Rhythm & Hues's bankruptcy process, which started around when I made the previous post, is proceeding. The company's arranged financing from the studios to continue visual effects production on three films currently in-house, and by tomorrow all the current employees (meaning those who were not laid off on the eve of the bankruptcy) will be entirely or almost caught up on wage payments from the period after January 16th.
I am still employed at Rhythm & Hues, so I am not personally going through the kind of financial trauma that many of my laid-off friends have been. Unfortunately, the bankruptcy court did not approve making any wage payments to those who were laid off, so many of them are suffering.
This weekend, after a stressful couple of weeks, the night of the Academy Awards finally arrived. Rhythm & Hues as a company is in no position to fund any kind of party, but a few of my dedicated coworkers decided to put one together at a local restaurant called Rock and Brews. They sold about 150 tickets, which allowed us to rent out most of the restaurant for the night and paid for pizza and beer for everyone who went. The restaurant kindly put the awards show up on their sound system and tuned all their TVs to it.
About an hour after I took that photo, the visual effects award, usually awarded in the first half of the program, was announced. Rhythm & Hues' visual effects supervisor Bill Westenhofer and animation director Erik-Jan De Boer, along with Guillaume Rocheron and Donald Elliott, who supervised for other studios, won the award for Life of Pi. This was Bill Westenhofer's second Academy Award, the first having been for my first project at Rhythm in 2007, The Golden Compass.
A coworker who was two blocks away and walking toward the restaurant heard our cheering and immediately knew our guys had won.
From left to right, Guillaume Rocheron, Bill Westenhofer, Erik-Jan de Boer, Donald R. Elliott.
Here's where it gets interesting.
Since Bill had been working as the production company's visual effects supervisor on the show, he was the one with a chance to step up to the microphone and offer an acceptance speech. These speeches have been a continual issue for the Academy Awards, because too-long speeches have caused the awards to run long in the past, so they enforce strict time limits. However, as we discovered, these time limits vary a great deal depending on the status of the speaker.
Bill thanked a few people, and around 30-40 seconds into his speech, the music from the movie "Jaws" came up. Now, at this point in the show, nobody else had had music come up during their comments until at least 60 seconds in. At around 50 seconds, he began to make a comment about Rhythm's financial problems, and mid-sentence, his mic cut out.
There are many reasons that they might give different winners different amounts of time, such as their prominence and whether the show's running late. However, Bill's win was immediately followed up by a win from Life of Pi's cinematographer Claudio Miranda, who was allowed to speak for 60 seconds and was not interrupted by music.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I have to say that a large number of people I work with or know through my work are convinced that he was interrupted because of the content of what he was saying, which was that visual effects as an art form is at risk.
The visual effects community, spooked by Rhythm's bankruptcy only a few months behind that of Digital Domain, another of the four largest U.S. visual effects companies, reacted to all of this with outrage. On the afternoon of the Academy Awards, five hundred artists had protested nearby in Hollywood to try to raise awareness of these issues, and many of the people involved in that protest were upset at the media not covering them despite the unusual size of the demonstration.
I'd love to post for you video of Bill's speech, but when it's been posted to Youtube or Vimeo, it's almost instantly been taken down by the Academy, despite that its posting, as news commentary, is almost certainly "fair use" under U.S. copyright laws.
The Hollywood protesters had been wearing small pieces of green tape, in the color of the green backdrops often used when shooting people who are going to be digitally inserted into other scenes later on, as a sign of solidarity. Within an hour of Bill's acceptance speech, people on Facebook and Twitter started changing their profile pictures to green squares to show support for visual effects workers whose livelihoods have been put at risk by the studios' behavior.
(This is not my picture, but as of this post, 114 of my 575 Facebook friends, or about 20%, have changed their profile photos.)
In seventeen years of work in the visual effects and animation businesses, I have never seen such a reaction. Whether it can be translated into a productive reaction, like union organization or something else that might make a difference, remains to be seen. I fully support unionization, particularly since the rest of the film industry has had most of their benefits provided by unions since the 1940s, but the unusual structure of the visual effects business in relation to the rest of the film industry, and the issues that have led to the current situation, makes it an incomplete answer to the problem. I really don't know what the best way forward is.
I'll leave you with a few articles on the topic. Note the already-taken-down Vimeo video of Bill's speech at the top of the first link.
And, go see Life of Pi if you get a chance. It's a great movie and worth your $17.50, or whatever a 3D movie costs these days.
