[HN Gopher] Pixel fucked: Inside Hollywood's VFX crisis
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Pixel fucked: Inside Hollywood's VFX crisis
Author : CharlesW
Score : 128 points
Date : 2023-06-28 13:31 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gq-magazine.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gq-magazine.co.uk)
| themerone wrote:
| Watch "Life After Pi" on YouTube.
|
| It is a documentary short about the vfx studio Rhythm&Hues which
| went bankrupt two weeks before winning an academy award.
| stavros wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lcB9u-9mVE
| samdunham wrote:
| So the general consensus from the comments appears to be that
| there are far more people wanting these jobs than there are jobs
| available. So the solution should be to discourage people from
| entering this profession. It's supply and demand. And currently,
| that balances toward the studios. Weed out the excess supply and
| the studios will need to pay more to the remaining workers. As
| for the people that can't imagine doing something else? Welcome
| to the real world where lots and lots of people do lots and lots
| of jobs they don't love. At a certain point, you have to give up
| on the dream job to pay the bills.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "Sonic", "She-Hulk", "Cats", "Avatar"....
|
| Maybe the industry will eat itself and we can go back to film
| making where it's the story that drives the film.
|
| Edit: watched "Life After Pi" linked to here in the comments
| section. I feel my comment above is too abrasive now. The VFX
| guys don't deserve this crap. I still dislike the modern
| "Blockbuster" however.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| She Hulk, amusingly, has many meta jokes about the difficulty
| of maintaining a straightforward legal comedy narrative with
| low visual spectacle.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| My Cousin Vinny did it. Honestly I don't think VFX has ever
| truly helped a comedy.
|
| Imagine what that movie could have been with cheap gratuitous
| CGI. Instead of Vinny getting covered in real mud, you could
| have slow motion closeups of glossy mud drops with fluid
| simulation flying through the air, the camera spinning around
| the mud in three dimensions before it cakes Vinny. But would
| such a visual spectacle make the movie funnier? I don't think
| so.
|
| And quite frankly, She Hulk would look a lot better if they
| simply found a buff actress and painted her green.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Not in general. In the context of modern tv, particularly
| on the marvel side. The finale is she hulk complaining to
| marvel / Disney that the show was becoming a heap of
| generic spectacle garbage with a big superhero fight even
| though the premise of the show was light legal comedy.
|
| It's a good observation. Marvel has flubbed the landing on
| almost every tv series even if the original premises and
| pilots were good. I don't think they executed on the bit
| very well, but props for trying I guess.
|
| Edit: I don't agree with it being better with a green woman
| though. It did benefit a lot from it clearly being the same
| actress in both forms. There's a time and a place for
| practical effects. That wasn't it.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _Edit: I don't agree with it being better with a green
| woman though. It did benefit a lot from it clearly being
| the same actress in both forms._
|
| I think it should have been done with the same actress. A
| buff actress can be made to appear more or less buff with
| clever wardrobe, camera angles, lighting, etc. In some
| scenes you hide her muscles under loose clothing or flat
| lighting, and in other scenes you emphasize them. Forced
| perspective can make her look taller or shorter when
| needed. Playing with the focal length could change the
| apparent shape of her face as well.
|
| CGI muscles completely ruins the whole deal for me. At
| the very least they should have done the opposite; hired
| a buff actress and slimmed down her muscles with CGI when
| necessary; I think that would look less fake than what
| they did.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Idk man I'm trying to imagine photo realistic she hulk
| and it doesn't seem like it would work.
|
| There was a hulk tv series a long time ago that was just
| a green painted dude and it was very silly
| earthboundkid wrote:
| Avatar is a relatively new franchise and there are only two
| movies in the series.
| _0ffh wrote:
| I heard it's one movie, once in the jungle and once in the
| ocean.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| What's really crazy is maybe another 10 years from now, the
| computer will have aced video generation from moving 3D blocks
| and segment maps.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Anyone can sell the future.
|
| _moving 3D blocks and segment maps_
|
| What does this mean exactly? Do you know?
| zzzzzzzza wrote:
| you draw some blobs in a 2 or 3 dimensional space and label
| them and tell the AI to animate a scene with e.g. a pirate
| talking to his parrot. It sticks the things in the indicated
| spaces.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| There's a lot of grieving on r/vfx, along with some posts with
| insider infos about sexual harassment getting deleted:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/uwwx82/anyone_read_tha...
|
| Some more stuff from vfx subreddit:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/14jyllh/from_3_potenti...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/13zf3hd/vfx_a_little_r...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/144mv2b/more_studio_cr...
|
| On and on... I work in vfx but on the software side, and am very
| sad to hear about this happening :(
| kneebonian wrote:
| Just to point out one of the threads talks about "From 3
| potential job offers, to all of them on hold." from 1 day ago.
| This may be because the actors guild, and the screenwriters
| guild are both on strike right now and so nothing can really be
| produced at this point.
