The Visual Effects Crisis

The visual effects industry is in a crisis. This summer, a wave of stories emerged that paint a picture of a looming disaster for visual effects houses across the world, and a punishing vicious cycle for the artists within, one marked by brutal working hours, unreasonable deadlines, and rampant burnout. It's not at all uncommon for visual effects artists to pull numerous hundred hour work weeks in the months leading up to a movie's release date. One artist interviewed by Vulture said that a light week on a recent Marvel movie still totaled some 64 hours. And that's to say nothing of the nervous breakdowns that have come from overwork, or the allegations of bullying, or the insane studio demands on blockbusters that undergo massive reshoots and retooling, or the fact that many of the artists interviewed for these recent pieces requested anonymity due to both non-disclosure agreements and the fear of As the history of the art form has progressed, digital effects have become simultaneously more prominent than ever, but also more invisible. They're inarguably one of the main drivers behind ticket sales and viewing hours, and yet they also fill out the majority of the films and television that we watch in ways that we hardly notice, all of it accomplished on the back of a workforce that's being driven into the ground. The system, as many people have said, is broken. But if you've been around and are familiar with this world, you'll know that this is a story that's not exactly new. You know, when you win an Oscar, which is of course a fantastic honor. This is from an interview that Kim Masters recorded with veteran VFX supervisors Craig Barron and Jeff Okun in February of 2013. People who are uninformed sort of say, well, you must be set for life now, you know, you've made it. And sometimes, you know, having the Oscar means that, oh, I don't want to use that person, they're too expensive now, or something like that. So it's a bit of a mixed blessing from that standpoint. We're below the line, meaning, you know, in the craft area, it's not quite like when an actor receives an Oscar, or the film wins Best Picture, and then that helps the box office of that particular movie, or raise the bar for that particular star. But yeah, there's a certain irony to that, but clearly there's a certain irony in our industry, which is what's happening right now, it's filled with irony. The irony that Barron is referring to here is in large part a response to the circumstances revolving around Rhythm & Hues. If that name doesn't ring a bell, then their work certainly will. Rhythm & Hues was one of a number of visual effects companies that started up in the late 1980s, in the era when computer-generated effects were beginning to find their way into feature films. Think of some of those early CG characters and sequences in movies like Young Sherlock Holmes and The Abyss. One of Rhythm & Hues' specialties was photorealistic creatures and animals, and by the turn of the century, their ability in getting these characters to believably interact in a live-action environment had turned them into one of the industry's major players. And it was that resume that led director Ang Lee to hire them to work on his CGI-heavy spiritual epic, Life of Pi. R&H were one of more than half a dozen VFX houses that worked on the movie, and among other things, were responsible for Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger Pi spends much of the movie with. Now, there are differing reports about what exactly went on behind the scenes, but one recurring story that's popped up in multiple places is that roughly midway through production, Ang Lee and the studio called a major audible that required a substantial amount of the work done on Richard Parker to be entirely revised. That's not exactly a simple task that you can solve with a little bit of overtime. Changes like these are seismic, and can result in months of added work to a project's timeline. It's the exact kind of working situation that ends up requiring those hundred-hour work weeks in order to meet a movie's release date. Again, it's not confirmed, but as the story goes, this was what ultimately sounded the death knell for Rhythm & Hues, because, as counterintuitive as it may sound, they were the ones who had to shoulder the cost for these major changes, not the studio, despite the studio demanding those changes in the first place. Profit margins in the VFX industry are already razor-thin, and for R&H, this contributed to serious cash flow problems and wound up pushing them to ruin. Life of Pi was released in November of 2012, and was a slam-dunk success, grossing over $600 million. But less than three months later, Rhythm & Hues filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and laid off more than 250 of its employees. The movie may have been in profit mode, but its unsung star was on its deathbed. That's the irony in this story, but it's not the only one. The Oscars, live Oscar Sunday, February 24th, on ABC. Just days after R&H filed for bankruptcy, Life of Pi picked up four Oscars at the 2013 Academy Awards. Ang Lee. But the story outside the Dolby Theater where the show was held was much different. Nearly 500 visual effects artists, including a number who worked on Life of Pi, protested to raise awareness for the ways that their industry was being mistreated and undermined. And back inside, when Pi's VFX team won, this is how they were treated when they tried to shed a little light on the situation. Finally, I want to thank all the artists who worked on this film for over a year, including Rhythm & Hues. Sadly, Rhythm & Hues is suffering severe financial difficulties right now. I urge you all to remember. If you're interested in more of Rhythm & Hues' story, I'd highly recommend giving the documentary, Life After Pi, a watch. What's important is that their rise and fall wasn't just a catalyst for conversation, but that they exist as a definitive case study that highlights many of the