The Visual Effects Crisis

Whoops, small correction at 14:13 -- I accidentally said "Motion Picture Company" when the name of the company is actually "Moving Picture Company". Apologies - just a dumb mistake that I made while recording and didn't catch while editing.

As a member of the on-set VFX team for She Hulk, we knew the visuals were going to suffer from day one. Pure inexperience on the production leadership (mainly Director) set us up for failure. That is not to say that the VFX crew was inexperienced, as our on-set vfx supervisor won an oscar for Dune while we were shooting. I would like people to know that the visuals for that show are pretty well astonishing considering what everyone was able to achieve despite the lack of budget, time, and prep, as well as the sheer number of shots of the hardest thing to create in vfx, a humanoid MAIN CHARACTER. Thank you for illuminating some of what's happening in the industry. It makes it a lot easier on me when people ask what I do at parties. Thanks to everyone who have been so supportive in the replies! It really does mean a lot to me!

That sucks, man. They always tell me "look for a job that you love doing" but everything I love doing is always in a abusive environment like this.

"Can you make it look a little more uh, edgy?" (artist increases a contrast filter) "Make it a bit more... realistic" (artist undoes the recent change) "Yes! Like that! It's perfect!"

Speaking of Cats. I have a friend who worked on Cat's VFX, and he was so overworked after that, he could not continue working for a long time. He was staying home for more than 6 Month just to regain his energy and mental health. I think it really broke him from the inside, since he wants to change his career ever since.

Former VFX Worker Here. My best war story is that I once worked through 5 x ~100 hour weeks in a row and went half mad 3 weeks in. In the end though, due to clients whimsically changing their minds, only 14 frames (so ~2/3rds of a second) of all that crunch ended up in the final deliverable. I love VFX but it's just simply not what it was like 10, 20, 30 years ago. I remember a funny moment years ago where a very grizzly veteran lighting artist rolled up behind me in his chair and whispered in my ear "You know, I used to make double doing this" and then slunk away. From his point of view, this has all been going downhill for ages. The other effect of this is that when conditions are that rough, most people who are skilled enough to leave the industry eventually will. While there are a lot of amazing people still in VFX, a lot of the best people have gone, simply because they don't want to deal with the worsening conditions and the poor lifestyle. Kinda like the Elves in the LOTR boarding ships for Valinor to never return. Simply put, the people who can easily leave for games, tech, etc., and make more money and have a better life, do. I could go on for hours about this, but in the end it's just really so sad to me. VFX was so magical to me when I was growing up, and I'm super lucky and blessed that I was able to work in it as an adult. I have a lot of epic memories, and had a lot of exciting times, along with the painful ones from my time in VFX. It really is a huge part of who I am today. But really I simply can't recommend it for most people at this point.

I remember when the teasers for Sonic first came out and people immediately blamed the animators for the terrible design. I realised that people have no idea how the entire design process works and that the animators have no say in the final design.

When I was in film school, nobody was allowed to eat/drink at the computers. Except the visual effects people. Because if they didn’t let them at at their computers, they’d never eat. Because they would never leave their desks. I was on that campus at various hours. Even wandered in drunk one night to use the foosball table at like 2am. All the same Vfx people were always at their desk working.

That clip of Taika Watiti laughing at the special effects in his own movie is particularly egregious, because if the effects don't look real on a movie it's almost always the director's fault. Marvel directors keep insisting on green screening absolutely everything, and that's a great way to make your movie look like garbage. The reason why Michael Bay's Transformers from 2007 still looks better than most modern Marvel movies is because he made sure to have as much real footage and practical effects as possible. Most of the time, the SFX were superimposed over real footage so the VFX artists could make sure light and reflections on the robots looked as real as possible, and felt like they were actually in the real world. Almost everything blowing up on that film blew up for real too. People like to shit talk him a lot, but Michael as a director has an amazing understanding of how to make special effects believable and how to give his VFX artists an actually good grounding base to work on top off.

Thank you for doing this. My wife works in this industry and this is not limited, this is on EVERY SHOW. Let me reiterate, ITS ON EVERY SHOW YOU LOVE. All of them uses the phrase “fix it in post” and it’s a nightmare, VFX houses are dying at a fast rate and they’re running out of workers. Everyone is burned out and ready to leave, the new people joining are walking targets and gets abused by the current workers because they’re abused. This cycle is killing the industry’s quality. Everyone of you watching this should go to your favorite publishers Twitter and raise hell. Show that you care, for real. Suicides are rising at a unhealthy level and we all need to help each other. Please I’m begging you.

There is a reason why this problem exists in several different industries (not just in VFX). We as people tend to overvalue the individual we see in the work rather than the team that actually worked on the project. Every time there's a big successful movie, you bet its success is given to the actors(whose names are adverts) or the producer(usually only credited to the most egotistical rich person that cries the loudest.) Essentially the directors, actors, and sponsors get all the credit because they advertised it despite all the extra back-end work that goes into the film. Working in visual effects is like working as a cook in a restaurant, no one ever tips the cook, they tip the cute girl at the register.

I don't understand how an industry whose very existence is mostly built off the back of visuals can treat visual effect work so poorly.

As an example of how great the tiger from Life Of Pi looked: After the movie came out this old dude wrote the local paper round here saying like "why did you have to mention the tiger from Life Of Pi isn't real, some of us were happy thinking it was real" and it cracked me the hell up.

I am currently working for the VFX industry and one of the things that stike me the most in the inbalance about how people are recruited : - VFX artist : 10 years experience, knows all the ins and outs of the software -> "Meh, a little bit inexperienced, but it may do the trick for easy repetitive tasks" - Producers : never ever worked with VFX companies, know nothing about how 3D remotely works -> "You are in ! Would you like a cofee and a massage ?"

Time and time again Keanu showing he was raised by loving parents and is a genuine legend.

I think the worst case of a VFX artist being treated poorly that I've seen recently was the person who got told by their studio that they had to stop creating their own comic, because it was a conflict with the industry work. Not that it was taking up their time, but that it was *competition*, that wasn't allowed under their contract. I cannot imagine working in a job that requires you to be creative, while simultaneously crushing your passions that way.

Making money as an artist often has this same narrative. If the customer changes their mind, they expect you to start again and they don’t want to pay you for the work you have already done. I always charge for the time, making sure that the customer knows they are paying for my time and not the finished product. If they are not happy with this I don’t work with them.

I remember that time the Oscars were on and the guys from Life of Pi got the Oscar for best VFX and started talking about the hardships they were facing and they full on turned the lights on them. That was surreal to see, like they were full on just denied on stage. Fucked up really. And the fuckers in the audience laughed and booed at them.

I worked as a VFX coordinator on Uncharted (liaison between the VFX vendors and the studio & director) and the disconnect described in this video is 100% accurate to my personal experience. Miscommunications lead to reshoots, reshoots create more complications, countless hours of work wasted down the drain and hundreds of artists working 100+ hour weeks trying to keep up with the studio's ridiculous demands. Working with the director was a nightmare because he had a vague idea of how he wanted the VFX shots to look, but no vocabulary with which to describe it, besides repeating "This needs to look more *real*." My favorite moment was when we were reviewing a plate (an original, unchanged shot with no added effects) in a scene shot in the ocean. The director paused the plate, pointed to the waves in the ocean, and said "did you guys do something to the plate? That water is moving strangely!" It took 15 minutes for us to convince him that there was nothing added. It was literally just water.

I'm actually shocked VFX hasn't unionized by now. But, this is how all the film unions basically happened, because studios would overwork and undervalue their crews, so they protected themselves.