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

[David Battistella]

Thankfully this is not a common problem in the gaming industry most gaming studios do most of their development in-house. One company will take it from concept to release, not contracted out to another animation company or programming company. And even after a game is released, they need to continue to support the game, or develop the next game within the same company, no bidding involved

Where it would also pay to keep a happy, balanced workforce. Some things can be so civilized.

 

[David Battistella]

OK. I'm showing som VFX love for the next 24 hours. If anyone wants to join in you can download the file here

http://www.f8films.com/stills/vfx.jpg

and temporarily switch your avatar.

I think it would be kinda cool to see REDuser threads populated with the Chroma key green.

Battistella

 

[Ketch Rossi]

All I can say is that this is an other truly SAD reality of the Industry...

Touching story.

 

[paulherrin]

Does this same stuff go on in the gaming industry?

essentially, and the problem is not subsidies alone (as some may postulate)... that's called a deflection.

game artists conditions are largely worse than vfx/animation.

the way these fixed cost contracts are structured, it's impossible to turn a profit and the existing VFX business model is just unsustainable with or without the subsidies…

precisely.

 

[Björn Benckert]

I Imagine fixed price bidding became the norm because:

Feature films are incredibly complicated, budgets are approved for films BEFORE they go into production, Vendors are chosen for VFX as early as possible so they have enough lead time in what is a very compressed environment due to ridiculous deadlines, Studios all want to make too many VFX heavy films but still there aren't enough studios to keep everyone who WANTS to be working on VFX heavy films employed.

An example of a VFX film that didn't have a pre determined release date and I believe also didn't have a predetermined exact budget is Gravity.

That's what VFX wizards can achieve given time, R&D and resources for a LOT less money than it costs on bigger blockbusters... Probably all because they took time to make the film, and didn't have to throw out a significant portion of their work or supplement huge amounts of work with crunch time at the end due to changes (nothing changed because the film was entirely created in previz to make it possible to do at all.)

Gravity, is also very different from most films. 2 actors, but mostly just one and that one is mostly made in CG. No big city shots no big setups just some tech geeks, with animatics and a VFX studio with a big motion control rig and a light box. Then the rest is post production. Space is for the most part empty, and not much unclose. Also not much organic stuff so even though they pretty much CG everything it's actually quite a trick to spend the same budget as a more full blown film with big shoots and lots of actors etc. So in that regard gravity is a small film. A genius move but stil a small film.

 

[Scott Crawley]

What I find to be true in any work situation is this; The more passionate people are about their work, the more likely it is that they will allow themselves to be exploited just for the opportunity to engage in their work. It's not just a supply and demand phenomenon, though that is a major part. Put another way, an obviously eager, or motivated party has diminished leverage in negotiations and is more likely to accept crappy terms.

VFX is full of passionate people who love what they do.

 

[paulherrin]

http://www.siggraph.org/discover/news/whats-wrong-visual-effects-industry

 

[David Battistella]

What I find to be true in any work situation is this; The more passionate people are about their work, the more likely it is that they will allow themselves to be exploited just for the opportunity to engage in their work. It's not just a supply and demand phenomenon, though that is a major part. Put another way, an obviously eager, or motivated party has diminished leverage in negotiations and is more likely to accept crappy terms.

VFX is full of passionate people who love what they do.

this is true Scott and towns like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal are cranking out graduates in this field at the rate of hundreds per year, but are there hundreds of new jobs per year? Not really? So there is a lot of skilled labour being trained and put into a competitive workforce. Puts the hiring company in a great position. This is why the governments pay Hollywood to come spend their money, in a attempt to create some trickle down economics.

Battistella

 

[ericyoung]

http://www.siggraph.org/discover/news/whats-wrong-visual-effects-industry

The article quotes a Paul Herrin - is that you?

 

[Marc Wielage]

I agree, that my little rinky dinky examples has really nothing in common with the multi million dollar budgets for VFX work on a big blockbusters. But the fact remains, that continuing this way of doing business is the very definition of insanity. It's when you do something over and over, but expect a different outcome every time. If all VFX companies lose money every time on all these projects, then why do they still think they can make it work?

They do make money sometimes. I was at Cinesite in 2002-2003 when we did most of the effects work on X-Men 2 and at the end of that project, we were told that -- incredibly -- we had made a 9% profit on the deal, which is very good for the VFX or post business. Unfortunately, the corporate higher-ups felt the profits should have been in the double digits, so they opted to shut down the company and lay off 350 people.

Believe me, when a company like ILM works on something like one of the Iron Man movies, they'll find a way to make a profit. The problem is for smaller companies that get hit with lots and lots of changes. In your case as an indie colorist, imagine if you agreed to do a small feature for $20,000, but then the producers came back and insisted you redo certain reels over and over again for free, then went and re-edited the movie and wanted you to make those changes for free, and then created a new version for TV which they wanted you to do for free. And if you refused, they'd threaten to sue and bad mouth you all over town. What can you do?

