VFX Guild?

I wanted to get back to what Alex F., Steve Wright, Steve Kaplan (TAG), Scott Ross and others are saying about the state of the post-production visual effects industry.

Let's be clear: post-production visual effects is not Feature Animation. Post-production is not an IP (intellectual property) derived trade. It's workflows and pipelines may be protected by trademark, copyright and NDA (non-disclosure) agreements, but those systems are simply designed to make the IP-owner more competitive within the post-production marketplace.

(Digital) feature animation and those companies that service (digital) feature animation production are not part of this discussion. As long as America's ability to design story, music and games remain our top intellectual property export, this area will remain largely domestic due to its ability to bear the cost difference between domestic development and overseas development. The specific production workflows involved in a story-based project require significant daily modification, from beats to layout, to such a point that the necessary choreography between story teams in multiple timezones would harm the process.

So we're talking about a bid-based service center that provides a contractual delivery of a set of shots. Much like a general contractor, a VFX company will provide a bid, project management, milestone delivery and often, change orders along the way. Toss in up to two years of free bid-related proof-of-concept tests, wink-and-nod overage forgiveness, horse trading, and studio pressure linked to potential future business, and the general contractor paradigm is obliterated. No GC in the world would still be in business today if they ran their construction business like a visual effects house.

And yet this is the model. No wonder why we're seeing drastic cost saving strategies in the New VFX Era. I'm curious to see how the IPO (initial public offering) goes for a major visual effects house in 2012. Sure, Pixar made it work. They own their product. I just can't see a publicly-held visual effects house trading in Pixar numbers given the market today.

The Tail Wagging the Dog

So in order to be competitive in the marketplace, in order to be low-bidder, you need to find a way to cut costs. In the Renaissance of VFX, back in the late 90s, ILM could call the shots, adding a sizable percentage to the bid to offset potential workflow overruns. Sony Pictures Imageworks, underwritten by parent, Sony USA, had underbid their competition to take the loss, knowing they had the deep pockets of their parent to keep them in payroll.

In the New Era, to survive, companies must find a way to keep the bid and deliver the product without 911 bail out. 911 work is sometimes shared by the client and the initial contracting studio, sometimes not. In all cases, 911 work is expensive.

Here's the thing about contract work: it's like getting to the check out counter with only fifty bucks in your wallet and sixty dollars worth of groceries on the conveyor belt. You simply toss items back to the store until you're under budget. Same deal with VFX. Can't do a 3D fluid sim? Make it a 2D solve with some canned smoke elements. No one will notice. Done.

I mean, we notice, right? We can tell if show effects are crap. Sure. But to the studio, it all about the bottom line. What if first and second unit production costs were greater than expected? What budget gets cut? Do you want simulated digital creatures or 50/50 animatronic puppeteering? Maybe we rewrite to get rid of the creatures entirely.

The tail doesn't wag the dog. That's just an illusion.

VFX Guild

The only (and this is a long shot) way this industry can command the attention of Hollywood is to form a guild, much like the Screenwriters Guild or the DGA (Directors Guild of America). The only way.

Why is that so difficult? Nobody wants to be the only guy in the guild. I have seen talk about IATSE 16 at ILM. Yeah, so George was the only kid in that sandbox. I'll talk about that in a future post. Basically same issue there, though. ILM was operating with a CBA through the Local and felt that it was unfair in that the CBA added financial obligations to their compensation packages that other companies did not have to adhere to, like paid overtime, guaranteed yearly raises and other benefits.

If one company does not join the VFX Guild, and therefore, is not bound to the statutory obligations set forth in that guild, the whole deal blows up due to market forces. I can't think of a company that would risk that, and certainly not in the name of the poor VFX artist who typically makes more than 100K annually.

For a guild to work, everyone needs to be in.

This general topic is currently being discussed among the active membership of the VES (Visual Effects Society). How do you fix the VFX industry? Where are we headed?

I'll keep you updated. Stay tuned.

The Importance of Collaboration

The industry has entered a New Age.

The first thirty years showed us the growth of a new digital entertainment industry and the reign of domestic production units. Companies like Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic (1975), Rosendahl's Pacific Data Images (1981), Edlund's Boss Film (1983) , Hughes' Rhythm and Hues (1987), and Ross/Cameron's Digital Domain (1993) epitomized the early production paradigm: single bonded, sole-source post contracts providing head to tail production design and delivery.

Proprietary software required a technical artist that was more engineer than cinematographer or painter. As workflows improved, due in part to the vast improvement in off-the-shelf software (starting with the release of Side/FX Houdini (Prisms) in 1994 and Alias' Maya in 1997), production efficiency increased. Digital dailies allowed for an increase in creative iteration during the production week, allowing supervisors more control over what they could provide the client. Landmark effects films like Jurassic Park and Twister proved that the heyday of the analog model and miniature set was over and digital effects would predominate, driving blockbuster film costs to new heights.

Fast forward 1999. The release of the Matrix marks the end of the Great VFX Renaissance. (The feature animation industry was as yet dominated by Disney, soon to be overtaken by a young Pixar, helmed by ex-Diseny animator, John Lasseter.) A double Academy Award Winning three-quel and highest grossing set of blockbuster VFX films at that time would prove to Hollywood that the old-line production companies need not be involved in the process. Offshoot companies led by defectors from the majors would set up veritable forced labor camps, running 24 hour non-benefit shops in order to cuts costs and keep bids.

In 2003, the mighty Industrial Light and Magic was forced to lay off nearly a hundred artists over a two-year period, many ending up in new start-ups and small boutiques. Those companies, like the Orphanage, would in-turn grow to accept small sub-contracts from larger companies. In 2004, The Day After Tomorrow, a project started at Digital Domain, would be finished by more than three dozen credited and non-credited sub-contractors.

If 1999 was the end of the VFX Renaissance, 2003 was the beginning of the Dark Age.

No longer would sole-source projects survive from turn-around through release printing. The norm would become an outsource partnership model (ILM/Singapore) or the increasingly cutthroat practice of underbid/change-order 911 sub-contracting (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, Witch & Wardrobe, Rhythm & Hues). 911 refers to emergency work: when the project goes south, the client takes the work away from the troubled contractor and sub-contracts it to a proven company -- at a premium.

Today, large production houses are simply managing large outsourced projects conducted overseas. We're seeing the rise of international VFX companies that rival domestic work. (With the release of Kung Fu Hustle in 2004, Asia had arrived. Companies like Base/FX and Pixmondo are providing main production work for television (Boardwalk Empire) and film (I Am Number Four) in partnership with companies like Sony Imageworks.

Collaboration and Supervision

The Great Domestic VFX Era is over. Costs in California are driving large companies like Sony to develop facilities in less expensive locales, like New Mexico. Digital Domain has opened offices in Vancouver and Rhythm and Hues has been operating a sister facility in Mumbai for years.

Without experience in collaborative workflows, without experience in visual effects design, today's entertainment trade school graduates will be at a disadvantage. The jobs in roto and matchmoving still exist today... but these entry positions are fast disappearing as overseas outsourcing is demanded by ever tighter bids. Tiny domestic boutiques fight over smaller and smaller sub-contracts and the trending industry job for the near future will be in production and workflow design.

Production

Knowing how to manage artists, design bids, understand the complex relationship between client and studio will be the most important skill set in the next VFX Era. Producers are absolutely key to efficient project models: without them, the complex sub-contracting system fails.

We'll talk about ways to collaborate, build workflows, design pipelines and make successful projects in an upcoming series of posts. Meanwhile, grab a friend and collaborate.

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