Abuse of VFX Artists Is Ruining the Movies

August 10, 2022 9:52 AM

"Someone hears you work on films, so they ask you, 'What movie made you cry?' The artist will respond, 'In theaters or in the office?'" Linda Codega does a deep dive into how the visual effects industry has become a late-stage capitalist hellscape, as studios constantly underbid each other, cater to outlandish last-minute demands from production houses (especially Marvel), and put the squeeze on the VFX artists who are burning out on the front lines.

“Almost every studio has some sort of cry room where people will just go into and cry for 10 minutes and then they come back out and do their job.” H explained, “I have had artists who have had H.R. step in and say, ‘We have to take you off this show because it’s unhealthy and we’re concerned for your safety.’ There’s been fist fights in the middle of the studio. People just reach a cracking point… I’ve been on shows that were doing 60, 70-hour weeks for five weeks straight, full of people who don’t see their family anymore. And that’s standard across the industry.”

David recalled a moment where he was in the studio working late with another artist. “He just hit that breaking point. I could tell because we’re in the late lab doing renders at two in the morning and he’s just sitting there like, ‘Is this really worth it, man?’ He left that night and never came back. No fanfare, no fuck you’s, no letters to the supervisor. He just left.”

How long does it take to get the work done? “A basic three-second shot, of Robert Downey Jr. with all the holograms floating around? Probably 50 hours,” David explained. What about a shot in a movie like Endgame, which can feature dozens of characters? He laughs, and can’t even come up with a number.. “Hundreds and hundreds of hours,” he estimates, “dozens of studios, hundreds of people.” All of them likely working overtime, with moving goalposts, being nitpicked by executives and directors, and many pressured to work in locations that only benefit the studio’s bid.

posted by j.r (43 comments total)

I've recently been learning a lot about VFX thanks to the reaction/comment videos put out by The Corridor Crew, a VFX studio which seems to mostly work with commercials or web content. They have a whole series where their team watches clips from films, past and present, and discuss them with an eye towards not just saying whether something's good or bad, but explaining how things are done and why something that seems easy and subtle may be so difficult. And they don't just look at digital effects - when they did a reaction to the newest adaptation of Dune, they compared specific scenes in that film with the same scenes from the 1984 adaptation - discussing how David Lynch tackled the same problems. (There's a story about what Lynch did during a sandworm scene that blew my mind.)

I've been learning so much about what an absolute skill and craft is being practiced here, which in turn is making it even more unconscionable that the people doing it are being so poorly treated.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:17 AM on August 10, 2022 [18 favorites]

Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be VFX artists.
I hope young people are wising up about this industry.
posted by Bee'sWing at 10:30 AM on August 10, 2022 [5 favorites]

Drew Magary: "Inside Hollywood's Visual Effects Crisis"
posted by kjh at 10:36 AM on August 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

Wow it's like the olden days at EA all over again. Plus ça change...
posted by seawallrunner at 10:38 AM on August 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

Wow it's like the olden days at EA all over again. Plus ça change...

See also: Sonic X-Treme
posted by Servo5678 at 10:40 AM on August 10, 2022

Movie studios defending themselves against charges of bad effects in major blockbusters by saying that's the best the effects dept could do under time and budget constraints as if that's not a massive self-own.
posted by subdee at 10:50 AM on August 10, 2022 [9 favorites]

If a shop is unionized (meaning that artists can demand more money, better working conditions, and limit the amount of control clients have to demand changes) it means that big production companies like Marvel will be less likely to accept a bid from that VFX studio.

Couldn't the other hollywood unions refuse to work on productions that use non-union VFX? Is that possible without an existing VFX union?
posted by a dangerous ruin at 11:02 AM on August 10, 2022 [11 favorites]

I advise the young people in my life to never become game developers or VFX artist, but it’s a rite of passage for some.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:02 AM on August 10, 2022 [8 favorites]

Never forget that this suffering is inflicted not to make big effects-driven entertainment possible, but to make it more profitable.
posted by Gelatin at 11:17 AM on August 10, 2022 [43 favorites]

A whole lot of fx-movies seem to be pretty close to being shot without an actual script, just some thumbnail-sketch notes and a plan to develop the film in the editing room with a few reshoots and a bit of ADR and a whole lot of reworking of vfx. And it's really not helping them make good entertainment.
posted by rmd1023 at 11:17 AM on August 10, 2022 [6 favorites]

