The L.A. Times is gloomy:
... Not long ago the visual effects industry was dominated by a few California companies with their own proprietary techniques and tools, along with the artists trained to use them. Now, thanks to advances in technology, the adoption of standardized techniques and readily available digital workforces, the industry has fanned out around the globe. ...
So let me give you a corollary: "Not long ago almost all hand-drawn animation was done in Southern California. Warner Bros. Animation, Disney Animation, Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, all the cartoons kids saw in movie theaters and on television were made in Los Angeles. Now, the cartoon business is a global one, with work formerly produced in So. Cal now created in Korea, Japan, China, the Philippines and other places not in the U.S. of A. ..."
The above is a true statement, but wonder of wonders, there is more animation/cartoon work employing more people in and around Los Angeles than at any time in the history of the business.
How can that be? Especially if the industry is now global?
Because the industry has expanded continually. And because large, deep pools of talent and established infrastructure have a strong gravitational pull. It might be true that California has the most qualified and expensive animation crews in the world, but those crews have proven they can meet release dates and deliver high caliber work year after year. (It does a conglomerate little good jobbing the money shots out to overseas contractors and then have a) missed deadlines and b) delivered work so inferior that audiences stay away in droves. Roadside Romeo, anyone?)
Movie work has been leaving Los Angeles since the 1940s. (M-G-M used to put on their end credits: "Made in Hollywood, U.S.A." to show how it supported the home team, even as they made movies in England.) Movie work will continue to be shipped out. But the larger reality is that a lot will stay, because fleeting tax breaks and lower wages don't make up for dime-store-quality product or late work. Release dates are important like never before, and few corporations will risk blowing off a long-scheduled opening weekend in pursuit of a hundred thousand dollars savings in a production budget.
I've watched the Chicken Littles yell that the sky was crashing down and the end was near for twenty-plus years. So pardon me for being a teensy bit skeptical that the doomsayers will be right this time when they were wrong ten or fifteen times before.
(VFX Soldier is also dubious.)
Posts
13 comments:
Visual effects companies almost never can stay in business for more than 10 years or so. That has been the norm from at least the eighties. However, the combination of California's super high business taxes combined with competition from cheaper labor in other countries will only speed up the demise of VFX shops. For artists in the States, the result will surely be less wages and competition for fewer available jobs. Actually, that is already happening.
The computer is partly to blame as well. It has leveled the playing field by making the animation and special effects jobs much easier and requiring less skill.
Spoken by someone who has never attempted to learn what animating using a computer is.
Keep your voice down, relic.
I really liked Chicken Little. Don't know why everyone bagged on it so much. Anyway. Cheers.
I must admit the first poster is correct when it comes to the reality of it being easier to do more mediocre CG just about anywhere cheaper outside of L.A. The fact that CG models are essentially puppets that wont go off model makes them more forgiving for less trained eyes.
Not to mention the hordes of schools that are cranking out much more CG generalist than ever before and very few traditional based artists that can learn how to work a computer after becoming a good artist.
The best CG folks will always be in demand, and as long as there are studio owners living in Beverly hills there will be CG in L.A. Studios will hopefully just need to pay more to have really good veterans sprinkled in with the younger crews wherever they are in the world.
This may be the best time to weigh all your options for opportunities wherever they are.
"but wonder of wonders, there is more animation/cartoon work employing more people in and around Los Angeles than at any time in the history of the business. "
But wouldn't you say most of those being employed are in non-union shops, no benefits, very precarious project-to-project employment and with ever falling pay rates. Globalism has brought wages down and made working conditions worse in the U.S.A. , not brought wages up and improved working conditions in Korea, India, China, etc.
... wouldn't you say most of those being employed are in non-union shops, no benefits, very precarious project-to-project employment and with ever falling pay rates.
Depends on the area of work. Depends on when you're talking about. In the fifties and sixties, when all American animation work was done stateside (and most of that in Southern California), rates were notoriously low.
Dave Michener, Disney animator, board artist and feature director with a thirty-plus year career at WDP, once detailed for me how he started at the Mouse House in the mid-fifties and KEPT his other job as a night-time manager at a gas station because he couldn't make a living on his Disney salary alone. He worked two jobs for several years before he made enough at Disney to quite the gas station.
The Mouse paid starvation wages in those days. Even with a union contract. Frank and Ollie were making $850 per week when they retired in 1978. As Woolie Reitherman explained to me once:
"None of the old-timers around here made a big paycheck. We got rich because of stock options. ..."
The more things change, the more they revert to the traditional norm.
Globalism has brought wages down and made working conditions worse in the U.S.A. , not brought wages up and improved working conditions in Korea, India, China, etc.
The second half of that is not true. Wages are going up rapidly in India and in China. Standards of living are rising at historically fast rates. Meanwhile, you're correct that wages here have been stagnant (and declining with inflation and benefits loss factored in).
This highlights the part that the LA Times article alluded to, but people still miss. Most of the work leaving LA is not going to low cost providers. It's going to places where the government offers staggering subsidies. The animators in the Canadian and London and Singapore studios that are taking LA work are paid salaries similar to LA salaries.
That's why the quote at the end of the LA Times article is misleading ("We have the best artists here in the world," Grossmann said, "but they are pretty much the most expensive artists in the world."). We DO have many of the best artists here (many of whom come from all over the world), but we are no longer the most expensive. If the playing field were level, work would fly back here so fast it would make your head spin.
It has leveled the playing field by making the animation and special effects jobs much easier and requiring less skill.
I have to disagree. The computer hasnt made it any "easier" to do animation jobs, it has made animation more accessible to everyone, so people who wouldnt have tried to do animation before can take a stab at it and see if they have what it takes.
There has always been "talented" people in the world capable of doing animation. It's possible there were more talented and capable people in the world than the 9 Old Men, but they just happened to be the ones who worked their way into Disney. The computer has changed all that. I bet the percentage of capable animators across the world is the same now as it was 50-60 years ago, there's just more opportunities now.
Dont presume to call CG animators less talented and call the computer easy to use. It still takes an immense amount of skill to make animation, no matter the tool. The proof is the piles and piles of crappy CG demo reels, and also the 2D animators who, try as they might, cant manage to keep their CG characters on model or appealing, and their timing and spacing is floaty: things you can get away with in 2D, but the computer is unforgiving.
I have respect for all animators, regardless of the medium.
"delivered work so inferior that audiences stay away in droves. Roadside Romeo, anyone?"
Battle for Terra, anyone?
Its not so much "Leveled the playing field" as altered the perception of what a talented animator brings to the table. There are many heads of dept/executives that that are not going to see that extra talent and as a result aren't going to pay for it.
"Good enough" syndrome
That's true and its sad with a lot of CG ..."its good enough" syndrome is active because they can trick some viewers long enough to get the money and run.
"The Mouse paid starvation wages in those days. Even with a union contract. Frank and Ollie were making $850 per week when they retired in 1978."
Adjusted for inflation, that $850 per week is something like $2800 per week now. That's something like $145K per year. Not exactly starvation wages.
Frank and Ollie were supervisors/superstars. They were at the absolute top of the food chain. And they made the equivalent of what a mid-level TD makes now. Thousands of animation professionals earn $2500-3000/week.
And yet, the films that Frank and Ollie were instrumental in creating made huge amounts of money. So, yeah, the top talent in the entire world were making OK money, and everyone else was making starvation money. Make sense now?
Post a Comment