A few months later .. Steven Wright responds

To refresh your memory, noted vfx tutor and artist Steven Wright wrote a fear-mongering op-ed note to the visual effects community some four months back. I read it, my bile rose, and I responded in this blog post.

Mr. Wright has now found the time to respond. After all, he has just returned from Mumbai where he was teaching the artists of Prime Focus how to use Nuke. His response was in the form of a comment to my original post. I'll paste it here for ease of read:

Steve Wright said...

Mr. Kaplan - Your summary of my essay was stellar. Your rebuttal, less so.

FUD-free commentary

As a promoter of unionization, your motives are obvious. My motives are the health of the employment in Los Angeles for VFX artists. I do not want to see the last remnants of VFX work driven out of L.A. which is exactly what I believe will happen. I don't Fear it, I am not Uncertain, and have no Doubt.

Self-referencing your own blogs and writings hardly constitutes compelling evidence to support your case. Citing a few articles about the occasional opening of a studio here hardly reverses the overall trend to leave the L.A. area. DD opened their big new facility not in L.A. but in Florida. You know why? Major tax advantages, plus Florida is a right to work state (non-union). Now why would the wise owners of DD move to a right to work state?

I noticed that you failed to mention to your fair readers that IATSE used to have a union at ILM, Local 16, which is now defunct. If unionizing is so good for VFX artists why was IATSE driven from ILM?

I suppose the most glaring fault in your defense of unionization for VFX artists is the portability problem. When unionizing automobile workers, cel animators, or electricians there is no threat of the business picking up and leaving town. With VFX, the work is utterly portable, so if the costs get too high the work simply goes elsewhere. End of analysis. And end of your job. Excuse me - not your job. You are the union guy. You get to keep your job. It is the VFX artists that will loose their jobs.

I can't help but note the irony of his claims to be motivated by "the health of the employment in Los Angeles for VFX artists" after just returning to the United States from India where he was training Prime Focus artists on the use of The Foundry's Nuke. He then has the chutzpah to say I'M helping bring down the vfx trade in Los Angeles!

In his comments, Mr. Wright further exposes his ignorance of the issues at hand as well as his lack of research into the discussions that have taken place within the last year. After making some tangential points, he provides the crux of his argument: unionizing and the introduction of portable benefits is unfeasible because of costs.

We've stated multiple times that costs are certainly a factor, but signing a union contract could be a cost benefit to a visual effects studio depending on the benefits that are currently being offered. At studios doing tent-pole feature film work, artists could be provided benefits that could save the studios money through the scale at which the IATSE can offer participation in the Motion Picture Industry Health Plan. Simply, for clarification, the contributions to MPI Health Plan could be cheaper because the IATSE contracts a lower amount due to the number of participants it has.

Secondly, the viability of participation in MPI has been discussed as the IATSE is attempting to form a national local that would provide coverage across the United States and Canada. For artists inside the US, the better choice would be participation in the IATSE National Benefit Plan. This has the added ability to tailor the cost of participation based on the operational needs of the studio. A vfx studio that is just starting out and has a lower operational budget than say a DD or Imageworks can negotiate different contribution amounts based on their needs.

All of this will be hashed out when a contract with a studio is reached. All of this still provides vfx artists, both here in Los Angeles and across the country, the ability to have a collectively bargained contract that stipulates no only standard and minimum workplace conditions, but provides portable health and pension benefits that are equal to what the rest of the entertainment industry enjoys. Further, it shows that we (TAG and the IATSE) are not interested in anything more that seeing those benefits and protections provided to the artists of visual effects and have found ways to work amicably with studios to do so.

To his other points:

• Digital Domain opened the Florida facility because they were paid by the state to do so. Not in the form of tax incentives, which would be made available if their goal of becoming a film studio comes to fruition. But in the form of direct payments and for the promise of opening an education facility. Claiming Florida's right to work status was a motivator predicates that DD felt threatened by unionization. A claim I would love to see substantiated.
• ILM did indeed hold a contract with the IATSE at one time. Local 16 was indeed the local that was tasked with representing the artists at ILM. My attempts at getting specific information about what transpired between Local 16 and ILM have been met with little reply. Luckily, I'm having lunch with Scott Ross today who may be able to shed some light on the subject.
• To claim that the traditional animation field has not felt the effects of the globalization of the industry just shows his gross ignorance of the craft and its tribulations.

I look forward to further clarification on his position.