Have had an interesting Twitter ‘conversation’ with Duncan Jones, director of the hugely successful and highly enjoyable film, Moon, that stemmed from this tweet about an era of low-budget, VFX fuelled movies and how professional post-production/VFX houses will need to slash their bills:
ManMadeMoon Thoughts after “Monsters…” new era of low budget movies coming. Effects heavy. Professional VFX houses will need to slash budgets soon.
I replied to say that I didn’t think that was going to be possible, given that most VFX artists aren’t paid that well right now (with really only freelancers making the big moolah) and that the overall cost of hardware, software and resources costing a small fortune isn’t going to help (it is still quite pricey – not so much hardware, but rather the software). As a non-senior production systems engineer, towards the end of my stay at MPC I am sure that I was earning a lot more than most VFX artists – supervisors included – based on conversations that were going around and to speaking to various people about it.
The conversation (damnit, I wish Twitter would make it easier to follow a complete “conversation”) essentially went like this:
ManMadeMoon @mbdrake I think it unlikely an op would turn down offer to direct a film if he is asked to do all the CG himself as part of the deal.
ManMadeMoon @mbdrake Here is the deal; You are hot shit on Maya. I offer you 100k to direct a film, but you need to do all the effects free of charge…
to which I replied:
No. Would have to be a much much higher figure – software, hardware and maint. v. expensive alone. Would make loss on 100k
I mean, just over a third of that would be my salary alone (although I am basing that as an engineer and not as an artist – but I would probably equate that at a non-freelance VFX supervisor level these days). Unless I was taking a lot of Red Bull, was using dodgy versions of the software needed to do the job, could negotiate a good discount with my local friendly outsourced post house or render farm (proxied res. stuff could be rendered locally obviously), as well as taking on additional staff to help get the job done. Their salaries would need to be factored into that 100k too. I don’t think a film with hundreds of shots could be made on a shoestring VFX budget of £100k. At least, not if you’re wanting it done quickly.
Also, VFX producers (who generally don’t tend to be that technical – it’s more about the process) can tend to underestimate just how much they need in terms of resources. Which ultimately then requires more money to be spent to compensate for that. On the other hand, if you have pure VFX artists and engineers working on a project such as this and ditch a dedicated VFX producer, you could save money there.
As for pirated software – one must point out that I have worked for a company that develops VFX software (which was pirated – one only had to Google the software name to find this was the case) and ultimately me and a lot of good people was made redundant. Not entirely due to piracy, I might add, but it certainly wouldn’t have helped matters if people didn’t pay my employers for the use of their software.
This comment surprised me a little:
ManMadeMoon @mbdrake and frankly, most of the public is a hell of a lot less discerning about the quality of CG than those of us who work in the biz.
Not entirely sure about that. You go on IMDb and the ilk and you’ll find far too many fanboys (and girls) bitching about the quality of VFX when they have absolutely no bloody idea on what went into creating it in the first place. All they know is that it’s CG and it can do magical things. Steve Jobs permitting.
All that being said, there are a good couple of examples where VFX quality need not necessarily suffer at the cost of a lower budget. Dave McKean & Neil Gaiman’s MirrorMask is one such production which required, for budgetary reasons (normal post houses being too expensive), for Dave to set up his own VFX studio. He did much of the FX work himself and took on students from Bournemouth (from one of the prestigious colleges there that specialise in computer animation) to help out. The result is fantastic, and is one of the best British VFX fantasy films I’ve seen in a long time.
Similarly, Red Dwarf: Back to Earth utilised a distribution network of artists from around the world to achieve some highly polished visual effects for exceptionally little or no cost. It was done for the love of Red Dwarf.
Both these solutions relied on students (the Red Dwarf stuff was supervised by fxphd – and consequently they got to use the material on their web site for training purposes) which is certainly a cost effective option. It gives them a leg up into the industry, and keeps costs low on the staffing front.
So yes, I suppose it IS possible, and perhaps not exactly on the 100k mark, but certainly doable at a lower budget that’s been afforded to big VFX films in the past and retain some of that quality. That I do agree with (having had time to think about it – I was too pumped up with vino yesterday to really offer a good argument for or against).
What I will say is that it is going to be difficult for professional VFX houses to lower their pricing much – after all, they have rent to pay on buildings, the cost of a dedicated render farm to maintain, permanent staff, and so on.
It’ll be interesting to see where things go from here.
Final words go to Duncan (re-arranged in right order):
ManMadeMoon @mbdrake My point remains though.. Am convinced therell be a wave of producers with scripts and a bag of chump change luring ops to direct
ManMadeMoon @mbdrake think of it this way. Im a producer. I can raise 200k to make a film that will look like it cost 10M, because I gave an op a break
ManMadeMoon @mbdrake Thats just smart business! Its the 21st century version of how Roger Corman used to make movies.
What are YOUR opinions on this?
