Someone asks about the age breakdown of working members of The Animation Guild, and I'm delighted to throw light on the subject.
Employed Active Members -- 87.1% (2,566 of 2,945)
Employed Active Members over fifty -- 29.5% (757 of 2,566)
Now, a few words about the above.
The employed percentage of active members appears quite high, but the statistic is usually higher still .... above 90%. So we look for total active membership to fall in coming months.
We have fifty more people working now than back in January. Then it was 2,506.
Going back further, in January 2008, employment was 2,271. (Click here for graphs about employment breakdown and trends in 2007-2008.)
What were the employment breakdowns five years ago? Ten years? We'll have to dig out old data, but my best estimates:
The industry has skewed young and male for a long time. If you use the handy search engine up in the left-hand corner, I'm sure you can dig up various posts that cover these subjects.
(I've harped on the maleness of the business previously; I won't bother doing it again here. But as to the youthfulness of the biz, I have several observations):
1) There's been a technological revolution in animation over the past fifteen years, and it's digital. Paper, pencils and paintbrushes don't cut it anymore. So the folks who were experts with those things are unemployable if they don't know the software programs that employers now require for animated production, and it's been tough for many to retrain.
2) Most artists and technicians who come into the business in their early twenties build a support network of fellow employees, most of whom are five to ten years older than they are. By the time these people reach their middle fifties, the long-standing support network they've relied on has retired ... and jobs (surprise!) become harder to come by.
3) Now as always, the business is ferociously competitive; younger and more energetic candidates pour into the field year after year. By the time you are in your forties ... or especially fifties ... you are competing against people who are decades younger than you are.
Animation might be youth oriented, but its a virtual haven for gray hairs compared to live-action work. In that sphere, you will find very few older workers.
Posts
19 comments:
I'm 30 now... but I remember when I was 24 trying to get into the industry. I was willing to do ANYTHING. Even work for free... and boy did they love that. While I'm a little older now, I'm much wiser, and boy do they hate that.
"younger and more energetic..."
There you go again. I suppose if you rationalize the situation you don't have to do anything about it. As one of the "over-fifties" struggling to find a paycheck, I resent your giving the situation even that much agreement.
Technology? What about all those cleanup artists with years of experience on Disney feature films who couldn't get a sniff of the work on "Princess and the Frog?"
More energetic? How can you help solve the agism problem if you are guilty of it yourself? I'm more than energetic enough to sit at a desk and draw or move a mouse and probably will be for the next 20 years. Actually, I'm a far better draftsman and a better animator than I was 20 or 30 years ago. I also did several "all-nighters" this year. No "energy" problem here- just a paycheck problem.
I'm astonished about the 29.5% figure. Really? Subjectively I would say it's more like 5%.
I can see how traditional artists can't find work, as that technique is hardly used anymore due to the rise of CGI. But I know numerous lead CG animators who were shown the door at Disney because they are apparently too old. Ultimately the 50+ animator finds it increasingly difficult to find gigs, and forget about even trying at the big studios like Dreamworks and Disney.
Perhaps it is ageism, but perhaps its more of a problem of overtime and schedules. Older animators are probably less likely to pull 65-80 hour workweeks as their family-less counterparts will. So they appear less valuable by the company and are let go. (but to be blunt, some of them arent keeping up with their skills. Ive seen it FIRST HAND at Disney)
But for the sake of argument, lets just say its about the overtime and the compressed schedules on films. I mean, why do films like How to Train Your Dragon, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and Bolt (among others) have animation schedules of less than 6 months? Thats ridiculous! Studios dick around for (sometimes) 7 years on a film, then when the release date looms, they kill animators (and on down the pipe) and then lay you off if you werent willing to bend over (typically, family people, over 50).
I propose studios cant have 2 consecutive months of overtime per department. They have to alternate months. Maybe that'll force them to PLAN properly ahead of time.
As my children grow, and actually have less time for me, I find I have more time for work. The overtime doesn't bother me as much.
I think workers over fifty are often at that point in their "family years."
I feel bad for my 30 year old coworkers with babies at home they don't put to bed at night.
The schedules being what they are, having 4plus months of crunch times where the artists have to work all the time to keep up{ missing out at the family dinner table }.
The employees could work this with positivity if they knew that the company that they are working this hard for will keep them employed once the crunch is over.
It's called loyalty. And it works both ways.
Or don't have loyalty and you get what you get. Ugly way of thinking, isn't it ?
Totally agree!
Putting the hours is fine as long as you know your job is secure. But the younger gunslingers think that they are impressing someone with the ungodly extra hours they put in in the hopes they'll be kept for another project.
Kind of a viscious circle. Managers see people do longer hours, managers then take this for granted...managers expect even longer hours on the next project...
I suppose if you rationalize the situation you don't have to do anything about it. As one of the "over-fifties" struggling to find a paycheck, I resent your giving the situation even that much agreement.
Sorry you interpret the post as "Agreement." But you're right, I had a bad choice of words there.
It's not so much an "energy" issue as it is a "will work cheaper issue."
Technology? What about all those cleanup artists with years of experience on Disney feature films who couldn't get a sniff of the work on "Princess and the Frog?"
Disney made the choice to employ key assistants and out-source the rest.
The company's decision. Certainly not TAG's.
More energetic? How can you help solve the agism problem if you are guilty of it yourself? ...
One charge that I'm not guilty of is agism. The majority of the TAG staff is over fifty.
If it we're up to me, there would be far more older artists working in the biz. But it's not up to me.
Time for me to apologize. I didn't mean to say that you were an ageist. I know that you have many unemployed friends our age that you would rather see working.