It sucks that creative professions are perceived as passion professions, so desirable that people will tolerate working conditions that wouldn't fly in other industries. I work on the unsexy side of the tech industry, boring B2B software, and developing that kind of software is clearly a passion job for at least some of the people who do it, but they still expect strong compensation, perks and humane working conditions because that's the norm for this side of the industry. But if you're working on direct-to-consumer entertainment you don't warrant those humane working conditions for some reason. It's the same across publishing, movies, video games, TV. Why does entertainment require a higher cost in human suffering to produce than database software or, like, devops solutions for salesforce development? Currently the market seems to find that an acceptable price to pay, when the same price wouldn't be tolerated for other kinds of production processes. Capitalism inherently tolerates certain pockets of human cost, but not others, and it's interesting to contemplate why these conditions are acceptable in entertainment when they'd be abhorrent in other industries.
posted by terretu at 11:39 AM on August 10, 2022 [10 favorites]

Never forget that this suffering is inflicted not to make big effects-driven entertainment possible, but to make it more profitable.

I'm always amazed at how much VFX are in movies and tv that one might not expect. It's not just big "effects-driven entertainment"; it's everywhere. Sure Marvel movies have a ton of VFX, but so did The Great Gatsby, Boardwalk Empire (go to about 36 seconds in and there's a guy standing on a boardwalk looking at the ocean; nothing fancy and easy enough to do on location, but it's a lot of composites and CGI), The Wolf of Wall Street (skip to about halfway through the video to some of the less obvious uses of VFX), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (← one of my favorites of this sort of VFX breakdown video).

I'm sure there are better and more current examples of unexpected VFX in non-special-effects movies than what I linked above, but those are the ones I remember at the moment.

I've also read that "de-aging" is so common that there are some stars that have not been seen on movie/tv screens without de-aging applied to them for the better part of a decade or so; not just in flash-backs or sci-fi movies, but every second that they are on screen, guaranteed as part of their contract. Can't find that article in a quick googling (maybe originally posted here on the blue years ago), though there are plenty of Hollywood Reporter articles about de-aging beyond the 2017 one I posted above.
posted by msbrauer at 11:45 AM on August 10, 2022 [7 favorites]

Why does entertainment require a higher cost in human suffering to produce than database software or, like, devops solutions for salesforce development?

You said it yourself: people want to entertain. They'll mortgage their lives and come to a strange town with no resources to do it, and if they're trouble, they can be replaced immediately. Hollywood has been doing that for a hundred years. In the other arts, maybe one of these people will become so famous and powerful that they can no longer be fucked with, but that's generally after enduring years of it first.

I feel bad about watching movies with SFX now, but they're just everywhere.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:46 AM on August 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

As someone who worked as a videogame artist for a long time, I have bookmarked an appropriate cartoon for this occasion (not my drawing, to be clear).
posted by Sing Or Swim at 11:46 AM on August 10, 2022 [11 favorites]

I noticed in the credits for Sandman that all the effects were done by a VFX studio in India and I was torn between thinking, "Hey, look, Indian studios are playing the big leagues!" and "Ugh the producers went for cheap and exploitable labor, didn't they."
posted by MiraK at 11:51 AM on August 10, 2022 [8 favorites]

This situation is precisely analogous to that of higher education, which relies on short-term adjunct professors -- contractors, effectively -- for the instruction of about 65% of its courses. (That figure varies depending on university, etc., but it is almost uniformly a figure that represents the majority of courses at any given school.) Such lecturers (such as me, until several months ago, when I bid academia adios) are exploited to the tunes of: no job security, unfair compensation, lack of benefits, absurd seasonal employment schedules, and generally being treated like second-class citizens -- all while doing MOST of the work for their employers.
posted by Dr. Wu at 11:53 AM on August 10, 2022 [20 favorites]

Why does entertainment require a higher cost in human suffering to produce than database software or, like, devops solutions for salesforce development?

Starting game programmers are young, cheap, and enthusiastic at any price. Those who survive in the industry at least command a higher salary with seniority, but the constant influx keeps the juniors cheap and replaceable. VFX appears to be the same.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:08 PM on August 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

Is there any industry that's not about to collapse itself from working too few people too hard.
posted by bleep at 12:28 PM on August 10, 2022 [25 favorites]

Is there any industry that's not about to collapse itself from working too few people too hard.