problems inherent within the industry. Problems that have only persisted and seem to be as bad today as they were 10 years ago. If the story about Pi's CGI being significantly reworked is accurate, then it slots in with one of the key problems affecting the industry, which is that there is a tension between, on one hand, the studios and the filmmakers, and the other, the visual effects houses. And what it often boils down to isn't just a lack of respect for the artists, but a fundamental misunderstanding of what the visual effects process actually entails, and the amount of time that it takes to do correctly. There's a spectrum of experiences across the giant CGI-heavy blockbusters that I'm focusing on, and it would be wrong to suggest that all productions are this unhealthy, but more and more, the recurring experience that keeps popping up is one that's marked by a singular lack of precision, by a lack of concrete, final, locked decisions. And we understand that if you have a vision and you're moving toward that vision, but as long as you're moving in that same direction toward that vision, that's fine, you know, we're gonna get there. But what we see often is that, you know, they'll be heading towards a vision, and you might be heading toward that vision for six months, and then all of a sudden they turn around and they're heading off in an entirely different direction. Think of the seismic reshoots that took place for Justice League and Rogue One, or the near Page One redesign for Sonic the Hedgehog. Yes, these are extreme examples, and reshoots are nothing new, nor necessarily a bad thing, but this story of backtracking and reshooting scenes and reconceptualizing visual effects is at the heart of so many of these grievances, because at the end of the day, it's the below-the-line craftspeople who have to execute a plan that, God willing, won't go through yet another iteration. For VFX artists, this is what leads to the crunch, when 14-hour days and sleeping at the office becomes the norm for months on end, often accompanied by a cycle of never-ending re-delivery to clients who are never satisfied. There's a term for this kind of thing. An artist required to deliver numerous final versions of the same shot because the client keeps changing the parameters of what they want down to the most minute detail has been, as they say, pixel f***ed. At the bullseye of all of this, two of the biggest offenders, as you might be able to guess, are Marvel and Netflix. This crisis stretches far beyond them, but they're the two that have been the most criticized and painted as villains, Marvel especially. As one former artist said, They're too big, they're too powerful, and working with them is the equivalent of stepping into a kind of toxic relationship. Case in point, in one anecdote that's garnered a lot of press, the company reportedly forgot to tell all of their VFX vendors that they were pulling Infinity War and Endgame's release dates back by a month, leaving them to instead find out from a press release. It's from situations like these where you can start to see how burnout can run rampant. It's not that artists are completely against ever working in a overtime, or against ever redesigning a shot. There's an amount of both that's just inherent within not just visual effects, but in all areas of post-production. But a degree of overwork this intense is just not sustainable, and is the exact thing that drives people out of the industry. And one thing that doesn't help in the slightest, is when things like this happen. Okay, does that look real? In that particular shot, no actually. It doesn't, really, right? When you look close. I need to be more blue. Well, you know. But does he look real? No, none of us. She looks... Something looks very off about this. But no, no, he changes hues, don't you think? Yeah. Apart from it's relative tackiness, Taika Waititi's comments here suggest something deeper. This is a point that Drew McGarry made in his article for Defector, suggesting that what it illustrates is a level of disconnect between a director and the below-the-line craftspeople. And that's an important idea, I think, in understanding this ongoing crisis. On one level, this kind of disconnect is just inexcusable. But on another, while certainly not ideal, it's somewhat understandable given the sheer size of a production like one of Marvel's, and the army of employees that it takes to create. I think that that's worth keeping in mind when looking at all of this. The kinds of massive blockbusters that we're focusing on, and the way that they're produced, has naturally evolved. We've gone rather quickly from movies that boast, say, a hundred individual VFX shots, to where we are today with movies that feature thousands. It takes more people than ever before to construct VFX for movies like these, and in some cases, more individual VFX houses. For reference, just over 20 years ago, The Phantom Menace employed just one VFX company, ILM, to create all of its digital effects, whereas The Rise of Skywalker, just a couple of years ago, employed a dozen. The 2002 Spider-Man employed three VFX houses, No Way Home, 14. This is a part of an overall change in the business model. Instead of a small number of houses tackling the effects for an entire film, you'll now have numerous houses, each taking on individual sequences or individual elements that each respective house specializes in. You can see this kind of escalation across the history of the MCU especially. It's now commonplace for some 25 or more houses to work on any one individual film. This is how much the industry has accelerated over a very short amount of time, and with this many separate companies and this number of employees, it's not difficult to see how a director can become disconnected from a mammoth-sized production like this. Of course, any sense of disconnect, regardless of the number of houses, is likely only accentuated when a director who has virtually zero visual effects experience is hired