Martyn:
When French illusionist Georges Méliès discovered film visual effects by accident in the late 19th century, he became one the world’s first VFX pioneers. His work fascinated people – thrilled them with tales of visits to the moon and other impossible voyages. He was a genius.
fxguide:
The protest is not a strike, “it is an effort to raise awareness,” explained VFX supervisor Scott Squires speaking to fxguide as he marched moments ago.
FXRant:
The average Oscar nominee for visual effects earned $763M (up from $662M last year). By comparison, the average nominee for Best Picture this year earned $202M, which is a particularly strong box office year for Best Picture nominees. Leading the pack in the visual effects race was "The Avengers" (which earned $1.5B), "The Hobbit 1" ($956) and "Life of Pi" ($548M).
Just think most movies that came out last year nearly all of them were touched by a post artist. Clean up, Beauty work. You name it it is being done.
As much as I don't agree with the protest today. [I don't like protest of anything visual effects or not. I feel they do nothing and are a waste of time.]
May the Force be with you guys. It is the first time we have all come together at all. That is a start.
Jeff Heusser:
Business issues facing visual effect studios and artists have been a hot topic for years, the last few months have been downright depressing.
It's clear that something needs to be done. I fail to see how this helps. The problem I see is that nobody understands or gets what we do.
A Grip has a very explainable job. So does a Director,or DP. If you don't understand something treat that thing like shit. It's been going on forever.
If we want change we first need all of us to be on the same page. If we are fighting with each other we can't fight the problem. Make a list of the top 10 things you would like to see changed in Visual Effects. Then lets get the artists to say yeah that want we want and go from there. Its a bussiness plan isn't it. Treat it like one.
Right now we look like a bunch of monkeys fucking a football.
If you run a studio or head the post production for one all of this should be scaring the shit out of you. The studios can't make a movie without us, and you know it.
It was election season and that was the talk. This was Gore and Bush. Remember that one. During a render or when you heard something that you didn't understand and didn't agree with, you would talk.
We were working overtime so Pactitle did what they always did got us dinner. In between rendering you would take a bite and maybe say something about the election.
If you had a question regarding your comp you could get an answer. Between Jim, Dolores we all would help each other. We looked at each others work. We QCed our shots as a whole. I seemed to get the shots that included tanks firing there guns. That meant smoke and the tank tracks that are surprising hard to paint.
Because I was working nights I would get to work and go straight to a review with the supervisor. They held a 5pm dailies just so the night crew could get notes.
My first shot I struggled with. Remember I was coming from a After Effects background. I was not thinking in native "Shake". My ideas had to be translated from After Effects to Shake. This made it slow going. One if the day compositors noticed this, Patrick gave me some pointers and I have been a node compositing fan since then.
I was also very new to digital paint. I had seen Matadorbefore but had not need to finish anything. More a button pushing painter. They also had licenses of CuriuosGfx which having a better GUI I started using. Maureen really showed me how to paint. When I mean showed I mean humbly shown the basics. She can paint. It's not a mistake she was staff. This is where I learned "Composite yourself into a corner and paint your way out." Which is a very smart handle on compositing. You can give a comp some really great extra polish with a paint node and and soft brush.
When your new a place they give you a harder or really hard shot to see if you get up and run out of the building. Sure enough my shot had its challenges. When I got to a place with it to where I was ready to show a supervisor, this is when I met Mark.
Those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
This seems like a good quote to discribe the current state of afairs in the world that is visual effects. I haven't been able to really put in words what I think about all of this. Some of it is out of our hands. But I think this quote really sums it up. The studios don't mind if we go under they will just find someone else. The artists and the owners of vfx houses do mind.
By David S. Cohen:
When I started covering the visual effects realm there was a "big four" of vfx companies: Industrial Light & Magic, Digital Domain, Rhythm & Hues Studios and Sony Pictures Imageworks. Two of those, DD and R&H, have gone bankrupt in the last six months and the other two are studio-owned, which doesn't assure their future but assures they won't miss payroll.
Have a exit plan, Always have a exit plan. For any job. Good things never last forever.
Esher Surrey[VIA: Juan Luis]:
If you are in VFX, or trying to get into VFX, you've probably been doing some soul-searching recently. Until a new business model emerges we are all more or less lashed to the deck, battering storm after storm.
I have been toying with this exact topic. What does the next 10 years look like?
The Deadline Team:
This year’s nominees show how visual effects have spread from summer blockbusters to genres as diverse as superheroes, different flavors of fantasy, more traditional sci-fi territory, and even the art-house film. For each nominee, there’s a moment that makes it worthy of an Oscar nomination. Here, the visual-effects supervisors on the nominated films break down the key challenges and talk about the sequence that clinched the nomination.