VFX and Computer Gaming are both flourishing industries and have been for a very long time. Plants grow tall with human mulch.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:38 PM on August 10, 2022 [9 favorites]

Favorite line: "Marvel uses so much VFX in their films that all Marvel films could be considered animated films."
posted by Peach at 1:06 PM on August 10, 2022 [8 favorites]

A whole lot of fx-movies seem to be pretty close to being shot without an actual script

An acquaintance of mine was the screenwriter of record for an early sequel in a long-running film franchise, and he was being tasked with writing scenes that were already being shot.

He's a good writer and I'm glad he got a paycheck and a good credit, but the movie definitely suffered from being manufactured in that way.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 1:08 PM on August 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

In the article;
“For example, the UK doesn’t have any paid overtime in any industry”, said H, a production coordinator

That's just not true - overtime is paid in a huge range of industries in the UK, including the entertainment industry; see some of the various union agreements here
posted by Luddite at 2:52 PM on August 10, 2022

Let's not forget the pioneering work of the visual effects artists in the long-running soap Eastenders in the early parts of the 21st century.
posted by knoxg at 3:21 PM on August 10, 2022 [9 favorites]

Had a friend's-friend in the early days of CGI who worked on some reasonably well known movies and it felt like a year of his life would be spent on a couple minutes--or even seconds--of screen time.

Movie studios defending themselves against charges of bad effects in major blockbusters by saying that's the best the effects dept could do under time and budget constraints as if that's not a massive self-own.

But this is one the solution to the horrific work conditions, right? Instead of fetishizing the perfect effect go with the one the team can get you on a reasonable schedule and with reasonable work hours. I mean, worse effects is what you might see when competent directors don't drive the VFX people to despair. The heroic director who insists on getting everything perfect is closely tied to the tyrannical megalomaniac abusing cast and crew.

Significantly longer production times is the other option, I suppose. (I know a lot of people here will imagine just spending more money lets you hire more people and makes everything proportionally faster, but that's seldom how it really works in large projects.)
posted by mark k at 4:08 PM on August 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

Or planning ahead well enough that the existing money goes further, surely? Having, as people say, "a vision".
posted by clew at 4:52 PM on August 10, 2022 [4 favorites]

I heard recently about the problems with CGI and the 4K video format. It appears that the CGI is rendered at a lower resolution than 4K to save money. This isn’t really an issue in theaters. If you watch said film on a 4K TV the CGI component on the screen is blurry compared to the live action on the screen. Obviously blurry. So all this exploited labor is turning out inferior quality imagery. Just so the studios can save even more money.
posted by njohnson23 at 6:29 PM on August 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

I've got some friends in this industry and you can see the burnout from the stress and the hours. And then on top of all that, instead of being celebrated for a job well done, the media blitz will focus on how Tom Cruise was in a real cockpit for a few shots instead of how 99% of the airplane shots in the that movie are CGI
posted by thecjm at 7:35 PM on August 10, 2022 [6 favorites]

> I heard recently about the problems with CGI and the 4K video format. It appears that the CGI is rendered at a lower resolution than 4K to save money. This isn’t really an issue in theaters. If you watch said film on a 4K TV the CGI component on the screen is blurry compared to the live action on the screen. Obviously blurry. So all this exploited labor is turning out inferior quality imagery. Just so the studios can save even more money.

I don't believe that's correct... or at least, not in the way I think you may be interpreting it.

It's true that most digital VFX is created below the maximum resolution of the era in which it's made, without a lot of forward thinking. Part of the reason behind that is technical limitations (a 2K file is ¼th of the size / rendering time of 4K), and partly to save money, as you say.

However, it remains very common to render VFX at 2K. Live sequences are typically shot in 4K / 8K, but composed VFX shots are sent back to the client in 2K. From there, the sequence is upscaled to whatever the movie needs to be displayed in. If the work is done well (and that's the issue here, along with time, budgets, and exploitation of workers) the audience won't see the difference, whether the film is projected on an 80-foot theatre screen or a 4K TV at home. Visual inconsistencies are more likely to happen in color timing, or when converting to HDR.