| civilitty wrote:
| Except that awful season of Battlestar Galactica where
| Starbuck comes back from the dead as an angel.
|
| Get ready for some truly _terrible_ scripted television acted
| out by the catering crews.
| LanceH wrote:
| You know it will be chatgpt heavy scripting.
| mirashii wrote:
| Given that Ronald Moore has driven shows he's worked on to
| similar absurd and horrid endings, like the similar
| religious subplot woven into the last season of DS9, I
| think we have a better culprit for the terrible last season
| of BSG.
| mindslight wrote:
| Say what you want, but a series that actually wraps up
| its plot lines with any sort of coherent conclusion is
| miles above today's prevailing standard of one or two
| good seasons, followed by a bunch of filler-based
| mediocre seasons, followed by the show getting cancelled.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| DS9 had a religious subplot from the pilot.
| dunham wrote:
| The last writers strike gave us Dr Horrible - I was hoping
| for something like that again.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| munificent wrote:
| ...and season two of Heroes.
| Izkata wrote:
| I think I remember reading that that season overall
| wasn't changed much - they just refilmed the last few
| scenes to resolve the plot immediately and end the season
| early, instead of going for a full season length.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| One of the things that was said at the time was that the
| show was meant to be an anthology series where every
| season had a substantially different cast and so some of
| the strange actor reuse in Season 2 was alleged to be
| completely strike-related. (Though in practice how much
| was strike related and how much was contract related in
| that they apparently didn't actually correctly contract
| the actors for an anthology series and how much of it was
| meddling to keep well regarded cast members busy due to
| public reception/studio notes is all kind of up in the
| air, and probably entangled.)
| alexalx666 wrote:
| Best hedge funds write their own software so should VFX studios.
| If you are using the same tools as guys from Poland you can not
| expect to compete on anything but project management skills and
| price
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Paid by the word.
|
| TLDR; The industry is desperate for people and there is a lot of
| work to do. Some people work more than 40hr/week and some people
| don't.
| zodester wrote:
| What I don't understand is why the VFX industry doesn't follow
| market dynamics and pay the artists what they are worth given
| the talent shortage. Or maybe they are and that story isn't
| getting told?
| piva00 wrote:
| Passion-based industries don't ever follow proper "market
| dynamics", video game programmers are paid less because
| there's always someone else who will take the job at a lesser
| rate because they are passionate about it. You try to pay
| less for a CRM developer and they will just find another gig
| while you won't find anyone as qualified because that job
| doesn't have a motivation outside of the monetary transaction
| for the labour.
|
| Market dynamics is just a model, as with any model it doesn't
| fit reality perfectly, it breaks down at the edges.
| bsenftner wrote:
| > Passion-based industries don't ever follow proper "market
| dynamics",
|
| Hammer hits nail on head, bulls eye. I've been a graphics
| programmer for 45 years, from research in the early 80's,
| through 3D video games, and years of Academy Award VFX
| studio work. It is the passion: making the media that
| captivates imaginations, and an ever visible stream of new
| applicants whose work looks really appealing - so you
| better shine or you'll be replaced.
| VectorLock wrote:
| This is why you always see bald faced attempts by HR
| departments to generate "passionate employees."
| snerbles wrote:
| It can be argued that it is a market dynamic, and (if you
| were to somehow control for everything else) the difference
| between the pay of an game programming job and an average
| white-collar boring office programming job is the market's
| value of that passion.
|
| That comparison may coldly boil down something people feel
| very deeply about, but I'd also argue the market is already
| doing that.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Passion-based industries don't ever follow proper "market
| dynamics", video game programmers are paid less because
| there's always someone else who will take the job at a
| lesser rate because they are passionate about it.
|
| This is an example of proper "market dynamics".
| toss1 wrote:
| Is that the market really breaking down at the edges, or
| fitting perfectly?
|
| I your examples of the video game programmers being paid
| less, it is because their compensation is in two parts: the
| money and the pleasure, astisfaction of passion, & the
| prestige of working on video games. In contrast, working on
| a CRM project has no other pleasures nor prestige, so those
| companies must may more dollars.
|
| Seems the difference in [pleasure, passion, & prestige]
| could even be quantifiable by measuring the paycheck
| differences?