to helm one of these movies. Nowhere has this been better demonstrated than in Cats, and its director, Tom Hooper. If any one movie fits the bill as a touchstone of all of the problems infecting the VFX industry, it's this one. The concept was flawed to say the very least, the working hours were insane, the deadlines far too tight, and at the center of it was a demeaning, tyrannical director who quite literally had no grasp on how visual effects are created. In a beautifully titled report by the Daily Beast, an anonymous artist who worked on the You don't just add a layer of fur to an actor in a motion capture suit in one step. This is a game of stages. In simplest terms, a character isn't textured until their movement is finalized. Hooper allegedly didn't understand this, and instead demanded fully rendered shots any time he needed to look at what was being worked on, which, if true, is nothing less than bizarre. We all know what happened next. We've all gawked at images from the movie and read about how it was literally released unfinished. But for the artists within, the fallout continued after the movie's release. The visual effects house in question is MPC, Motion Picture Company, who closed their Vancouver branch in late 2019 in order to pursue better tax subsidies in other territories. They're one of a number of VFX houses that have made similar moves in recent years, or who have just closed outright. The economics of the VFX industry are… complicated. Those tax subsidies don't actually go to the visual effects companies, but to the studios, and because studios will understandably pursue the cheaper of labor options, that forces VFX companies to constantly move to territories that offer the best rebates, or to underbid one another in order to secure contracts. And if the companies are moving all the time, what does that spell out for their employees? Solving these issues isn't easy and won't be done quickly. Obviously improved production methods and sharper pre-production on the studio's part is ideal, but I want to end by bringing up two things that I've seen people talk about that are worth considering as ways forward. The first is residuals, or any kind of profit participation. We hear about this all the time, actors, directors, producers, writers earning residuals on the movies that they make for years. On the highest end, you've got someone like Tom Cruise, for instance, who's reportedly set to take home an eye-watering $100 million from Top Gun Maverick alone, but this goes all the way down the line. It's not a perfect business, of course, Hollywood accounting is Hollywood accounting after all and people are screwed over all the time, but it's worth considering that VFX companies, for whatever reason, are not entitled to this same kind of profit participation deal. Which increasingly makes no sense when considering just how big a box office driver the visual effects are. Consider just some of the big CGI characters. Few people, I imagine, saw Godzilla vs Kong because of Rebecca Hall or Alexander Skarsgård. Few saw Sonic the Hedgehog because of James Marsden, or Transformers because of Shia LaBeouf, or Jurassic World because of Chris Pratt. That's not to slag off those actors, but it is to question why the VFX companies who create the characters that do drive box office revenue are not entitled to anything on the back end in the same way that other branches of the film industry are. Here's VFX supervisor Jeff Okun talking to Kim Masters in that 2013 interview again. I've never gotten a residual for anything I ever did, nobody up there did, that did the work, so what we got out of that movie is what we made from doing the work and the bragging rights, whereas, you know, you always hear like, you know, Tom Cruise and all the big actors, oh, you know, I'm working at scale and only taking, you know, X percent of the back end. At least they have the back end. Right. If the movie succeeds, they're rewarded. Well, so nobody's getting a back end, like Life of Pi did not give a back end to Rubin Hughes that we know of. I've never heard of anybody on a visual effects movie getting back end except George Lucas and Francis Coppola, at least in the early days, spread out back end to all their keys. They gave bonuses, right? It wasn't like necessarily a written thing, was it? Craig probably answered that, but also on Matrix, Keanu Reeves gave his visual effects crew a bonus, a very hefty bonus that they split. That's the only time in all the years I've ever heard of visual effects people getting anything. Far and away, however, the most overwhelming step being advocated for is unionization. To many, a step that's long overdue. If nothing else, go back and look at the working conditions that led to the establishment of other labor unions in the film industry, the Actors Guild, the Writers Guild, IATSE, and so on. You'll find a lot of grievances that sound awfully similar to those that are being shared by visual effects artists today. Little has seemingly changed since Rhythm & Hughes' story, and unless something does, more and more stories like the ones that have emerged this summer will continue to spill out. The work itself will no doubt suffer, talented people will be driven out of the industry, and worst of all, artists will continue to be mistreated. Right now, I would say that all the artists are angry, and they're angry because we're doing fantastic work, we're driving the box office, we're not getting paid commiserate with what we're bringing to the table, we're not getting recognized for what we bring to the table, we're being minimized. You know, we feel, we've been very loyal to our employers. We've been loyal to Warner Brothers and Fox and Universal, you know, and we deserve, like, a little better than, yeah, whatever. Hey everybody, thanks so much for watching. This video is brought to you by the good folks at Mubi, a curated streaming service that premieres a new film every day. 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