That's not to say that increasingly tight deadlines, budgets and abuses can't result in poor visuals, along with terrible working conditions. One technical part of the solution (together with human-centric changes like unionization) is the increasing use of technology like Stagecraft / The Volume, in which interactive 3D scenes are projected around the soundstage as the scene is being shot, visible to both the production crew and actors. This means that environmental VFX must be created before filming takes place, rather than being composed at the end, when deadlines and pressures for delivery increase. It also reportedly makes for better working conditions for actors, who can actually see the environment they're inhabitating, rather than pretending in front of a giant green sheet.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 9:07 PM on August 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

the media blitz will focus on how Tom Cruise was in a real cockpit for a few shots instead of how 99% of the airplane shots in the that movie are CGI

like stunt work. i credit reading Christopher Lee's interviews when I was younger to start my appreciation of the stunt performers, and these days, it's actors like Anthony Mackie & Brie Larson, who're very vocally appreciative of their stunt team, sharing the limelight when they can, that I appreciate so much more.

something similar should be encouraged for vfx, and yeah, it's a global industry (just like animation), hunting for cheap labour, so I really hope whatever labour movement energy that is happening, you guys won't forget the other studios too.
posted by cendawanita at 9:44 PM on August 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

When previews of the original design of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie were released, people were horrified that the adorable Sonic now looked like a creepy, hairy humanoid.

The studio had a VFX team working long hours to redesign and remake Sonic, and the movie was very successful. (In fact, because it was about the last movie to hit theaters before Covid lockdowns started, it ended up being one of the biggest box-office draws of 2020).

What happened to the VFX team who saved the movie? They were all laid off.
posted by eye of newt at 11:45 PM on August 10, 2022 [5 favorites]

Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be VFX artists.

I’ve got one that wants to and he’s just about to turn 17 and Knows Better than me. So I’ll just get behind him, now and any day he quits. Sigh.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:44 AM on August 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

Twenty years ago I worked with someone whose partner was a VFX artist. Despite living together, she said there could be periods of weeks, bleeding into months, when she just didn't see him. He eventually had a breakdown in their bathroom and she talked him into quitting.

Not long afterwards I worked in rented office space in Soho, London, which is festooned with big FX houses. Across the hall in a room designed to fit three, five guys were working on compositing Tom Hanks footage into a digital Westminster Abbey for The Da Vinci Code (production couldn't get filming permission). They were there when I arrived in the morning. They were there when I went home at night.
posted by Molesome at 4:03 AM on August 11, 2022

So I’ll just get behind him, now and any day he quits

A friend of mine is much much much more happier now that he's gone independent (though now he's on a long-term gig - this was back when lucasfilms had a Singapore office iirc). It's just not worth the stress.
posted by cendawanita at 4:14 AM on August 11, 2022

Warriorqueen, it's good that you live in Toronto - This article mainly focuses on the big studios doing marvel/blockbuster films, but there is a lot of work being done here on smaller films and TV shows. Smaller productions with less shots mean that the deadlines are more staggered, so it's easier to schedule things so that you don't have, like, a thousand shots all due at once, and the artists aren't continually working crazy hours. I've been doing freelance VFX work for about 20 years, and yea, sometimes it gets nuts, but then sometimes it's interesting and fun. Tell your son to look at the smaller companies around town, they're better places to work than the big prestigious companies in California or London.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 4:19 AM on August 11, 2022

For those who have kids who can't be talked out of pursuing VFX/ videogame design (aka, "computer art," in a way broader sense), I would like to give some hope grounded in reality. This isn't to say that everyone who pursues this slight deviation from film & TV & videogames will experience none of the suffering that plagues those sectors (because it all depends project by project, even within studios/ agencies that overall have solid reputations and track records). BUT. By and large, working in advertising/ marketing can be creatively satisfying, well-paying, and with hours that are reasonable.

There are, of course, shops/ studios/ agencies that are known for grinding their workers to the bone. But there seems to be many more that respect boundaries, pay on time, and try to make the work environment overall pleasant & predictable.

Making art for the ad world can feel like selling out & very uncool. But just like there are turd movies and shows, where one's VFX skills become relegated to just getting a paycheck, on the flipside in the ad world, there are some very interesting products and companies who need to get the attention of their target audiences, and they can really benefit from unique creative voices & visions. (But there are also plenty of crap companies with crap products as well – can't have it all.)