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| dspillett wrote:
| Market dynamics only works that way in employer/employee
| relationships if the workers push for it enough. From the
| ealrier discussion someone linked to above: "The elephant in
| the room here is that VFX, unlike many other film
| professions, isn't properly unionised" - this may play into
| the situation. It may also/instead be that a lot of VFX work
| is done (once you get down to the individual workers) in
| short term contracts, a bit like the "gig economy" situations
| seen in other industries, which seems to easily create a
| barrier for worker protections.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Wages only go up when employees refuse to work for less.
|
| Sadly, people who work in video games and movies are some of
| the most overworked and underpaid professionals relative to
| the value they provide because they have been socialized to
| see themselves as artists who are "doing what they love" so
| it's about "more than the money". Which allows studios to
| exploit them, because for the studios it is _very much_ about
| the money.
|
| If game developers were just as willing to work for FAANG
| then conditions would improve for them overnight. Same as if
| VFX artists were willing to do mobile app UX design. But as
| long as they stick to only their passion, they fail to exert
| any financial pressure to improve wages or working
| conditions.
| adql wrote:
| Don't you know ? Art done for purpose of getting money is
| not pure ! /s
| LapsangGuzzler wrote:
| My guess is that the "gig" nature of animation jobs
| disadvantages workers because they're constantly needing to
| look for the next gig, which makes the hiring process a race
| to the bottom. The lack of job stability increases the
| likelihood that workers will accept less-than-favorable
| terms. We see this in game dev, and more recently, the
| Hollywood writers strike.
| felipeerias wrote:
| > In 2014, three visual effects artists launched a class
| action lawsuit alleging that between 2004 and 2010, numerous
| big studios - including Disney, Pixar, Lucasfilm, DreamWorks
| Animation, and Sony Pictures - had colluded in setting salary
| limits and avoiding hiring artists from other studios. (The
| studios settled the case without admitting liability, paying
| out a combined PS140 million settlement.)
| jsnell wrote:
| The employee/employer power dynamics are clearly very
| different than in e.g. software engineering:
|
| > A clause in Angell's contract reportedly required him to
| pay a PS30,000 penalty should he quit in the middle of a
| project.
|
| I can't imagine anyone signing that kind of contract in tech.
|
| Employees probably have less bargaining power than in tech,
| since the skills aren't as transferrable. The employers are
| just contractors being squeezed by the studios both on cost
| and on extra work, and pass that squeeze onto the employees.
| And since the VFX houses aren't the ones making the profits
| on the final movie, running a VFX studio and trying to get
| the best people (and best product) by promising better
| conditions doesn't actually work.
| [deleted]
| snerbles wrote:
| There are market dynamics.
|
| It's like game devs and pilots - a cool job lots of kids
| wanted to do growing up, so there's a glut of new talent
| eager to be used up and burned out for pennies.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| So glad EA games didn't hire me. Web devs seem to do
| alright.
| npteljes wrote:
| I share the sentiment. It was my wife's (then
| girlfriend's) explicit wish that I don't chase my
| passions in such an environment, and I'm really grateful
| for that after the years.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's probably also the case that (not so well-paying)
| passion jobs become less interesting when they're your
| full-time, perhaps long hours, job and you don't really
| control what you work on. I was pretty passionate about
| photography once upon a time but I realized (correctly)
| that I'd probably end up doing photography for some
| small-time newspaper (when those still existed), some
| organization's public relations, or commercial
| photography--and not Life Magazine.
| Dowwie wrote:
| The documentary "Jurassic Punk" tells a story about Steve
| Williams, a VFX artist who was central to the animation presented
| in several blockbuster films, including The Abyss, Terminator 2
| and Jurassic Park. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15095920/
|
| Williams did not receive credit, nor benefit financially.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| He did receive credit and he was paid by ILM. He also became a
| visual effects supervisor. Maybe he feels he didn't receive
| enough of the credit compared to Dennis Muren and Phil Tippet,
| but he was also not in charge of the show. He did end up in
| many behind the scenes interviews. If anyone didn't get enough
| credit, it was probably the texture painters, lookdev artists,
| shader writers and lighters who actually made the dinosaurs
| look realistic.
| kobalsky wrote:
| that's a wild statement.
|
| did he release software on the public domain those movies used?
| efitz wrote:
| Unionize. Every group of workers in Hollywood has gotten f**ed
| until they unionized.
| ancientworldnow wrote:
| VFX is hugely outsourced so you need to unionize globally
| (especially India, Eastern Europe, etc) for it to work.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| You could get rid of "in Hollywood" and this sentence is still
| accurate.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Tell that to all the millionaires in devs and investment
| bankers in SV and Wallstreet who aren't unionized.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| sergent_moon wrote:
| You don't have to unionize if you're doing the fucking.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The reality is they are actually not as well paid as they
| think they are. If your employer can afford to pay you
| $300k or more and still bring in billions in profit, you
| are generating a whole lot of profit that does nothing but
| go to the top to pay for another yacht.
|
| Being better paid than the lowest of people doesn't make
| you well compensated. People need to stop making this a rat
| race and considering pay only by who they make more than.
| adql wrote:
| CEOs and lawyers don't appear to really need any union
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Neither do software engineers, doesn't stop people from
| endlessly trying to pitch the idea on HN.
| LapsangGuzzler wrote:
| I once used the NBA's collective bargaining agreement
| (union contract) as a model for a hypothetical software
| engineering union at Apple. Pro athletes are a great
| example of white collar organized labor.
