Questions

When you push images as far as we do you find out we're all the demons live. You know the secrets.

You also see a lot of mistakes being made. Now I'd like to be clear. Most of what I do is fixing mistakes to help tell a story. In the world we work in you very rarely get perfection. Let's not create problems for ourselves.

DOP's if you have a questions ask. We have on set supervisors who would love to answer your questions. Problem solving as two is always better than one. Crew members we are not in competition with you.

There is a flip side to that coin. As visual effects professionals we have to be approachable. Their not dumb because they need to ask. Be there when needed and answer their questions as accurately as you can.

Attention

Why are visual effects so expensive?

I'll tell you why.

Time.

Time cost money.

My time isn't a democracy. I control it. I get to decide who gets my attention. Hollywood wants our attention. They have had it for a very long time. It's where all the stories are.

Concept artists get to think up and visualize worlds that you have never seen. Pre-vis artists add motion and depth. 3d artists take 2d and give it sides. Texture artists make it dirty and real. Compositors take all the images and make them one. Coordinators watch over the artists. The IT folks keeps all of this running. Vfx producers provide foundation. Last but not least the visual effects supervisor. They keep all of us honest. They make sure our work is good. They are looking in the corners when your looking in the middle. They live in A and B.

That's a lot of people's time. Yeah, visual effects cost money.

Big Year

I have been thinking about all the great work vfx artists have been turning out the year. When I say "artists" I mean just that. I'm not talking about the companies or supervisors. I'm talking about the artist now. It's fine that supers might have the last word but it's the artist that have to make that happen. It's all well and good that the sky needs to be purple but if us artist can't make it work it's for nothing.

This coming year lets show we are the movies. Lets step up and defend each others great work. Let us vote for each others work. Lets make them stand up and notice that Hollywood can't make any movie without us. Comedies need great looking car comps. Huge tent pole movies need Zombies. Non of this is shot practically. It's us match moving, adjusting color and timing. It's us that remove camera rigs and camera cars. It's us that help develop characters and animate them.

Visual effects as a whole needs to vote together. Studios are taking advantage of us being split on what to do. Some want a union. Some just want better pay. Some just want to see there families. We all want to do amazing work. Let's do that.

Roto and paint is just as important to the movies as huge stars that are on the screen.

Teach the juniors that are asking questions. Share. Do your work like your hair is on fire. I'm here because a group of artists showed me ropes and how this is done.

I love my job.

Happy New Year.

A hat tip to all of you who work weekends and stay late to make great stories come to life.

Vfx Is Work

Matthew Johnson via Twitter:

@VFXSoldier @mikeseymour @scottsquires @DrScottRoss @VFXG @VFX_RANT #vfx Switch from games to film, but things seem so shaky. Advice?

Mike Seymour via Twitter:

@mtthwjhnsn76 @VFXSoldier @scottsquires @DrScottRoss @VFXRANT Do what you love, work with people smarter than U, prepare for it to be hard

This is correct. If it's worth doing its going to be hard.

fxphd | VFX Foundations: now available for purchase by non-members →

 John Montgomery:

What’s the background regarding the course? In response to a huge government and private initiative, a large cross section of people from many of the top of the VFX facilities in the UK got together in 2011 to define what was the most crucial things for educators and students in VFX to know. For professor Tahl Niran, it was a major turning point in how he approached training.

This course and the one after is a must if your new or old and wondering about some of the topics. If you know everything then don't bother.

 

→

#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.

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.