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#2.70 - Leave VFX, Please

Sent from: London, UK. destination: San Rafael, California, USA

Posted on blog.juanluis.com

What can be done?

1. Leave. Go back to school. Choose another career.

2. After you leave, don't teach VFX. You may think you're doing the world a service by educating younglings - but if they have minimum wage to look forward to, you are not helping. Stop it.

3. Put the glory myth to bed. When a talented young kid asks you for advice on how to get into the business, tell them "don't" and hang up the phone. Stop giving talks about your work - or if you do, be sure to spend at least half your time talking about how poorly you are paid, how you have to move often, how you don't meet anyone famous, you will never get to direct, and you have lower back and wrist ailments that will probably never go away. Make it as unappealing as possible.

Telling younger "kids" to not get into a profession is a horrible thing to do. What should be said is "find a profession you love".

That way when you do start to burn out, or even better when it gets hard. You can make it thru. All professions have people who say this. The take away from all of this is, its really sad how many people hate their jobs.

Because something is hard is not a valid reason not to do it.

Tent-Pole

Did Disney pick up Lucas Arts for ILM? Nope.

I'm still thinking Disney sees and knows buying huge(Star Wars) story concepts are the way of the future. Many of the big studios are making huge 200 million and above films hoping they clean up at the box office. Most of these are rehashes of older stories that are remade with todays technology.They will then buy smaller movies hoping for a huge payout base on production costs. Many of these smaller movies are targeted at the older demographic. The huge tent pole VFX movies are targeted at the younger generation.

Bases covered? Maybe.

Have a look at whats happening with World War Z and R.I.P.D. Even comedy productions are having the same trouble as the big VFX movies.

A birdie tells me that an up coming comedy is in reshoots and is struggling with the VFX shots that are already on the books. These are not game changing shots these are the regular car comps and production fixes that are more and more becoming part of the film process. The schedules have become so compressed and the films release dates decided even before production starts. No time to move that production van. The scary thing is most of the people working on these films have experience. This is not there first BBQ.

Visual effects is slowly becoming as big a part of making a movie as editing or set design. I would argue sometimes more important than talent. There is a reason ILM gets a title card all to itself. There are saying we are very important.

It's not a mistake Disney just picked up one of the best companies at doing this. John Knoll talked more at last years VFX bake off about how difficult the rig removals were in the last "Mission Impossible" than than anything else. I remember a question "how did you do that". " oh we shot that practically". The shots weren't about amazement but getting that BMW back on the road. Get the story told.

I am hoping Disney sees that you need a good visual effects house to tell the stories they want to make. Along with franchises, you also need people who can execute. Lucas Arts has proven they can.

I hope others take notice.

I wonder what they are going to do with the Indiana Jones Franchise?

Beast

Remember when Disney did their first computer animated shot? I believe it was "Beauty and the Beast". The overly smooth camera, gave it away.

Part of me is thinking Disney buying Lucas Arts is a good thing for visual effects and its artists.

Disney now means business. Visual effects wise. Will ILM only work on Disney movies? No. But Disney can now do what Lucas did with ILM in the past. Disney now has complete control over ILM. For the visual effects industry that might be good. There has always been talk of the studios buying up vfx companies and then being self contained. As a artist you would move from studio to studio simular to how the camera operators and set lighting technicians do. This is how the rest of the movie industry works.

Disney had a really good post house called "Secret Lab". A lot of the really good painters came from there. If "101 Dalmatians" makes you anxious you know what I'm talking about. Disney decided to close it. Many think that was a mistake.

I hope Disney is saying Lucas Arts is very important. 4.05 billion important.

Indecision

The idea that you can make a movie in post is crazy. As you look around at the big tent pole movies being made all of them have gone into reshooting parts of there movie. I have read reports that shooting started even before some of the final decision have not yet decided. Even comedies are such a mess that then need to go and reshoot.

Making a movie is hard. Some think it is easy. Get a camera, point it in the general direction of the action and you got a movie. This simply is not how it works. It takes planing and asking questions.

Let’s not make it harder by not making decisions and talking it out first. Sometimes all it takes for me to solve a problem is to go talk it out with someone. I had a supervisor that would sometimes explain how he would do it on a optical printer. This made the process much more simple.