|
| If Apple devs had the same revenue sharing agreement the
| NBA players do and received a similar share of Apple's
| revenue, the median pay would be around $600k. That's
| just the median, think about that.
|
| Just because engineers are well-compensated compared to
| the rest of the economy doesn't mean that we can't
| benefit from organized labor.
| twoodfin wrote:
| I like the structure of that thought experiment, but if
| anything I'm surprised that the median Apple engineer
| (pay around $200k?) has within a small integer multiple
| of the leverage of NBA stars.
|
| I'd expect the latter to be much harder to replace than
| that.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| When you consider the average length of an NBA career
| (less than 5 years), their pay looks even worse.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| But CEOs and Lawyers both have at least informal in-groups
| that do such gatekeeping. Law school is full of aggressive
| hazing, and a requirement to burn yourself out to please
| someone else, and CEO and director boards are the epitome
| of nepotism. Of course they don't need unions, they are the
| exact power dynamic unions are an attempt to balance
| against.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Honestly, I'm a little curious why VFX work has so much allure.
| It's a decent wage, but I don't see why that job specifically is
| worth it. Surely there are other jobs demanding less work while
| paying more money. Is it just because it's art? I feel like that
| sort of corporate "spend two weeks making a realistic fire which
| will be on screen for 3 seconds" can't be that fulfilling as art
| in itself, when you have essentially zero creative control.
| hondo77 wrote:
| The problems that you work to solve are not the usual "I need a
| new parameter for this API endpoint" type of work. It's fun
| (for a while) and crazy and even glamorous (watching something
| you've worked on in a theater with the public is great).
| Another nice thing is that, while most software written is very
| evanescent (almost every bit of software I have worked on in my
| 38-year career is gone), my name in the credits of some very
| popular movies will be around 100 years after I'm dead. That's
| pretty cool.
| riotnrrd wrote:
| I worked in VFX for almost ten years. It's incredibly fun! I
| absolutely loved making movies and I worked with some amazing
| artists. It pays terribly, but it was the most fun I've ever
| had in a job.
| wanderingmoose wrote:
| I would add that there are really challenging problems and
| continual technical development. And since each movie comes
| with its own new set of requirements, each one is a fresh
| slate of new, crazy problems. For me personally, I love the
| short iterative cycle between math and an output image.
| riotnrrd wrote:
| I worked on tools for artists and you're totally right. The
| fast iteration was so great; it felt more like good ol'
| fashioned stay-up-all-night hacking for the joy of it than
| anything else I've ever done professionally.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I'm sure it's pretty fun to see the stuff you worked on in
| theaters, and from what I've seen on the 'VFX Artists React'
| show that Corridor Crew puts out the VFX artists actually do
| have some amount of creative control - depending on what
| they're doing.
| bmarquez wrote:
| > experience of working on a film or television series that is
| underbid, understaffed, subject to unreasonable, inflexible
| deadlines, and endless directorial nitpicking: "pixel fucked"
|
| This feels like working for a video game company. People
| overworked, underpaid, and doing it for the love of the creative
| arts and working on a name brand project. Similar things have
| happened at Electronic Arts.
| edvinbesic wrote:
| Feels like working in advertising as well, granted it's been a
| decade for me but I imagine the "creative" ego trip is still as
| alive as ever.
| diob wrote:
| There's a lot in modern day life that seems to depend on an
| endless supply of naive young folk who don't yet realize
| they're being taken advantage of yet. They have that belief
| that their situation will be different.
|
| It's one of those things you can't tell people either, they
| have to experience it unfortunately, so the cycle continues.
|
| Not sure how you fix that beyond regulation / protection for
| those folks.
| ancientworldnow wrote:
| In the film industry everyone _knows_ they 're being taken
| advantage of, it's very explicitly discussed at the lowest
| ranks of production. It's just that it's _the only entrance
| to the field_ if you aren 't wealthy or heavily connected.
| You have to suffer until you build your network and credits
| enough to pull yourself up. There's little to no delusion,
| just embracing the suck.
| diob wrote:
| You say they everyone knows, but also say "You have to
| suffer until you build your network and credits enough to
| pull yourself up."
|
| That's the delusion right there, young naive folks thinking
| their suffering will pay off.
|
| Because while you say everyone knows, the truth is that
| discussion is not equal to understanding / internal
| feeling.
|
| It's only after being chewed up by the machine with no
| actual payoff do folks come to an understanding,
| unfortunately.
|
| But until then it's lip service, and folks silently
| thinking their situation is special / different.
|
| I'm not knocking these folks by the way, I think it's part
| of the human spirit / condition. That's why I advocate
| regulation / protections.
| arp242 wrote:
| Harlan Ellison's old "pay the writer" rant applies to many
| industries. He was right.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuLr9HG2ASs
| DemeterFarm wrote:
| [dead]
| nunez wrote:
| see also: investment banking, Big Law, Medicine (with bigger
| paychecks)
| ghaff wrote:
| Or they have an understanding that they're being hazed (for
| lack of a better term) but if they make partner/finish
| residency they have a not necessarily cushy life but are,
| as you say, going to be well-paid and have a decent
| professional life if they like the work.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| I'm a bit curious how are conditions this bad.
