actor’s cattle calls. They are just trying to be an “extra” and then hope to move on up the food chain. They all want the Hollywood dream and they make sacrifices for it. Keeping it in terms of actors – the union doesn’t necessarily protect that actress from making a decision to take her top off. She does it to get the part because the other actress won’t.
I don’t think anybody wants to see a topless CG artist. So where we sacrifice is time and money. You take a gamble and see if it pays off.
One method to this madness is that a Technical Director or Senior Artists will design the shot. This design and technical implementation is passed to some of these “new” artists to mimic. They do all the grunt work for a lot of the production. If you stand out then you move on hopefully to a higher position next time. It keeps going and going. Unfortunately some people out there exploit the situation. They aren’t sweat shops, but they still are places that a normal person wouldn’t want to work.
As a business owner and a producer I myself will take advantage of low costs if the person is an unknown commodity. Say they don’t have a reel or a credit list. I do know that when I find awesome crew members I need to pay them what they are worth. I also like to see them grow as artists and filmmakers. If I can’t afford a certain rate I’ll sit down and explain to them why I can’t and it is up to them. I don’t make that a common place and generally my projects pay full rate.
Doing video/film production nowadays, I can see where our non-union Dallas film community has set it’s own rates much like the Visual Effects industry used too. Dallas actually has some higher than L.A. for “under the line” crew. I shoot in L.A. from time to time and crew from locals. You see, I get a glimpse at non-union crews vs union crews. I have to say that in some cases non-union costs me more, but the work ethic from the non-union is always better than union. I don’t like to stereo-type because I have a few select union guys are amazing. That is just my experience on numerous shoots.
I haven’t even got to sending work out abroad. We need help from the government for this situation. I will say that most foreign governments understand that a lot of money can come in through this path. The entire filmmaking process gets assistance in lots of cases. May not be much assistance but it is better than the nothing we get. Dealing with incentives for film and commercial production state to state is also confusing and many times to cumbersome for a project to take advantage. I have to apologize to our Film Commission here in Texas, but the hoops I would have had to jump through and the time frame of my project didn’t allow me to use our convoluted incentive. At least I did shoot in Texas!
Is a guild or a union the magical answer to all this? Personally, I think that this whole process is such a mess, like our Healthcare in the United States of America, that there is no simple solution and that the start of any solution involves all of us doing out part. The problem is that holding out for what your worth is scary. This is why “show business” isn’t for everybody. It takes work and yes it does take sacrifice. It also takes an intense love for what we do.
“Hollywood is still the mecca for good or bad, but it isn’t the beginning or end for filmmaking.” – Robert Duvall
Hopefully I’ll start writing a little more frequently!