Glad you're featured, and I found what you had to say in your last blog really interesting. It's not often you get this kind of glimpse into the industry, and I hope the protesters manage to make this issue go massively public.
Thanks guys, your support means a lot. At this point I have no way to tell whether I'll have a job past April, but I'd be proud to stay at Rhythm under new ownership if I have the opportunity if and when that day comes.
Of course it was cut off on purpose. There is always a control room for any major event where a bunch of dudes are sitting and watching the process like hawks. IMHO it is just as rude to talk about your financial problems on such event as it is to cut the speech of someone. The whole Oscar event is a above all a celebration, which is watched by a global audience, hence it is also a business. People tune in to watch the ceremony to be entertained, and organizers know that very well. There are like 1000 actors and movie business professionals from all over the world in that hall and I'm sure they all have problems in such difficult times, but the audience does not want to hear about it. With the current level of unemployment in the U.S. and devastating debt crisis in Europe, the general public is striving to keep the food on the table for their children. It would be really fucking aggravating for an average family to hear about how bad the life is from a guy who's just won an Oscar.
On February 26 2013 22:45 Reasonable wrote: Of course it was cut off on purpose. There is always a control room for any major event where a bunch of dudes are sitting and watching the process like hawks. IMHO it is just as rude to talk about your financial problems on such event as it is to cut the speech of someone. The whole Oscar event is a above all a celebration, which is watched by a global audience, hence it is also a business. People tune in to watch the ceremony to be entertained, and organizers know that very well. There are like 1000 actors and movie business professionals from all over the world in that hall and I'm sure they all have problems in such difficult times, but the audience does not want to hear about it. With the current level of unemployment in the U.S. and devastating debt crisis in Europe, the general public is striving to keep the food on the table for their children. It would be really fucking aggravating for an average family to hear about how bad the life is from a guy who's just won an Oscar.
Hearing people constantly whining about difficult times is also very fucking aggravating considering the recession has been over for 4 years in the US. With corporate profits and the stock market at all-time highs, we shouldn't let profitable industries screw over their skilled labor just because somebody on the opposite corner of the planet is still having problems.
Hollywood is making money. Lots of it. The big studios are just abusing their market power to screw over their small suppliers and the "woe is me" people let them get away with it. This happens whether there is a recession or not.
On February 26 2013 22:45 Reasonable wrote: Of course it was cut off on purpose. There is always a control room for any major event where a bunch of dudes are sitting and watching the process like hawks. IMHO it is just as rude to talk about your financial problems on such event as it is to cut the speech of someone. The whole Oscar event is a above all a celebration, which is watched by a global audience, hence it is also a business. People tune in to watch the ceremony to be entertained, and organizers know that very well. There are like 1000 actors and movie business professionals from all over the world in that hall and I'm sure they all have problems in such difficult times, but the audience does not want to hear about it. With the current level of unemployment in the U.S. and devastating debt crisis in Europe, the general public is striving to keep the food on the table for their children. It would be really fucking aggravating for an average family to hear about how bad the life is from a guy who's just won an Oscar.
The guy who just won an oscar and will probably be unemployed in a few months after they finish their current projects, and who had to lay off half his workforce because he couldn't pay them. Yeah... other unemployed people wouldn't feel sympathy for him at all.
On February 26 2013 22:45 Reasonable wrote: Of course it was cut off on purpose. There is always a control room for any major event where a bunch of dudes are sitting and watching the process like hawks. IMHO it is just as rude to talk about your financial problems on such event as it is to cut the speech of someone. The whole Oscar event is a above all a celebration, which is watched by a global audience, hence it is also a business. People tune in to watch the ceremony to be entertained, and organizers know that very well. There are like 1000 actors and movie business professionals from all over the world in that hall and I'm sure they all have problems in such difficult times, but the audience does not want to hear about it. With the current level of unemployment in the U.S. and devastating debt crisis in Europe, the general public is striving to keep the food on the table for their children. It would be really fucking aggravating for an average family to hear about how bad the life is from a guy who's just won an Oscar.
Hearing people constantly whining about difficult times is also very fucking aggravating considering the recession has been over for 4 years in the US. With corporate profits and the stock market at all-time highs, we shouldn't let profitable industries screw over their skilled labor just because somebody on the opposite corner of the planet is still having problems.
Hollywood is making money. Lots of it. The big studios are just abusing their market power to screw over their small suppliers and the "woe is me" people let them get away with it. This happens whether there is a recession or not.
