I’ve just been reading this article from Variety (VFX artist plight at issue) in which former VFX and motion graphics artist and now political blogger, Lee Stranahan, appeals to James Cameron to speak out for fairness for visual effects artists, and I’ve been thinking that it is indeed time for VFX artists (and engineers) to get the recognition they deserve.
But it goes much deeper than this.
For VFX artists, they deserve better pay and benefits and better credit positioning. For VFX engineers, they deserve at least a credit. As a former VFX engineer it has to be said that we generally get paid better than most VFX artists (however this is not always the case and speaking to former colleagues at other facilities, the pay for system administrators/engineers can vary greatly – especially, it seems, when it comes to gender. Junior engineers who put in much of the grunt work when it comes to installing heavy server and workstation kit, earn far less than most VFX artists, and yet put in just as long hours and lousy shifts). This is because engineers are likely to be more employed full-time at a post facility rather than on a contract basis (unlike artists who can come to a facility on a contract/job/freelance basis). So here us engineers have the better deal so far it has to be said. But we should – in effect we’re working in a specialised HPC (high performance computing) environment – something where skills can be transferred to scientific/lab research positions and other specialised “cloud” computing infrastructures.
For those artists on contract/job/freelance basis have very little in the way of entitlements/benefits (holiday, sick pay, etc.). Full time employees at post houses usually have at least a pension scheme. This is not extended to contracted employees in most cases, obviously.
So what is the incentive for the VFX artist? Career progression? Possibly. But this depends, in part, on credits. And as mentioned in the original article, VFX staff are almost always listed after craft services and appear right towards the bottom of the credits. Even then not everyone is included (engineers are almost always excluded – it suggests that render farms, workstations, software, storage, VPNs, and everything else in-between sorts itself out despite the combination of grunt work, long hours, lousy shifts and most post houses consider engineering a “necessary evil” and hardly get a good word sent down to them from clients or even management of the company they work for) and everybody is fighting for space for their names to be included as studios allocated a set limit per facility.
Mind you, given how most broadcasters trim out the credits of films when they air anyway (yet same broadcasters won’t do the same for their own programs), it’s a moot point. Is there any need to expose more film for people’s names? How about flashing up an URL at the end of the film to learn more about the filmmakers and the people that made the film? To be honest, I just don’t know what the answer is, but the entire credits system is proving to be unfair. Even if you ARE included in the end credits, it’s likely your name is probably misspelt by the third party company responsible for typesetting and producing those credits.
My opinion of the VFX industry after six years working for it was that both creative and technical teams are seriously under-represented. I was not at all impressed with the Visual Effects Society’s representation in the UK at the time – all the benefits really went to those that worked in and around Los Angeles and New York. I am assured things have improved by now, but it’s still not enough. VES should be doing a lot more for it’s members – especially in the international, non-US community where a lot of UK facilities are being used for major Hollywood-funded films are made. Surely there must be an organisation out there prepared to truly stand up to the film and TV studios on behalf of those (artists, engineers, producers, supervisors, etc) to ensure better benefits for those that work in it?
That said, it’s the employers of VFX personnel who should be doing more for it’s employees regardless of whether they be full-time or contract. During my years in the industry, working full-time, I was never offered any training on anything that remotely interested me. There was always talk, of course, but absolutely nothing came out of it other than a monthly subscription to Safari Bookshelf on-line.
VFX work IS being taken advantage of by film studios. One could say that the post house is merely a film studio’s rag doll – to be battered about as needed, and when done, tossed aside for something cheaper and shinier. Some directors prefer working with certain facilities, but it’s probably more of a case that they prefer working with certain people. If those people feel they’re not being looked after by the facility they’e working for, or the film studio, they’ll go elsewhere.
All I know is that I’m encountering more and more artists leaving the film industry to pursue careers in graphic design, the games industry (yipe – if you thought the film industry could be scary, the stories I’ve heard about the game industry is enough to make one scream), or anywhere else their talent might be appreciated. Similarly for engineers who leave to work for specialist HPC/cloud systems.
Interesting article, Martyn, and I agree with most of your points. But I think it should be pointed out that position in the end roller isn’t necessarily a reflection of importance. There ate probably a lot of historic reasons for how they are ordered, but it seems to me that chiefly, vfx tend to come late because they are part of POST production. Like music, which also comes late. Secondly, and you know this, tech infrastructure people in facilities may not be considered part of the ‘crew’ for a specific show, as their work load is spread across all the shows being done at that facility. In a sense they are working for the facility, not the show. Accounts people, or the HR department, or most of the managers at the facility probably don’t get credits either.
Very good points, Paddy.
I do recall at MPC that HR department occasionally got credits for Technical Support. Which was rather odd and one must ask how that came to be. But surely there are full time creatives/production staff at most facilities who may work across multiple shows (which may be the executive producer, head of department, etc.) yet they are credited and the engineers, accounts, are not. To be fair to MPC, in the past they have taken out full spreads in Cinefex and listed the entire staff on particular shows (Harry Potter springs to mind).
I also fully realise that I work for the facility and not entirely on one show – although where each of us engineers were positioned made it easier to provide support for the show that was currently located in the same area. We also occasionally got to go to the studios themselves to set-up kit, set-up specific configurations for the show and provide specific support for the show. And all this juggling the other shows too. In fact, it was mentioned on numerous occasions in meeting that each show would have one engineer assigned to it as a specific support point for artists, producers, etc.
The credits system, to me, appears to be inconsistent regardless of however an individual facility works. The reason I gave up working for MPC was there was no career progression. Those of us that wanted to go into the more creative side ended up doing the crap jobs and moving between departments was a painful experience. I also lost confidence in senior staff after speaking to them in confidence only to discover they’ve talked to other people that I specifically asked them not to.
I was poised to move to Framestore at one point, but they clearly never bothered to listen to why I wanted to move away from MPC and what I wanted and as such the negotiations broke down (and my opinion of them rapidly dropped – they don’t care about people, it’s all about numbers).
Honestly, I don’t know whether to be happy or disappointed – because that’s the situation here in India. Only worse. Here, its common for a stunt director or an art director to claim something done in VFX as his own!!!
The effort taken by Lee is commendable and should be encouraged. The VFX industry as a whole needs to unite quite desparately. They are indeed denied respect that they, very very, deserve. Look, the same guys who like to boast that “everything was real, no VFX was used” would be shamelessly, and desparately hoping the VFX guys would fix or create things they couldn’t get for “real”. Yet, no one likes to acknowledge or credit the guys who worked on them.
I totally disagree with Paddy (no offense mate) that the VFX guys are not working for the specific project but for a facility instead. Thats unacceptable. The so-called “crew” work on many shows too, and are not tied to a specific production. Perhaps the fact they get their cheques from the production house gives the impression that only they work for the show. But, that’s not fair at all. The point is we need to recognize the guys who “worked” for the show – no matter how, and through who.
VFX guys … speak up or you’d be shut out !!