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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Life After Pi - A short film on the fate of the VFX industry

Many years ago a VFX company I worked for was thinking of creating their own content. Well, the studios didn't like this idea as they felt we had become their completion and there was too much conflict of interest. I'm sure things are different now though.
 
Why don't the VFX companies negotiate a profit percentage into their bids? The more vfx shots that are needed, the higher the percentage. That way they get their upfront budget, plus some revenue on the back end once the film makes money. I feel like this would also push the vfx industry to be better and innovate more since their work can now get them back end profit as well. Bad vfx films will make less while great vfx like Life of Pi, Gravity, Avatar, etc. go on to make a fortune.

Anyways, just a thought I had. Would be good if this became the norm and seems like a reasonable approach that could solve the issue. One argument I hear would be "studios would never go for that." Does it matter? If all VFX companies decided to take on this practice, they have NO CHOICE. So what, the studio would reject all of their bids and have no vfx work done? No way. Almost all Blockbusters need heavy vfx work these days, so they have no choice really but to comply.
 
Good film. Difficult and complex issue. It's somewhat a case of the studios wanting to hold the gun.

One real issue is the lack of a trade union in VFX. Moving films into predominantly VFX based imagery means that you have no risk of running high labour costs on the back end, after it is shot, with fixed contracts and no union to deal with in post production.

There is a serious argument about where the talent lies in VFX, is it with the artist who creates the tiger? or the director (critic) who tells you if it is good enough or not?

Place on top of this institution after institution churning our highly skilled hungry graduates into the workforce on a yearly basis and you basically have lovely conditions for slavery.

And one of the Oscar nominated films this year tackles the very subject in the past tense, as if it does not exist as a "way of being" in the Master/Slave relationship between 6 studios and "the VFX industry".

The sad part is the artists just want to do good work, but somehow the really talented people have to bend over and get raped because they have been convinced they are worthless slaves instead of the true talent. What's the line about the devil in The Usual Suspects? "The biggest trick the devil ever played was convincing us he does not exist". The studios have somehow convinced VFX that they have no power or talent.

Such a sad cycle. The world was supposed to be so much more advanced by now.

Battistella
 
Bob Gundu said:
Many years ago a VFX company I worked for was thinking of creating their own content. Well, the studios didn't like this idea as they felt we had become their completion and there was too much conflict of interest. I'm sure things are different now though.
Click to expand...

I can name at least two VFX companies (The Orphanage and Digital Domain) that announced and attempted to create their own content. They both went broke in part due to those attempts. Creativity and savvy production expertise don't often go together.
 
M Most said:
I can name at least two VFX companies (The Orphanage and Digital Domain) that announced and attempted to create their own content. They both went broke in part due to those attempts. Creativity and savvy production expertise don't often go together.
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Not having anyone to distribute your content probably plays a fairly largish role as well.
 
Matt Ryan said:
Anyways, just a thought I had. Would be good if this became the norm and seems like a reasonable approach that could solve the issue. One argument I hear would be "studios would never go for that." Does it matter? If all VFX companies decided to take on this practice, they have NO CHOICE. So what, the studio would reject all of their bids and have no vfx work done? No way. Almost all Blockbusters need heavy vfx work these days, so they have no choice really but to comply.
Click to expand...

There are an awful lot of VFX companies in an awful lot of places today. Even the "majors" (i.e., the 5 or so largest and most trusted lead vendors, which today would probably include ILM, Weta, Double Negative, MPC, and possibly Pixomondo) all exist in at least 3 very disparate locations each. Good luck on getting that kind of collusion to happen.
 
M Most said:
There are an awful lot of VFX companies in an awful lot of places today. Even the "majors" (i.e., the 5 or so largest and most trusted lead vendors, which today would probably include ILM, Weta, Double Negative, MPC, and possibly Pixomondo) all exist in at least 3 very disparate locations each. Good luck on getting that kind of collusion to happen.
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They would have to create a union of course to define and enforce the "rules."
 
M Most said:
How do you know they didn't have any distribution deals or plans?
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I don't, but when your are going up against the largest distribution network in the world and competing with them, it's hard to say that they are going to freely distribute your films. The studios still own the highway.
 