They are able to screw over their skilled labor because the competition from the opposite corner of the planet can do the same work for a really miserable sum of money. And if you think the quality of the products are not the same, you just wait several more years.
....I`m really woried about all this. RIght now I`m spending almost 17 hours per day studying vfx in the most expensive and prestigious vfx school in the whole world. I spent all my saved money to do this, I have literaly no back-up plan after this. I`m pretty much all in. Reading all of this makes me really woried.
On February 26 2013 22:45 Reasonable wrote: Of course it was cut off on purpose. There is always a control room for any major event where a bunch of dudes are sitting and watching the process like hawks. IMHO it is just as rude to talk about your financial problems on such event as it is to cut the speech of someone. The whole Oscar event is a above all a celebration, which is watched by a global audience, hence it is also a business. People tune in to watch the ceremony to be entertained, and organizers know that very well. There are like 1000 actors and movie business professionals from all over the world in that hall and I'm sure they all have problems in such difficult times, but the audience does not want to hear about it. With the current level of unemployment in the U.S. and devastating debt crisis in Europe, the general public is striving to keep the food on the table for their children. It would be really fucking aggravating for an average family to hear about how bad the life is from a guy who's just won an Oscar.
Hearing people constantly whining about difficult times is also very fucking aggravating considering the recession has been over for 4 years in the US. With corporate profits and the stock market at all-time highs, we shouldn't let profitable industries screw over their skilled labor just because somebody on the opposite corner of the planet is still having problems.
Hollywood is making money. Lots of it. The big studios are just abusing their market power to screw over their small suppliers and the "woe is me" people let them get away with it. This happens whether there is a recession or not.
They are able to screw over their skilled labor because the competition from the opposite corner of the planet can do the same work for a really miserable sum of money. And if you think the quality of the products are not the same, you just wait several more years.
Actually, competition with low-wage countries was NOT the issue that put Rhythm in trouble. The company is perfectly positioned to compete, were that the main thing driving down bids. The real problem is local governments enacting gigantic, treaty-violating, market-distorting subsidies that benefit the major movie studios and not the artists or their employers. For example, companies are currently ditching Vancouver to go to Montreal because Quebec recently enacted a flat-out 60% payment of the value of wages paid for movie projects there that goes to the studio, not the employer.
There's no country in the world you could move the work to compete with a 60% refund to your customer for taking work elsewhere. And, these subsidies are particularly toxic because people uproot and move around the world only to have the local governments pull them when they realize how expensive they are (like British Columbia is doing now.)
On February 27 2013 01:56 Kznn wrote: ....I`m really woried about all this. RIght now I`m spending almost 17 hours per day studying vfx in the most expensive and prestigious vfx school in the whole world. I spent all my saved money to do this, I have literaly no back-up plan after this. I`m pretty much all in. Reading all of this makes me really woried.
If you have no family and never intend to, if you're willing to work unlimited hours in a country with no labor laws and move anywhere in the world on a few weeks' notice, you should have no problems.
Edit: My comment may come off as unsupportive, and I don't mean it that way; I just don't see the future of working for VFX vendors to be very rosy. I think the path to take, if you can, is to try to work for companies that own their own content rather than being vendors for others. The prospects are much better for those companies.
For anyone reading who is considering an expensive art program specifically because of a dream to enter this field, I recommend that you consider another way into it, such as by studying computer science, that will leave you with a more broadly-applicable skill set should you wish at some point to do something more stable.
On February 26 2013 22:45 Reasonable wrote: Of course it was cut off on purpose. There is always a control room for any major event where a bunch of dudes are sitting and watching the process like hawks. IMHO it is just as rude to talk about your financial problems on such event as it is to cut the speech of someone. The whole Oscar event is a above all a celebration, which is watched by a global audience, hence it is also a business. People tune in to watch the ceremony to be entertained, and organizers know that very well. There are like 1000 actors and movie business professionals from all over the world in that hall and I'm sure they all have problems in such difficult times, but the audience does not want to hear about it. With the current level of unemployment in the U.S. and devastating debt crisis in Europe, the general public is striving to keep the food on the table for their children. It would be really fucking aggravating for an average family to hear about how bad the life is from a guy who's just won an Oscar.
To be clear, he was not complaining, only acknowledging the situation and asking people to think of the artists affected by the bankruptcy. I know people who were immediately put at risk of losing their homes by this -- these people are mostly decently paid.when they're working, but nobody's making enough to save very much money.