|
| Is there an overproduction of artist hopefuls compared to the
| movies being made?
|
| I would also guess differentiation is low. Any VFX studio is as
| good as the other, so every studio is paranoid about losing a
| movie deal, over not accommodating the directors whims?
|
| this is one of the places I feel generative AI can do a lot of
| good. It can get rid of the routine VFX like changing an actors
| pant etc that VFX artists are inundated with and leave only the
| artistic work for VFX artists which is hopefully not as taxing
| and not as requiring of crunch
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Is there an overproduction of artist hopefuls compared to the
| movies being made?
|
| Yes, this is true literally everywhere in the arts: there are
| far more aspiring artists in any given field than there is
| money to support as full-time artists, and the way the market
| for art works you end up with a very small number of artists
| making lots of money, a modest number of artists making barely-
| adequate money, and a whole lot of people making occasional
| incidental money but unable to devote themselves exclusively to
| the field because of lack of funds unless they have unrelated
| support, where the skill/quality differences between being in
| the top category and the bottom may be very narrow for
| individuals, even if they are notable on average, because there
| is so much volume that a lot of the filtering mechanisms that
| exist in practice are rough.
| cubefox wrote:
| The requirements grow with the capability of the tools. VFX
| getting better in the last decades didn't make the crunch less.
| olivertaylor wrote:
| Exactly. Is that a basic economic principle? I think it's
| called the efficiency paradox.
| cubefox wrote:
| Wikipedia calls it Jevons paradox:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
| olivertaylor wrote:
| Thanks!
| ravenstine wrote:
| > Is there an overproduction of artist hopefuls compared to the
| movies being made?
|
| Yes.
|
| Hollywood in the general sense is also an industry packed to
| the brim with ego and wishful thinking. Nobody wants to rock
| the boat because, heaven forbid, an artist may never be allowed
| to live their dream working on the next Avatar or the next Toy
| Story for crossing the wrong person.
|
| For better or worse, most young artists I've known are wishful
| thinkers. They each had a dream of working on the next Jurassic
| Park or the next equivalent to 2001 A Space Odyssey, or the
| next Frozen or whatever. Although the software industry is
| filled with aspirations of working at The Google or Meta,
| unlike programmers, artists in entertainment are willing to
| work for peanuts because they can't have their grand vision
| shattered.
|
| The fantasy of being important is what fuels the entertainment
| industry. It's numerically infeasible for every artist to work
| on The Next Big Hit, but everyone is required to believe they
| can in order for there to be enough fresh artists to be chewed
| up and spat out.
|
| I'm so glad I left animation and became a programmer. The worst
| coworkers in software pale in comparison to the giant throbbing
| dicks that exist everywhere in the entertainment industry. I
| can refuse to work weekends or, even more drastic, quit my job
| when the deal gets bad, and it's unlikely to permanently damage
| my career if it even does at all. My career isn't founded on a
| combination of free work and brown-nosing.
|
| > this is one of the places I feel generative AI can do a lot
| of good.
|
| I seriously think that studios aren't far from having their
| lunch totally eaten by small groups of individuals using
| various forms of AI. No doubt that GPT has been used in
| Hollywood already, but VFX and animation are stuck in the past
| in many ways. These studios are afraid to experiment, which is
| why they resort to using old school methods that are outclassed
| by individuals with deepfake tech.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Programmers have plenty of comfortable fallback options if
| they don't make it to FAANG.
|
| Screenwriters and VFX artists, not so much. There are more
| people wanting to do these jobs than there are positions to
| be filled. That means anyone who isn't willing to put up with
| being used and abused can be easily replaced. It's why nearly
| every skilled trade in Hollywood has a union, because
| collective bargaining is often the only way to guarantee any
| sort of stability or fair treatment. VFX artist unfortunately
| don't have a useful union, so they get to experience
| firsthand what Hollywood was like for everyone else 90 years
| ago.
| ghaff wrote:
| The unions/guilds set some floor for wages and conditions
| while working. But they don't really do a lot for the
| aspiring actor waiting tables between auditions for bit
| parts however much he believes he could be the next Tom
| Cruise.
| s1mon wrote:
| I'm not in the industry, but from talking to people that have
| been, VFX is one of those things that gets squeezed the most.
| It typically happens after principal photography is done, and
| the release date has been set in stone by the management and
| marketing machine at the studios. When you add the wide numbers
| of VFX houses, the lack of labor protections, and the ability
| to outsource to all corners of the world, there's so much
| competition that it's a race to the bottom with pricing and
| delivery dates.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Are they in a union? I know most of the industry is unionized
| but I've never heard of vfx having its own or being part of
| one of the others.
