... to their own company.
Former ImageMovers Employees Launch Atomic Fiction
The new full-service VFX business will aim to cut costs for clients without sacrificing quality.
Three VFX veterans let go from Robert Zemeckis’ recently shuttered ImageMovers Digital have launched a new facility in Emeryville, Calif.
Named Atomic Fiction, the business was co-founded by Kevin Baillie, who serves as president and VFX supervisor; Ryan Tudhope, creative director and VFX supervisor; and Jenn Emberly, performance and animation supervisor.
Atomic Fiction is opening in Emeryville ... as a full-service business, with art direction and concept design. It is focusing on high-end character work and digital environments as well as fire and water effects and compositing. ...
A long while back, c.g.i. supe Jim Hillin and I discussed the ongoing phenomenon of effects houses spawning the next generation of effects houses when employees went off and formed their own companies. This regenerative thing has been happening since the 1990s, the horse-and-buggy era of computer graphics.
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17 comments:
"The new full-service VFX business will aim to cut costs for clients without sacrificing quality." - ...while offering their employees above labor standards work environment, compensation and benefits - is whats missing from their intro line. Same old BS. "The king is dead, long live the king!". Anyone up for setting up vfx cooperative? - Email me. I am dead serious.
Yeah, right. I bet they "cut their costs" by underpaying their employees and calling them "independent contractors" to get out of payroll taxes like many boutique studios.
Why are you giving any attention to these here-today-gone-tomorrow companies anyway? Their modus operandi is opposite the unions position and should be shunned.
Since when are vfx supervisors art directors, or know anything about it other than executing the production designer and art director's vision as approved by the director? Makes no sense.
Why so anti against individuals that want to forge their own path. Good for them and I wish them all the success!
And even if it doesn't work out at least they tried something instead of just talking about it. You only go around once, take a risk and don't criticize.
Ah, lovely to see the usual bitter hens here clucking away at their usual defeatist negativity.
I say congratulations to these folks for their initiative, I hope they succeed. It's a tough business, and it's good to see people rising to the challenge. Unlike some armchair commentators...
The same folks who brought down "The Orphanage" and "ImageMovers Digital" are starting another company? Fool me once...
Congrats wish them the best and too bad their aren't more courageous artists going independent
*they're
^
I hope that's irony.
Thanks for posting this, steve. I think it was necessary since it pertains to the history of Imagemovers, an 839 animation studio.
I don't know these individuals, nor did I work at Imagemovers. However i get suspicious of claims like theirs. I get really curious as to what the figured out that no one else has regarding cutting costs to clients while operating in northern California. My curiosity turns to suspicion when owners start knighting themselves as creative directors and vfx sups.
As Steve said, vfx has had a history of artist-driven companies rising from the ashes. Esc came from Manex, claiming they didn'y need managers. Orphanage came from ILM. The ambition of these companies were crushed by the realities of running the flawed business of vfx. Unless that flawed way of doing business is fixed, unless vfx establishes a set of minimums to studios so that it can not just run a business, but be profitable, then there will be no real business in vfx, just press releases with a lot of promises.
My experience with these artist driven facilities is the process of the exploited becoming the exploiter. The guy who sat at the box wanting to call the shots instead of being dictated to. And often in vfx, the loudest guy in the room wins. Meanwhile the task of delivering on all the promises of the press releases falls on the artists.
Interesing that a commenter here mentioned the cooperative business model. While I don't think it will automatically correct the business problems with vfx, i think it would put some honesty in shop owners intentions which in the past have been just words: "we built this company for you" "we are family... And the more direct " be a team
Player" "do it because you love the work, not the money". And my favorite "its a cool movie".
Its been stated at the VES summirs that the number one cost is labor by some shop owners. Makes sense in a biz where a seat went from a $300K black box to a $5K mac pro/HP box. Even the software switched to high volume price point. Makes as much sense to me that labor would be your main cost as the digital tools becomes as cheap as pencil and paper has been for decades. Because its the people that matter. As this industry tries to treat human beings as commodities, they will never compete in the world market on strictly price. Its foolish.
So perhaps these guys have figured this out. Perhaps they learned something from imagemovers being a guild house. Perhaps they will be the first vfx shop to open that under iatse rep. Pridefully. Maybe they will see the wisdom of hiring experiences artist making livable wages, dignified hours. Perhaps the intend to cut cost by utilizing the production lighting/compositing artist as look dev artist in between productions. Perhaps they have learned the fine art of coralling clients into making timely decisions so that they can promise a better product gor a better price, as every dollar spent is on the screem. Perhaps, even, they saw how at imagemovers, that a feature animation is compartmentalized into stages like previz, layout, blocking, animation, lighting and shot finaling, and how vfx now shares an identical lifecycle, so that the clients are contractually required to lock a decision at each stage, otherwise face an overage that has a healthy profit margin locked in. Perhaps, even, they "collluded" with other studios like ILM on how they do such breakdowns with clients so that more and more vfx vendors have a unified front toward the studios.
I say all that because I can't think of any other way to offer a client a better product for less money unless how vfx does business changes. If its the usual "exploited becomes the exploiter", then their days are already numbered.
Thanks for reading.
Since ImageMovers Digital will close after finishing "Mars Needs Moms" which studio is going to animated the mo-capped "The Yellow Submorine" remake?
Thanks Vfxlabor,
NOW I can go out and start my own visual effects house!!!
Seriously. I'm not kidding.
Can I have a job? PLEASE!!!
There's a lot of nonsense that gets into these comments, but wading through them is worth it to find the gems, like the comment from VFXlabor. Well and truly put!
This is a great podcast with FXguide.com’s Jeff Heusser interviewing Steven Poster, National President of the International Cinematographers Guild, discussing vfx and cinematography and workflows. However the real gem is at then end. Hear it from a guy who has had 40 years with IATSE. It starts in the last ten minutes of the podcast. Required listening for all vfx artist.
http://media.fxguide.com/fxpodcast/fxg-101229-StevenPoster.mp3
I'm just coming across this blog post now - thanks for posting it Steve. Thanks as well to all of the well-wishers! While it bums me out when total strangers assume we're out to reduce costs by taking advantage of artists, I can't say I entirely blame 'em. That's happened all too often in this industry (and several others), which has left many artists feeling like "beaten puppies."
To set the record straight and show that we're not BS'ing or planning to take advantage of people: 95% of our workforce is W2. We work crazy hours sometimes (we're a growing startup!), so we pay exact overtime to all of our non-exempt employees. Our off-site 1099 contractors are paid right on schedule, if not before. We legitimately buy all of our software. We have a flexible time off policy: need a day off? Take it. Paid.
Vfxlabor is spot on with his vision. On top of that we're using new technologies like cloud computing to make sure that every dollar from a client goes up onto the screen - not to pay for "dead time" overhead of a massive, expensive datacenter. There are ways to make the process better! We, as a VFX community, just need to look deeper to figure out what those things are and have the courage to jump in and try 'em out!
So, to the skeptics out there: maybe not every company owner is evil, or looking to simply make a quick buck. We, for one, believe that the only way to true long-term success is to treat people well, find innovative new ways to streamline and improve the process, have fun, and build something sustainable.
Hopefully we're right (so far, so good!), 'cause we want nothing more than to provide another top-notch, California-based studio for talented artists to call home.
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