Read the link at the bottom that describes his comments in the press room afterwards. They were tasteful and appropriate. Also, his comments were well-prepared and quite brief by the night's standards.
Claudio Miranda got his award before Bill Westenhofer and talked for 55 seconds.
Bill Westenhofer talked 55 seconds before the music started and at 75 seconds the mic was cut off. Oscars speech is not the place to talk about your financial problems.
I don't see what's the big deal.
Edit: Okay, he didn't talk for 55 seconds, because he just stood by the mic for 10 seconds before starting. I guess that counts as a speech too
On February 27 2013 05:05 synac wrote: Oscars speech is not the place to talk about your financial problems.
Certainly not the place to talk about one's own, however when the team who just won an Academy Award is going through a group trauma, it's more than appropriate to acknowledge that they went through that for the work that just won.
Honestly, I don't know what exactly happened in terms of their process. It's possible that he simply went over time and didn't merit, in the producer's view, the extra leeway given to actors and directors. It's possible that there was a blanket policy of cutting the mic on anyone who said anything that wasn't exactly a thank-you, regardless of content. It's possible that they were specifically prepared for him in particular to bring the issue up and had planned in advance to cut the mic if that happened.
Furthermore, I completely understand the Academy's desire not to have their event used for, say, opinion or a political statement, and they may well have thought that's where that was going. However, in this particular case, what's interesting is that cutting his mic at that exact moment stirred up so much discontent among the visual effects community that it's likely to have a bigger impact than if they'd just let him finish his thought.
On February 27 2013 08:43 Durak wrote: Your latimes article got the names wrong. Well done >_<
Yeah I noticed that.
As for a walk-out, there are no legal protections for employees who walk out except as part of an official union action. Also, even those protections can be suspended for companies currently under the supervision of a bankruptcy court. So, I will not be doing any walking-out on 3/14.
Do you think the VFX industry can, or should unionize the artists like the rest of most film professions are? It seems like everybody else has looked after themselves, and so the artists are where the financial edges are being sucked from.
On February 27 2013 09:40 -Kaiser- wrote: Do you think the VFX industry can, or should unionize the artists like the rest of most film professions are? It seems like everybody else has looked after themselves, and so the artists are where the financial edges are being sucked from.
As I mentioned in the OP, I fully support unionizing. I'm still a member of the IATSE Animation Guild (currently on what they call "honorable withdrawal" since I'm not working for a union employer) and they pretty much deliver what they promise, the best of which is a coordinated health and pension plan that's ultimately funded by residuals paid by their signatory studios on the work their employees produce.
However, the fact that visual effects employees are working essentially for middlemen between them and the content owners makes unionizing only a partial solution. It doesn't address the issue that the vfx companies are stuck between expensive labor on one hand and studios that want to pay them below cost on the other.
On February 27 2013 09:40 -Kaiser- wrote: Do you think the VFX industry can, or should unionize the artists like the rest of most film professions are? It seems like everybody else has looked after themselves, and so the artists are where the financial edges are being sucked from.
As I mentioned in the OP, I fully support unionizing. I'm still a member of the IATSE Animation Guild (currently on what they call "honorable withdrawal" since I'm not working for a union employer) and they pretty much deliver what they promise, the best of which is a coordinated health and pension plan that's ultimately funded by residuals paid by their signatory studios on the work their employees produce.
However, the fact that visual effects employees are working essentially for middlemen between them and the content owners makes unionizing only a partial solution. It doesn't address the issue that the vfx companies are stuck between expensive labor on one hand and studios that want to pay them below cost on the other.
Then what about VFX studios pursuing ownership of the content that's making all of the money? It seems to me like a studio like DD or R&H or MPC or Prime Focus all have the ability to do the VFX for an entire blockbuster themselves, so why don't the studios, in an environment where it's becoming harder and harder to make money, start making their own movies? Hollywood has thrown writers in the trash, they're throwing artists in the trash.
I'm probably ignorant of a lot of things, but it seems to me that if a top-end VFX house become a production house and started producing their own properties, you'd be seeing a hell of a lot less money being leeched away. I don't see how difficult it could be to find investors to get your budget together when you can tell them you don't have to pay x amount of other people.
It seems to me that with Hollywood generally being so wasteful with their budgets and the profits going so little to the people who are making most of the movie, a VFX house would be able to stretch a budget a lot better, pay their employees better, and (the bottom line) pay the investors better. I guess it's a matter of risk vs. reward, but the worse the finances get for some of these companies, I can't help but think that it might be less of a risk to try and make your own film.