Putting talent in a green suit doesn’t make him disappear. Putting tracking markers all over a iPhone doesn’t generally make a better shot. Making movies is about the small stuff.

“Smaller brush, Michael. I want to feel it not see it”

Ask us questions and listen to us. We are a group of really smart people who can do almost anything. Trust us.

Indecision might be the most expensive part of visual effects.

0200_people_v03a

Working nights is werid. Your times are all screwed up. You shop in the middle of the night and you are going to work when most people are driving home. Good thing was I was were I wanted to be.

I was greeted by Phillip Hoffman. At this time Phillip was a coordinator. I filled out all the paperwork and was led up stairs to the comp closet. A narrow room which had a door on the far side that led to the art department. 4 cubicles lined the right wall and 3 desks on the left wall. I was to share a desk with Craig Mathieson. Craig is a really good compositor and wasn't afraid to make mistakes and laugh at them. Everyday I would come in and Craig was chuckling about something crazy yet obvious he had screwed up in some way. I wish he was around longer, I feel I didn't learn everything he had to offer. Jim was to my left. On the night shift. There was a group of painters that were brought on to help with the heavy paint work that needed to be done. Delores Pope, and two other artist I never saw again after the project was over and for the life of me cannot remember there names. Down the hall was a additional room that had the other compositors that were all on the day shift. Brad the lead compositor on the show help me get setup and showed me rush and how the network was setup. Also setup a e-mail account so I could communicate.

Phillip sent me my-first assignment. All you could get was a scratch removal. There was really hard, hard, medium and easy. There was smoke in almost every shot. Tanks and gun shots make a lots of smoke. To help speed things up we only worked on the right third of the frame. The scans were 4k but we worked on a 2k cropped image. If we needed other parts of the frame we could ask. We used a 2k playback machine called the framethrower that you could load your image sequence and play it back realtime.

There is a reason you start in paint and roto. This is some of the hardest compositing I have ever done.

0200_people_v02a

After finishing with Synchroneon pictures I went back to the production world. Back to set lighting. I needed a job. There wasn't work at that time for artist with no experience. I bounced around working as a set lighting tech. I worked I on music videos and feature films and television. Learning all the gotchas of production.

I was contacted by a producer at Pacific Title and Art Studio and the decision was made that I didn't have the experience to do what was asked. Jim had put my name in the pool of artist for hiring. That's a big step. Jim trusted me to do a good job. He new that i would do whatever it takes.

About 3 months later I got a call from the same producer asking if I would be interested in a job.

I remember the day clearly. Location was Long Beach at a harbor hotel. It was 5:30am. I was acting bestboy for the day. I pulled into crew parking set the parking break and made the call. I left the message of my life. Joe and I agreed on terms and I went to work.

The job was a restoration. There was a scratch on 41,000 frames of Battle of the Bulge . I would be working nights.

0200_people_v01a

Watching today’s DNeg’s layoffs it reminded me if what a different world it is to even 8 years ago. If was a sad day when the producer pulled you into his office to discuss the future. When you find out that you aren’t part of it. Good times are shared in the rooms of visual effects.

My first Shake job was turning night into day. It was a low budget feature that someone agreed to do the post and visual effects for. There was no budget. The job post was on the shake list and I responded. I interviewed with David Troy. He agreed to pay me a weekly rate for rotoscoping. I was not called a roto artist but that’s what I was. The scene need to take place in the day but the shots where shot as the sun was going down. If you have ever worked in production you know how many times this happens. Its not called tragic hour for nothing. The idea was I would roto talent and we would then place a daytime background in place of the fading to night one that was shot. Lets just say I got very good at roto really fast. How the body moves. Lower arm, upper arm. Even single bones of fingers if need be. There was also simi- transparent clothing. Which was very dark. If I had the experience to know that was going to be such a problem I would have run. As I remember it I had 3 weeks.

After I had completed the roto for all the shots the supervisor sent me plates that were to be place outside to make it seem like daytime. All of a sudden I was a compositor. This was exciting. This was what I had in mind. All the that hard work payed off. This was fun. I can do this.