| riotnrrd wrote:
| No. The VFX industry in the US is not unionized.
| wanderingmoose wrote:
| You are correct in that the industry as a whole is not
| union. Most of the smaller vfx houses are not union.
|
| However some of the larger vfx houses like ILM and some
| of the feature animation houses like Dreamworks are are
| union. (ILM is IATSE...not sure about others)
|
| In my experience, whether or a vfx shop is union or not
| has little impact on salary and job stability.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In my experience, whether or a vfx shop is union or not
| has little impact on salary and job stability.
|
| Without unionization across the industry, that makes
| sense.
| olivertaylor wrote:
| There are a lot of factors, but you're not wrong.
| ksey3 wrote:
| Thank trash software. Keeping the ship afloat becomes more
| important, than wondering where the ship is heading. Thats what
| trash software does to ppls brains.
|
| Its so bad, it allows (and requires) 600 ppl to sit together
| and produce a few seconds worth of mindless forgettable sensory
| over stimulation, to keep a 14 year old glued to his seat. I
| mean Bill Waterson does a better job with just a pencil.
|
| On top of it, there arent enough over stimulation requiring
| eyeballs on the planet to sustain such a mindless mega
| machine(see Odlyzko Content is not King), that the trash
| software enables. Its natural the whole thing keeps breaking
| down regularly.
|
| It will only change when people step back from keeping the ship
| afloat and ask where the ship should be heading.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _this is one of the places I feel generative AI can do a lot of
| good. It can get rid of the routine VFX like changing an actors
| pant etc that VFX artists are inundated with and leave only the
| artistic work for VFX artists which is hopefully not as taxing
| and not as requiring of crunch_
|
| What are you basing any of this on? I have seen demos that
| would be incredible for previs and animatics but nothing that
| would pass for final quality.
|
| Computer graphics research, software and hardware continues to
| march forward, that's a reason visual effects have progressed
| so much in the last 20 years.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Notably while many other entertainment specialties have unions,
| I don't think vfx does
| bsenftner wrote:
| I was 7 years at Rhythm & Hues, leaving the industry during the
| production of Life of PI. It gets this bad for several reasons,
| including: each VFX studio has between 3-5 feature films moving
| through it, at different stages of production, at a time, and
| often a few commercials as well; that equals between 1200 and
| 2800 digital artists and their support staff all working on the
| same corporate campus; by necessity, these technical artists
| have a range of experience, so there is also an education
| department, a constant flow of new software, and software
| freezes for a given production that may last 18+ months; so by
| necessity the staff is managed en mass with cafeteria food,
| around the clock render completions and hence 3-5 "dailies" per
| 24 hour period. One production's compute going over
| expectations, or production changes, or staff changes easily
| ripple in impact through the entire studio - all productions.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Hollywood in general has a surplus of hopefuls. But Hollywood
| is largely unionized. VFX is a glaring exception.
|
| My friends who work in animation describe a _constant_ back and
| forth between the union and the studios over demands for more
| work for the same pay. Generative AI will just make it easier
| for directors to ask for even more ludicrous tasks.
| munificent wrote:
| _> But Hollywood is largely unionized. VFX is a glaring
| exception._
|
| And, in fact, this one of the reasons _why_ VFX gets so
| heavily overused for stuff that you could do in-camera.
|
| Is the actor wearing the wrong pants? Well, reshooting that
| requires paying union actors, gaffers, camera operators, etc.
| to shoot it again. Fixing it in post means you pay a couple
| of ununionized VFX artists.
| pavlov wrote:
| The problem is that when you start relying on this too
| much, then you eventually start shooting entirely without
| the pants. "We'll fix it in post!"
|
| It doesn't happen with the actual costume department quite
| like that, but properly lit sets have definitely been
| widely replaced by expanses of greenscreen awash in
| nondescript lighting that hopes to vaguely match whatever
| the rendered surroundings turn out to be.
| underwater wrote:
| The Avengers films did exactly that. They filmed
| characters with random costumes because they hadn't done
| the designs yet. Then replaced the costumes with CG
| later.
| pavlov wrote:
| Why even bother with a script?
|
| You could just assemble a cast, bring them into a
| greenscreen studio, and shoot a complete matrix of poses
| and angles and lighting variations. Then synthesize the
| film from that when someone decides what it should be
| about.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| They even did fakeouts by the trailers using even further
| different CG costumes.
|
| Some of the reason they gave for that at the time wasn't
| just saving on real world costume designers by
| outsourcing it to "cheap" VFX teams, but also for added
| "security" to avoid "spoilers" leaking to the press in
| tabloid photos.
|
| (Spoilers of a sort: My favorite meta-joke on all this
| was Spider-Man: Far From Home's "primary" Mysterio
| costume which had tabloids and fans doing all sorts of
| speculation what the CG composited costume on top of it
| would look like, given the Avengers situation, only to
| find out that was actually the outfit for many of
| Mysterio's scenes because it very well fit the character
| in that medium.)