That's part of the plan for a lot of companies, but when your expertise is making $100 million plus movies, you need that much money to get started, and if you only have that much, you are risking everything.
I definitely noticed this event during the Oscars after reading your other blog that you posted, and I feel really bad about this situation. The fact that VFX work can be done in a shopped out way is certain to make it the norm, and I think that the only way to change that is through unionization. Although because of the digital medium of your work they can hire scabs from across the world, so I don't ever see the union being able to gain any traction. Really the only way to fix this is to create public awareness of the issue, which would be rather hard considering the size of your community and the scale of social problems that people are confronted with on a daily basis. The situation in the VFX industry is emblematic of how capitalist modes of exchange do not account for humanity or the dignity of the workers in any way, and this being a digital industry gives insights into the future perils of the worker.
I apologize for being so negative and I truly feel awful for you and your colleagues.
On February 28 2013 00:49 aike wrote: Time to go get a job at Blizzard :D
They're a prominent local company who does great looking work. I've talked to them before and I probably will again.
However if I were to interview or work for them, I will probably wind up going silent on TL, because I gather they look poorly on candidates or non-customer-facing employees talking about them or their work on internet forums that follow their games.
On February 28 2013 00:49 aike wrote: Time to go get a job at Blizzard :D
They're a prominent local company who does great looking work. I've talked to them before and I probably will again.
However if I were to interview or work for them, I will probably wind up going silent on TL, because I gather they look poorly on candidates or non-customer-facing employees talking about them or their work on internet forums that follow their games.
So go work for EA
If you need work as an animator, I know guys at PopCap (now part of EA) and Pocket Gems.
On February 28 2013 00:49 aike wrote: Time to go get a job at Blizzard :D
They're a prominent local company who does great looking work. I've talked to them before and I probably will again.
However if I were to interview or work for them, I will probably wind up going silent on TL, because I gather they look poorly on candidates or non-customer-facing employees talking about them or their work on internet forums that follow their games.
Yeah, I think it would be a fun place (and department) to work. And maybe one day you could be working on a Starcraft CG movie! ;D
What exactly did you do on Life of Pi? Or were you on other projects?
On February 28 2013 06:50 aike wrote: What exactly did you do on Life of Pi? Or were you on other projects?
I did not work on Life of Pi, since when it was in production I was in the commercials group. I'm a digital lighter, meaning that I am responsible for the color, light, and shadow in digitally-rendered elements. There's also a hefty dose of managing the data coming in from other departments whose work I'm lighting.
Here's my IMDB page, if you're curious what movies I've worked on in the past. I've also done a bunch of TV commercials and a few other small projects for other purposes.
On February 28 2013 13:34 ziggurat wrote: Fascinating blog post. Thanks for posting.
Can you give a bit more info about the Quebec subsidies? How could any government think that it's a good idea to do this?
Any government wants to bring jobs to their area. So by paying the movie companies that work with companies in VFX in their area will encourage them to do it, which encourages VFX companies to be located there, which makes more jobs, which = more taxes and happy people, etc etc etc. But it's retarded.
On February 28 2013 13:34 ziggurat wrote: Can you give a bit more info about the Quebec subsidies? How could any government think that it's a good idea to do this?
Subsidies like this, in Quebec and elsewhere, are structured as a refundable tax credit for production companies who bring motion picture work to their territory. (Refundable tax credits are those that you can have paid out to you as cash to the extent that they exceed the tax you owe. In addition, the B.C. and Quebec credits, I believe, allow the money to be paid out in full even before taxes have been paid.)
Quebec provides a 60% credit on labor done by workers who have been working in Canada for over one year. So, for example, London VFX houses are laying off their workers and opening Montreal offices. Some workers are simply being told they must move to Canada or lose their jobs. Even though their work isn't eligible for the credit for the first year, the hope is that after they've been there a year, they'll start to be eligible.
Interestingly, these credits go to the production companies, not the VFX studios. So, the VFX studio isn't actually saving any money by doing this -- it's just having a better chance to get the work because the studios want the credits.
Today the so-called "stalking horse" bidder, the company that's first to submit a bid to purchase the company, was announced. Interestingly, it's JS Communications, whose parent company, CJ Entertainment, is the sponsor for the CJ Entus Starcraft team.
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