Matt Ryan said:
They would have to create a union of course to define and enforce the "rules."
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This would be precisely the same moment the studios would find a new model and start selling a new kind of film. See the key number 112million to make life of Pi over 600million gross. That is the preferred margin for a film.
 
As VFX companies fail, one after the other, the studios are driven to look in ever scarcer places for enough competence to handle ever bigger projects with increasingly advancing VFX requirements. That alone should be driving the leverage back into the hands of the folks that have the expertise, the pendulum must swing the other way sooner, rather than later, methinks.

The fact that work is being profit-driven to New Zealand (Avatar 2, 3 & 4), Canada, and God knows where else, is mostly irrelevant; the true artists in the field are a small and select group; as suggested above, they need to organize in an official capacity.
 
David Battistella said:
This would be precisely the same moment the studios would find a new model and start selling a new kind of film. See the key number 112million to make life of Pi over 600million gross. That is the preferred margin for a film.
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Studios rely on vfx for most of their biggest profit films and franchises. The non vfx driven films make far less money. I think the studios are the ones "stuck" if the vfx industry unionized and received some back end. Your basically giving the VFX company a producers credit. Seems fair to me and I feel like the studio would have to accept it.
 
Saying they "Should have stopped working on the Tiger" is pretty naive. So many factors you ignore. For instance if they bid higher a company who can offer a 60% discount thanks to government corruption can underbid them. If they don't underbid every single job they'll get none of them. If they held the tiger "hostage" then they would have been sued, and lost.
 
I very highly doubt that this will happen. Why would they do this? To be nice?



Matt Ryan said:
Studios rely on vfx for most of their biggest profit films and franchises. The non vfx driven films make far less money. I think the studios are the ones "stuck" if the vfx industry unionized and received some back end. Your basically giving the VFX company a producers credit. Seems fair to me and I feel like the studio would have to accept it.
Click to expand...
 
Tax incentives are the worst. There are a lot of issues plaguing this story and our industry and tax incentives are at the core. Remove the incentives and a lot of these issues begin to dissipate.
 
Matt Ryan said:
Where else would they go? It's a matter of necessity.
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It's a bit to complex to banter about in an Internet forum. There's a lot at stake. Mostly money. And when you have the hammer, there is no point in letting go. The leverage belongs to the studios. Talent is rarely a strong enough negotiating tool.

Im going to just leave it at that or we could spiral down a long convoluted road.
 
mikeburton said:
Tax incentives are the worst. There are a lot of issues plaguing this story and our industry and tax incentives are at the core. Remove the incentives and a lot of these issues begin to dissipate.
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Its all all a race to the bottom. If it's not tax incentives it will be something else. If the vfx industry unionized you'd see less VFX films in the next 3-5 years, the marketing machine would push something new and we'd be watching hand drawn animation again being produced in third world countries.

The issue is slavery. To them, To make real money, you need slaves. I mean that in the sense that what might not be a living wage in America can be a living wage elsewhere. Everything else we are buying is being made by slaves, why not movies?

It's a complicated social issue and is a deeply rooted economic way of operating at the core of all of this. Sure, there is what is fair, but ask the IMF what they think is fair? Ask a Hollywood studio what they think is fair? You'd probably get similar answers.
 
ericyoung said:
It's a bigger problem than just VFX really. And it's worldwide.

It's globalisation and growing corporate takeover of literally every aspect of our lives, all in order to serve the singular goal of make the most profit, with virtually no regard to how that happens or what bad effects it has.

Strangely, most of the individuals in large corporations are not bad people, and many sympathise as fellow employees, but the aggregate corporate entities have no loyalty to employees, town, state or even country. Unfortunately, this also attracts corporate leaders with similar inhumane values.

Studios could choose to keep more work at home, pay a living wage, and allow more reasonable business models, and still make very decent if reduced profits. But no, profits have to be huge and constantly growing, so of course that doesn't seem to compute for them. And that's even though long term it hurts them too if there are no viable VFX houses of R&H's calibre left.

There is some hope though. I do feel that people are beginning to gather together for pushback on very many issues.
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+1.

Great documentary, by the way. Heartbreaking.
 
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