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _Generative AI will just make it easier for directors to ask
| for even more ludicrous tasks._
|
| What are you basing this on and why would this be the case?
| themerone wrote:
| It's much easier to exploit people passionate about their
| industry.
|
| This is why game developers have some of the worst working
| conditions in the the software industry.
| flopsamjetsam wrote:
| Yes, they're both "passion jobs" and people often work on
| "passion projects" in them.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _this is one of the places I feel generative AI can do a lot
| of good. It can get rid of the routine VFX like changing an
| actors pant etc that VFX artists are inundated with and leave
| only the artistic work for VFX artists which is hopefully not
| as taxing and not as requiring of crunch_
|
| And the last decades' exponential increases in productivity
| could have lead to keynes' famous 15 hour workweek - except
| they didn't.
|
| Instead, productivity got directed to more output and more
| profit and working hours stayed the same if not increased.
|
| As such, I'm more predicting this will simply lead to less VFX
| artists being employed by the studios than for there being a
| substantial improvement in working conditions.
| imtringued wrote:
| It is more efficient for the business to hire the same guy
| for 45 hours than three guys for 15 hours. If we assume that
| all of them get their turn eventually, then this can only be
| done by rotating who gets employed.
| olivertaylor wrote:
| You're right about the productivity. And many movie studios
| already own VFX studios. Netflix has Scanline, Disney has
| ILM, etc. But it is not super common.
| xg15 wrote:
| I was more thinking about employment by the _VFX studios_
| themselves - i.e., if the article is right and VFX
| companies are already in a race to the bottom with respect
| to the movie studios (their customers), this race would
| likely swallow all productivity benefits that generative AI
| could provide.
| olivertaylor wrote:
| Oh right, of course. I agree. But as with any technology,
| new possibilities emerge. Perhaps someone will come up
| with a new paradigm.
| pwthornton wrote:
| From what I can gather and have read, two things can be true at
| the same time:
|
| 1) Viewers can tell the difference between good and bad VFX and
| have a lot of complaints about the quality of VFX on a lot of
| projects. 2) Studios don't seem to care. They care about price
| and about tight deadlines.
|
| Marvel is getting criticized a lot for the quality of its VFX,
| which has been poor at times in recent years, and a bit culprit
| of that is that release dates are set with schedules for work.
| But rewrites and reshoots happen, which push back when VFX can
| do their work, but the release dates don't move. So this leads
| to a lot of rushed work.
| rcarr wrote:
| > Now, not only were VFX houses responsible for conjuring vast
| fictional cities, bustling crowds of tens of thousands, and
| cascading waterfalls, but they would also spend months fixing
| mistakes: digitally erasing visible wig lines in period dramas,
| inserting absent props, snipping away errant strands of hair,
| tucking in double chins.
|
| Take with a pinch of salt because I don't work in the industry,
| but I'm not convinced this "VFX for everything" approach is
| cheaper or results in better films. I still think a lot of old
| films blow the modern counterparts out of the water.
|
| The very fact that they had to use practical effects and physical
| film was expensive meant you couldn't just shoot unlimited takes
| without burning through money (unless you were Kubrick who was
| notorious for doing takes from every angle). The whole "fix it in
| post" mentality leads to sloppy, rushed work and a lack of
| thinking and commitment on behalf of the director and producing
| team. See here[1]:
|
| > Even after shots are exhaustively delivered, Marvel is
| allegedly "infamous" for requesting "tons of different
| variations" until one earns the green light.
|
| and even worse:
|
| > We've literally made up entire third acts of a film, a month
| before release, because the director didn't know what they
| wanted," one source said about Marvel in general.
|
| You would never have had this back in the day. You planned out
| your big set piece in advance and you shot it, and you better get
| it fucking right because your head was on the chopping block if
| you didn't. Instead, the directors and producers are now
| offloading their responsibility to get things right on to the VFX
| artists. Maybe the demands of HD and 4K means that such work is
| necessary compared to back in the old days because stuff like wig
| lines and errant hairs wouldn't be visible due to the resolution.
| But some of me wonders if it is overproduction, which I think a
| lot of contemporary music nowadays also suffers from.
|
| Another evil is film companies refusing to create a "everything-
| in-one-place" content model like the music industry has done with
| Spotify, with the end result being an endless churn of content in
| an attempt to justify the subscription over their rivals. I
| imagine this is a contributing factor to the rushed "fix it in
| post" mentality but I can't see why film would be any different
| to any other industry - where taking your time to get it right
| the first time ends up being faster over the long run.
|
| [1] https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/marvels-vfx-
| artis...
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| I think it's kind of natural for artists to demand higher
| standards than is truly necessary, even for discerning
| audiences. Something that many people are unaware of is that
| even for classical music, it's standard practice to do multiple
| takes on a given piece and the stitch together the best parts
| in editing. However, I think I speak for a lot of fans when I
| say live recordings are just as good if not better than these
| Frankenstein recordings, so why bother going to all that
| trouble?
