The Visual Effects Crisis

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Sources / Further Reading:
Inside Hollywood’s Visual Effects Crisis by Drew Magary - bit.ly/3LRjvHH
The VFX Industry is Trapped in a Downard Spiral by Drew Turney - bit.ly/3C3eDLc
KCRW Interview with Jeff Okun and Craig Barron - kcrw.co/3SHMik7
“Life After Pi” Documentary - bit.ly/3xZiojt
Pressure, Crunch, Blacklist Fears: The MCU’s Visual Effects Artists Speak Out by Logan Plant - bit.ly/3LTw05k
“I’m a VFX Artist and I’m Tired of Getting Pixel-F_cked by Marvel” by Chris Lee - bit.ly/3rhtOer
Abuse of VFX Artists is Ruining the Movies by Linda Codega - bit.ly/3ClgV9z
Fighting for a Piece of the ‘Pi’: The Full Story Behind Hollywood’s Visual Effects Problem by Bryce J. Renninger - bit.ly/3roDOm8
Editing the Buttholes Out of ‘Cats’ Was a Total Nightmare for VFX Crew by Laura Bradley - bit.ly/3SMLY3J
VFX Protest at Oscars by Jeff Heusser - bit.ly/3V2WoOH
Music:
Lex Villena - “6” - bit.ly/2BtObLD
Lee Rosevere - “What’s in the Barrel”, “What Happened in the Past Doesn’t Stay There”, “Slow Lights” - leerosevere.bandcamp.com/
Chris Zabriskie - “Cylinder Four”, “CGI Snaker”, “Perhaps It Was Not Properly Manufactured” - chriszabriskie.com/
Dyalla Swain - “Psyche” - / dyallas
You can follow me through:
Website - andrewsaladino.work
Twitter- / andymsaladino
Vimeo - vimeo.com/theroyaloceanfilmso...

[@TheRoyalOceanFilmSociety]

Whoops, small correction at

[@Chibi_Sashi]

I remember when the teasers for Sonic first came out and people immediately blamed the animators for the terrible design. I realised that people have no idea how the entire design process works and that the animators have no say in the final design.

[@MechanicalRabbits]

That clip of Taika Watiti laughing at the special effects in his own movie is particularly egregious, because if the effects don't look real on a movie it's almost always the director's fault. Marvel directors keep insisting on green screening absolutely everything, and that's a great way to make your movie look like garbage. The reason why Michael Bay's Transformers from 2007 still looks better than most modern Marvel movies is because he made sure to have as much real footage and practical effects as possible. Most of the time, the SFX were superimposed over real footage so the VFX artists could make sure light and reflections on the robots looked as real as possible, and felt like they were actually in the real world. Almost everything blowing up on that film blew up for real too. People like to shit talk him a lot, but Michael as a director has an amazing understanding of how to make special effects believable and how to give his VFX artists an actually good grounding base to work on top off.

[@FinnTheHuman88]

As a member of the on-set VFX team for She Hulk, we knew the visuals were going to suffer from day one. Pure inexperience on the production leadership (mainly Director) set us up for failure. That is not to say that the VFX crew was inexperienced, as our on-set vfx supervisor won an oscar for Dune while we were shooting. I would like people to know that the visuals for that show are pretty well astonishing considering what everyone was able to achieve despite the lack of budget, time, and prep, as well as the sheer number of shots of the hardest thing to create in vfx, a humanoid MAIN CHARACTER. Thank you for illuminating some of what's happening in the industry. It makes it a lot easier on me when people ask what I do at parties.

[@moatddtutorials]

"Can you make it look a little more uh, edgy?"

[@nbarealtalker]

When I was in film school, nobody was allowed to eat/drink at the computers. Except the visual effects people. Because if they didn’t let them at at their computers, they’d never eat. Because they would never leave their desks.

[@AdamSaeed]

That sucks, man. They always tell me "look for a job that you love doing" but everything I love doing is always in a abusive environment like this.

[@elidranow]

Of course Keanu Reeves is one of the only people to give his VFX team a bonus

[@schnittmagier5515]

Speaking of Cats. I have a friend who worked on Cat's VFX, and he was so overworked after that, he could not continue working for a long time. He was staying home for more than 6 Month just to regain his energy and mental health. I think it really broke him from the inside, since he wants to change his career ever since.

[@t.b.m.5718]

There is a reason why this problem exists in several different industries (not just in VFX). We as people tend to overvalue the individual we see in the work rather than the team that actually worked on the project. Every time there's a big successful movie, you bet its success is given to the actors(whose names are adverts) or the producer(usually only credited to the most egotistical rich person that cries the loudest.) Essentially the directors, actors, and sponsors get all the credit because they advertised it despite all the extra back-end work that goes into the film. Working in visual effects is like working as a cook in a restaurant, no one ever tips the cook, they tip the cute girl at the register.

[@nihongo_jouzu]

Former VFX Worker Here. My best war story is that I once worked through 5 x ~100 hour weeks in a row and went half mad 3 weeks in. In the end though, due to clients whimsically changing their minds, only 14 frames (so ~2/3rds of a second) of all that crunch ended up in the final deliverable.

[@BatrickPateman430]

Time and time again Keanu showing he was raised by loving parents and is a genuine legend.

[@cyberdemon7694]

I remember that time the Oscars were on and the guys from Life of Pi got the Oscar for best VFX and started talking about the hardships they were facing and they full on turned the lights on them. That was surreal to see, like they were full on just denied on stage. Fucked up really. And the fuckers in the audience laughed and booed at them.

[@gulubidulu]

I am currently working for the VFX industry and one of the things that stike me the most in the inbalance about how people are recruited :

[@purplehaze2358]

I don't understand how an industry whose very existence is mostly built off the back of visuals can treat visual effect work so poorly.

[@kjxy96]

This is why actual artists need to start holding more creator/directorial roles. You need the higher ups to be able to speak to artists at their level. Who better than a fellow artist? This rule translates to 2d animation as well

[@redherronrecords]

As an example of how great the tiger from Life Of Pi looked:

[@OGNord]

Thank you for doing this. My wife works in this industry and this is not limited, this is on EVERY SHOW. Let me reiterate, ITS ON EVERY SHOW YOU LOVE. All of them uses the phrase “fix it in post” and it’s a nightmare, VFX houses are dying at a fast rate and they’re running out of workers. Everyone is burned out and ready to leave, the new people joining are walking targets and gets abused by the current workers because they’re abused. This cycle is killing the industry’s quality. Everyone of you watching this should go to your favorite publishers Twitter and raise hell. Show that you care, for real. Suicides are rising at a unhealthy level and we all need to help each other. Please I’m begging you.

[@Argusthecat]

I think the worst case of a VFX artist being treated poorly that I've seen recently was the person who got told by their studio that they had to stop creating their own comic, because it was a conflict with the industry work. Not that it was taking up their time, but that it was *competition*, that wasn't allowed under their contract.

[@Grand_Works]

I'm actually shocked VFX hasn't unionized by now. But, this is how all the film unions basically happened, because studios would overwork and undervalue their crews, so they protected themselves.