To be very precise; I believe rationalizing a wrong is a form of agreement. You don't rationalize or explain unpaid overtime and you shouldn't rationalize discrimination of any kind. What if you tried to "explain" racial discrimination?
The problem of age discrimination is that it's difficult to prove ... and becoming more difficult all the time.
SCOTUS makes it almost impossible to prevail in an age discrimination suit, what with some of their recent rulings. That's the reality, like it or not.
And though I believe that age discrimination exists, when 29.5% of the employed workforce in unionized animation is over fifty, the Animation Guild has small chance of winning a grievance charging age discrimination.
No need to go into defensive mode. Nobody is holding you personally responsible for the problem or the persistence of the problem. The problem obviously stems from the inadequacy of the corporatist labor laws in this country in which labor is held as a liability and an obstacle to the "free" market and an inconvenient drag on corporate growth, rather than a vital element in the economy that needs to be safeguarded. As we now see, when labor, i.e. consumers and tax payers become expendable, the results are devastating,not only to individuals, but the economy, as well.
With that much freedom, businesses are free to react not only to threats, but to perceived threats and potential perceived threats without ever having to be accountable for their actions as the have to be in many other countries.
Clearly that has to change before anything effective can be done about it, by you or anyone else having to function within the system.
I just wanted you to call it the way it is; it's discrimination, plain and simple and like any discrimination, shouldn't be reinforced by logic.
And though I believe that age discrimination exists, when 29.5% of the employed workforce in unionized animation is over fifty, the Animation Guild has small chance of winning a grievance charging age discrimination.
Steve, with all respect--WTF?!
I know that you're being "realistic", but hell!
I don't care if .001% of the workforce is over fifty. If ONE single guy has a legit grievance and has any materials to help his case(just like he needs for any OTHER grievance) it'd be GOOD to know the union-that is, YOU-would deign to freaking take it up!
BTW I've a way to go before I get to that age. Come to think of it, though, when I do-assuming that, one by one, those "overage" guys aren't left out to swing in the breeze with no aggressive union backing them up-since a lot of my peers will be that age too we'll have a shot at getting some help? Even if it seems dubious? I sure hope so.
You'll likely take offense but wow, the way you worded that seems pretty offensive to the average likely candidate for action NOW. Sorry to say.
Since it was mentioned up thread, I have a theory about why the pipeline gets squeezed unmercifully, with nothing ever seeming to change with a system that is simply NOT good for the animators-even from the Company's standpoint.
More than one person has noted the insane schedules that result from a film spending ludicrous years and years and years in story/"pre"-production, problems not getting adequately fixed, resulting in a whopping whole 12 mos for animating an entire film becoming almost the norm!
I believe it's because the PTB with the wherewithal to knock heads to get the film in the pipeline do not ever knock heads. It's s crony thing. The problems stem from the top, meaning the producers and directors, period. At a couple of places the real head is the guy who runs the studio, but his immediate reporting underlings are the issue. And being a bunch of above the line "creatives" they cover for each other or otherwise enable a lot of shilly shallying until the last gdamn moment, when they know perfectly well that it'll kill the "pipeline".
They also know that that pipeline is either under contract or has no options than bending over & taking it. But it's a terrible way to run a railroad.
Well said. Thanks.
Steve?
Actually, I meant the 10:50 post.
>>a film spending ludicrous years and years and years in story/"pre"-production,
animated films spend years and years in story because they don't don't start with stories. if they started with a story, they would not have to rewrite and rewrite until they had something that resembled one.
my guess is that animation studio heads and their select few producers 'buy' or 'option' different somethings that, at a particular moment, seem good, seem amazing, original. that something could be anything - an a list actor with a one-liner, a comic strip, a children's book. it doesn't matter what, and that's the problem, because what they are buying is just some kind of vague peace of mind, some kind of vague security blanket that they can point to, something they can hold onto, to claim that it was their decision that set the gears in motion. they own the decision. they do this with, say, ten or twenty of these 'somethings' a year. twenty 'decisions' really. then they spread a bit of money over each, diversify their investment further, see what they can dig up with hired guns to mirror their directions and tastes further. to reflect the initial something they bought. then they simply invest more time and money in the somethings that bear more fruit to their liking, the somethings that attract the right director or actor or writer or whatever. maybe in the meantime they discover another studio has a similar something in development. they dump those somethings or reevaluate them - they weren't as original as they might have thought.
they are not making films. directors make films. studios make movies, and movies are not stories. they are events. events built from somethings. all the story and character shit you might get in the meantime? those are extra bonuses some unnamed, uncredited, and underpaid talented schmucks deep down in the trenches threw in there to keep themselves from hanging themselves every day after work.
Whether or not a project needs more development time and money to become something worth producing is not the issue. There is no law limiting production budgets or schedules or automatically tying them to development time and cost. Holding production budgets hostage to development cost is something producers do voluntarily. They willfully ignore the connection between production quality and returns. All you have to do is compare the movies that fail with the movies that succeed.
Still, the producers will never stop dreaming of doing the animated version of Paranormal Activities.
>>There is no law limiting production budgets or schedules
upon what magical planet of infinite resources do you reside?
throwing infinite time and money at something is just as often the recipe for a bomb as it is for a hit. ask kevin costner.
You sound like a producer. Nickel-and-diming the production budget and exploiting and driving the artists into the ground doesn't make a film a hit, either. At a quality studio, more development time usually means a better and more successful movie. Budgets are fictitious. A production budget that necessitates the abuse of artists is, by definition, inadequate.
The producers chose to make an animated film, accepting the risks. The artists don't owe the producers a profit, just their best work.
Which animated film did Costner produce?
Post a Comment