The other artist was Jim. He was a compositor newly back from a trip around the world. Finding his way back on to the grid. Jim was a seasoned compositor by this time. Working on Paintbox and the inferno at places like Charlex in New York and Editel in Los Angeles. He was tasked with the other 20 or so shots in the this movie. He used all he basic tools. Clean plates, 2d tracking and most of all his brain.

After that job ended. Jim found himself at Pacific Title and Art Studio.

Expensive

I was asked this weekend what is the most expensive part of visual effects.

I responded:

All of it.

Paint and roto are just as important as modeling and lighting.

There is a notion in visual effects, that you can throw a bunch of cheap labor at a problem. This isn’t true.

That model that you spent countless hours on will look like crap behind bad roto. If the compositor has no clue then the game is up.

The idea that roto/paint is a entry level job and there for is easy just doesn’t hold up. I’m a bad painter. I can get it done, but by no means do I consider myself a rockstar painter. If you need painters hire them but dont hire artist that might also know how to paint. If you need great modelers grab them up.

To many times I have seen companies hire because of price and then have to scramble and pay the price hiring people who have the skills needed.

Always give the shot to the artist who is best suited for the task. Know your artists. I have heard coordinators and supervisors joke about trading artist for other artist.

I don’t think that’s a crazy idea.

Disconnect

There is a disconnect in artists.

One of the best things I learned at Pactitle is,

"This is your shot. Nobody is going to come rescue you."

That meant that its my roto, my track[sometimes we would get camera tracks, or art for other sources],I keyed that. I know where the demons live. Most importantly I know how to keep the demond's at bay. Most importantly it is my problem. Find a solution.

The many steps a shot might take is a hard thing to juggle.

When you are getting roto from here and tracking from down there. There is no telling what might happen. There is a pipeline. Not the one you are thinking. But the one that goes from artist to artist. There is color space to manage. There is file naming conventions.It might be as simple as is the scan right. Does it match the ref. There are a lot of places for murphy to show up. You have to trust that everyone on the line can do what they say, and that it goes to plan.

Make sure you are talking to the other artists. If your the roto guy, make sure you know what the result of your work needs to be. Don't roto blind. Ask the compositor what is needed. Do you want soft edges or no filtering. If your doing a removal and there is going to be a huge cg alien comped in, it might help to know that, if your painting out a background element. Green screens, know, or have a general idea of what is being comped. If your a match mover a tip of the hat. If the track is off, what do you got. That's right, nothing.

Don't forget to thank and tell the other artists that contributed when you get a final if your the last to touch the shot. Everyone works hard. It's nice to know what you contributed, worked.

Wide Lens

We are a group of highly technical people. Most of us are nerds. I have heard people say " That guy is freak of nature good." What I think they mean by that is the artist is both artistically talented and technically talented. We draw and paint. We can make things move like they weigh a ton when it's really just ones and zeros. Sub surface scattering is exactly that, technical. Normals are pure math. Matching color can be both done by eye or numbers. Frankly the human eye sucks at matching color so you should go with numbers. Math always wins.

I think that's what a company is looking for. Someone who can see and think.

Just this last week we were trusted to make a naked man look not naked even thou he was clearly streaking down the street. Sounds impossible, it's not. We pulled it off and the director was very happy. Having technical knowledge is part of having ninja skills. It's one thing to think it up and have a plan. It's a completely different process to making it come to life on screen.

Stepping back and looking thru a wider lens is always a good idea. This isn't new for any profession. It's a good practice for life in general. It's knowing what is important and getting rid of what's not.

Real?

Maureen says. "It doesn't have to look real. But it has to look consistent."

What's real can be nothing more than a opinion. But if the image isn't consistent then all bets are off. My annt can pick out that comp. Kids these days look at Star Wars and shrug.

Having real world production experience is great. Most never have. If you get the chance you should.

The DP has to make it look real but also has a set look. Maybe it's tragic hour and your losing the light. The make-up artist needs the actress to look there best even thou today, not so much. Working with a DP or Gaffer is great composition and lighting experience. Seeing what happens in the real world is huge. Working as a AC gives really good knowledge of the camera.

Every step of making movies is a trick. From writing the story to final distribution. Know your craft. Love your craft. Geek out. I have seen artists do crazy stuff with both there knowledge of art and there technical knowledge. Push nuke to its limits.

Break it, then come back.