That being said, the range of skills needed in ads/ marketing runs from very elegant & sharp graphic design, all the way to Looney Tunes style squash & stretch with cartoon physics. Visual genres range from staccato-animated photo collages, 3D realism, retro pixel art, hand-drawn cel animation, vector graphics, and/or a combination of all of the above.

Job titles range from particle effects, 3D modeling, character design & character animation, motion graphics, illustration, cel animation, typography, stop-motion, compositing. I'm sure there are more. They use software such as After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, Blender, Cinema 4D (with their various render engines), TV Paint, Figma, Maya, Houdini, 3D Max. Again, I'm sure there are more.

The point in sharing all this is, rather than thinking such job titles only get funneled into the grindhouse of feature films & TV & videogames, where said industries are known for hollowing out their workers to the bone, ads & marketing (and even tech companies) are in need of these very skill sets, and their track records have been much better.

I'm sharing this as someone who studied film in undergrad, did on-set PA work, worked at post-houses, then transitioned over to motion graphics, and have been working there for the past 10+ years now. If I had kids of my own, I'd ask them to consider ads as a viable option if/ when film & TV & videogames becomes crushing, brutalizing, and utterly dehumanizing.

But like others are saying, it seems that freelance VFX artists in the film & TV industry have found a way to manage their lives, even in light of the endemic issues in the entertainment industry. So it seems there's still hope for those in the trenches.
posted by room9 at 6:38 AM on August 11, 2022 [4 favorites]

I'm watching the ILM documentary on D+ and they did so much glorious analog effects work in the late seventies and eighties but at the same time, developed the digital effects tools that eventually killed those hand-made effects. Working in effects during those days meant actually building and painting things and then blowing them up with explosives; it looks like so much fun in contrast to working in digital SFX which seems like hell.
posted by octothorpe at 7:07 AM on August 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

Syndicated column by Hedda Hooper (1885-1966) on March 22, 1958:

“I liked this one about a man who’d been taking care of elephants in a circus 25 years. He fed, bedded them down, did everything, then the number of elephants was doubled. After a month of this he was in a state of exhaustion. His wife said to him, ‘Why not give it up and get another job that’s easier.’ He screamed, ‘What! And leave show business?’”

posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:00 AM on August 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

It sucks that creative professions are perceived as passion professions, so desirable that people will tolerate working conditions that wouldn't fly in other industries.

I dunno if people would put up with that level of shit for doing say, accountancy.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:06 AM on August 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

ChurchHatesTucker, that's brilliant. I got into the film industry (not VFX) out of passion and a desire to express myself creatively. What I ended up doing (being a camera assistant) was grueling, poorly paid, not suited to my personality, and not creatively satisfying at all. I left the industry, went down an unrelated career track, and pursued my creative impulses on my own time. I'm glad I did.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 4:12 PM on August 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

One fundamental problem here is monopsony.
It's interesting that we accept the truth that monopolies are inherently problematic and require regulation. However, there isn't a lot of action when it comes to recognizing the problematic nature of monopsonies. The fact that VFX companies have to kowtow to Marvel and Disney because they command the demand, is the source of much of the grief.
posted by storybored at 9:07 PM on August 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

I’ve got one that wants to and he’s just about to turn 17 and Knows Better than me. So I’ll just get behind him, now and any day he quits. Sigh.

In older days the Australian aboriginal rite of passage from boy to man included punching him in the face until a tooth came loose. So these things can be growing experiences.

When he quits place a hand on his shoulder and say "Today you are a man, my son."
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:11 AM on August 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

A couple of decades ago I worked with a VFX artist who had just exited a Marvel gig. He showed me a couple of the Maya renders he worked on (TOTALLY should have not had access to them, but looking at how they were built was amazing). The director picked the worst one. He left Hollywood to get into advertising. The 50-60 hour weeks were a lot better than whatever he was doing before.
posted by ryoshu at 6:54 PM on August 12, 2022

there's a short documentary about this called Hollywood's Greatest Trick which goes a bit deeper into this ana the phenomenon of the VFX artists being forced to move constantly, because their bosses are chasing tax credits.
posted by wowenthusiast at 5:48 AM on August 13, 2022 [1 favorite]