I know of a major local D.I. company whose name you'd recognize who has a fairly iron-clad contract that basically forbids the client from ever pulling the work and going to another firm. The reason why is, it happened once or twice in the early days, when they were halfway through a D.I. project, and the studio abruptly yanked the job and went somewhere else, refusing to pay the bill. The company finally got some attorneys to create legal wording so bullet-proof, nobody could get around it (easily). It also helps that they're a powerhouse company with major talent that does great work, but that contract ended a lot of weaseling from certain nervous studios and clients.

 

[Marc Wielage]

So in that regard gravity is a small film. A genius move but stil a small film.

Go watch the 2-hour "Making of Gravity" feature on the just-released Blu-ray disc. I don't think a film that took 4 years of Alfonso Cuaron's life and $100M of Warner Bros.' money is a "small film." Small in cast, yes... but enormous in terms of what they had to shoot, light, and then create with VFX. I would be very surprised if the VFX budget on that film was less than $50M.

The behind-the-scenes footage is absolutely amazing, and a lot of stuff that looks trivial and simple on film is enormously complicated in real life. In particular, the lighting decisions made by Emmanuel Lubezki were amazing, particularly the combination of "real" lighting and "synthetic" lighting, to the point where I think it's pretty much seamless. It took them about 9 months just to create the previz reel on the movie, which tells you how complex the planning was. Cuaron reveals that he and Lubezki initially thought the movie would take about 12-18 months to shoot, and were sorely surprised when they realized the enormity of the task at hand.

 

[M Most]

There actually is another side to all of this, if one is willing to look at it. The fact is that for many years, at least since electronic finishing began, there has been a good deal of what the studios would consider "price gouging," especially by finishing facilities. "Nickel and diming" has been a common practice for many years, including things such as charging very high prices for raw stock (videotape, DVD's, etc.), inflating overtime hours, charging for every item a la carte, etc. Now, some of this was understandable because of the general principles of supply and demand, especially at a time when the equipment needed to do any of this was very expensive and required a significant base of business to justify that cost, as well as personnel with rather specialized skills to run it. But at some point, the studios lost a significant amount of trust in the vendors they worked with, at least on a business level, and everyone has, to some degree, been paying the price for that ever since. Post production has always been a very low profit business, regardless of the size of the operation. At some point it became almost a no-profit business. And the modern visual effects business has largely been created on the back of the post business, both now using essentially commodity hardware combined with both commercial and custom software. The difference is that the level of distrust has become very, very high, and the number of vendors has increased. The incentive game has made it all far worse, but even without that, the politics started heading down this path a long time ago. It is also why nearly every studio has, at some point in the last 15-20 years, created their own in house visual effects company (some have created post facilities as well) only to discover, over time, that it's a no-profit business that is better left to those talented and gullible enough to do it as a vendor and allow the studio to dictate prices so low they wouldn't even accept them in their own facility. So the in house facilities come and go, and when they go, eventually a new management team comes in to the studio and does it all over again. This has happened repeatedly at every major studio. Currently, the studios that are in the visual effects game are Sony (with Imageworks) and Disney (with ILM). Of those, Imageworks - once one of the creative leaders - has been severely downsized and is in constant danger of being closed completely. ILM is still "apparently" doing well, but since there is no real way to account for that, who knows. Of course, they do have the advantage of having a few Star Wars jobs force fed to them, so they're not going to need to look for work any time soon.

My point is there's a long, complex, and varied history that has led to where we are today. It's not just "bad business practices," and there is no simplistic solution like "just charge hourly rates." Healthy business relationships require bidirectional trust. That does not exist in the post business and it does not exist in the visual effects business. That's simply the way it is.

 

[jake blackstone]

Friend of mine works at WB as a colorist and he tells me, that they have to bid even on WB TV shows just like everyone else. If someone else comes in cheaper, then they get the job. So, very often studios are finding out that in-house post is not a good solution to cutting the price of post.
What strikes me about the present VFX situation is the similarity to the times, when actors were working under the old studio system. They were signed with one of the major studios, there was no other place for them to work, if that studio was unhappy with their performance and they were stuck with them for pretty much all of their life. That went on until congress got involved and actors became free agents. Well, fast forward and now all VFX companies are employed by the very same major film companies. Unfortunately, I don't see any act of congress changing that. Unlike actors, which couldn't easily be imported from faraway lands, especially after the invention of sound, VFX work now done worldwide and even if congress was so inclined, they are pretty much powerless to change the present situation. Let's face it, VFX and the rest of post is quickly becoming a commodity and like with any commodity, the lowest price is the determining factor of who get's the job. And there is no changing the fact, that there are still only six companies that provide bulk of the work.

 

[paulherrin]

The article quotes a Paul Herrin - is that you?

indeed it is... apparently i got an honorable mention for some reason, haha
maybe a little out of context, but my point there was about rapid decentralization which i believe is the only sustainable route.
and for the record, i think many of the states need fundamental adjustments to their incentives...
it's possible to have creative grants or incentives that don't go out to whoever's out shopping for dollars.

contracts are key, as are relationships...
if you want to call an oligopoly 'good business' i can't argue that, but i do not think that it is good.
no act of congress or executive action necessary, although it would help, neither is likely to happen.
there is a case about to go before nafta & cit/usitc/wto...

^one bullet...