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 !!

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).

Bingo. Couldn’t agree more. Canvas would find it difficult to be further removed from this ideal (under the misleading guise of being “open”). If you’ve not read it already, you might find my response to the latest BBC Trust consultation on it of interest:

http://files.me.com/mo.mcroberts/suvob2

(PDF link).

Does this mean your blog is going to be moving or unreadable again?

What’s my interest? Well, I do love the BBC (especially BBC News website) and feel that it should be supported and kept independent and ad-free (and that ITV should not get any of the licence fee), but I’m also very tempted to go “TV-free” like yourself.

I fell on ice today when walking, even though I was being fairly careful. I’ve been out with the grit now and dealt with that spot.

Walk around a lot, bitch, moan, slap some one cry about it, slap someone again, moan a little more, bore the crap out of the viewers,walk around a bit more.

“That’s It” That’s every episode in a nut shell, No more no less, no Aliens, no explosions, no humour, no team work, no entertainment whatsoever.

They must have a rich backer or something with all the adverts saying it great and fantastic and blah blah blah.

SORRY IT IS ABSOLUTE BORING CRAP !!!!!!!!

Sci fi NO

Drama NO

Entertaining NO

Good acting NO

Good Characters NO

Boring Shite HELL YES!!!!

Thanks so much for mentioning CloudBerry Lab products in your blog and pointing out their flaws. We will be working on them

Thanks
Andy
CloudBerry lab team

By way of an apology, I’m going to make a small donation to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. And a charity of Hilary’s choice too. It is the very least I can do.