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of design work is like that. I'm willing to believe we
| sometimes notice things at a subconscious level but do we
| actually benefit from the 10 million (or whatever) fonts in
| existence or from people agonizing for days over the most
| subtle difference in colors you'll be viewing on a non-color
| corrected monitor.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Often there is a choice between not showing a thing happen on
| screen because it wouldn't be practical/economical, or using
| VFX. Now suppose for instance you're making a disaster movie
| about a tsunami hitting NYC; your options are doing it with
| scale models (which will look fake or limit you to very quick
| shots of the disaster), doing it with computers, or not making
| the movie at all. That sort of effect for that sort of movie
| isn't really negotiable.
|
| But when the effect isn't critical to the movie and not having
| the effect was a perfectly valid choice? Like for instance, a
| character throws a cigar and the director thinks it would be
| cool to have the camera follow and spin around the cigar as
| it's flying through the air. Maybe you could do that for real
| with a sophisticated robot arm holding the camera, but that's
| expensive. In a previous era, the director would forget about
| that idea, it wouldn't get into the movie and nobody would care
| that it wasn't in the movie. But now that computer imagery is
| cheap and abundant, a director can have that gratuitous effect.
| And if it doesn't look like crap when the movie is released, it
| will almost certainly look like crap a few years later. The
| movie would have been better off without the effect in the
| first place. But because VFX is so cheap, it is now used for
| nonsense like this all the time and it makes movies worse on
| the whole.
|
| One of the first movies I noticed this in was Fight Club. At
| the start of the movie when the MC is in the office, there's a
| long scene of the camera flying in between garbage in a garbage
| can. It's all CGI; there would have been no way to get a real
| camera flying around in between empty cans and donuts wrappers.
| It's an impossible shot to do for real, but they could do it
| with CGI. It also looks like crap, completely fake. I saw this
| movie in theaters and it looked fake then, and even worse now.
| In an era before CGI, the director could have settled on having
| a macro camera pan across a pile of trash without flying and
| twisting around inside of the trash. A real camera filming real
| trash. It would not have been as dynamic, but it would look
| real and continue to look real forever.
|
| Basically, the cheapness of VFX seems to blind many directors
| to cases in which less-is-more. Now we have more-is-more movies
| packed to the brim with every gratuitous effect anybody can
| think of and it all ages like milk.
| zgluck wrote:
| There was a very similar large thread (239 comments) last August:
|
| _Hollywood's visual effects crisis (defector.com)_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32421538
| civilitty wrote:
| _> The elephant in the room here is that VFX, unlike many other
| film professions, isn't properly unionised._
|
| That's really all that needs to be said.
| zgluck wrote:
| There were other nuanced takes towards the bottom. For
| example, the one written by olivertaylor seemed insightful to
| me.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32461613 (excerpt)
|
| _I work in the VFX business, formerly managing a VFX house
| and now negotiating contracts with studios and production
| companies._
|
| _A few random thoughts..._
|
| _There is a massive industry-wide labor shortage and a
| massive surplus of work to be done. Artist rates are way up,
| there are more junior artists than ever, there are more shows
| with more VFX than ever, VFX shops are turning away tons of
| work, new shops are springing up, investment groups are
| buying and consolidating VFX houses to try and become big
| players, etc. This is a boom time for VFX._
|
| _This is absolutely a (labor) seller's market. Individuals
| and companies that are not taking advantage of this to create
| a better environment for themselves are missing a huge
| opportunity. There's never been a better time to quit a job
| you don't like and find a better one. Or to start a company!_
|
| _..._
| civilitty wrote:
| _> That said, there are a number of (very large) companies
| where it is absolutely normal to work 6 days a week 10 to
| 12 hours a day. This is not a secret, it's been very common
| for a very long time. Personally, I wouldn't work for a
| company like that._
|
| Says the former manager of a VHX house who now negotiates
| with studios... he'd literally be one of the people
| responsible for this situation.
|
| It's a shortage of employers willing to pay workers. Thats
| why they cant get enough artists
| olivertaylor wrote:
| Not really. I've never worked for a studio that treats
| people like that, and wouldn't. And I've been in a unique
| position to see how these situations unfold. It is very
| complex, very fluid, and difficult to manage. I think the
| bottom line is just that it is too difficult to do
| correctly for most studios (people).
|
| However, you are correct in that people in my position
| are often at fault - but executive leadership ALWAYS
| signs off.
|
| The labor shortage situation has changed a lot since then
| but it was never a wages problem. I knew people at
| studios offering double their standard rate who still
| couldn't find enough qualified people.
| gwern wrote:
| There are similar comments in OP about salaries and
| changing expectations/demands by labor discovering its
| negotiating power, but it's buried at the end so no one is
| reading that far.
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