Down south, there's discussion about animators' pay rates, and how they're not what they used to be:
Quality animators in c.g. command good salaries. So maybe the marketplace is telling us that quality matters.
Have animators salaries drop over the past decade?
They've dropped from the nineties, no question. But here's the last two years of data (3D animators):
(2010) low: $1018 -- median: $1,565.82 -- max: $2,836.36
(2011) low: $1,366.45 -- median: $1,808.41 -- high: $4,388.00
Minimum scale is $1628.56
It seems to me that the middle class of animator - the intermediate level are the ones getting the squeeze from below.
Same was true in the 2D heyday (both of them).
And so on ...
But as creatives take wage reductions, so do others:
DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg's compensation dropped more than 40 percent last year, down to $4 million from $6.7 million, according to the company's proxy filing. ...
(Also, too, there was a bit of money Jeffrey invested with Bernie Madoff, which turned out to be not a good move. Ah well. Seemed like an inspired idea among many folks prior to Bernie's arrest.)
Last thought about animation wages: They're never consistent over long stretches of time, for supply and demand are ever changing. There was a sense in the middle nineties, when Disney was rolling out hit after hit and television animation was booming, that the good times would go on forever
But that was a dangerous idea. The high water mark for hand-drawn animation -- Lion King -- was released on June 24, 1994, and rolled up huge box office. And mothers were telling their sons: "Go get into animation! It's better than a government job!"
Seventeen months after the lion picture, Toy Story made its debut. And though nobody knew it at the time, traditional animated features were on their way out.
All thing pass. (Hell. Many times they slide by without anybody knowing that they're slipping away.)
Posts
10 comments:
One of my latests posts on my blog titled "Is The US VFX Industry Dead?" compiles Bureau of Labor Statistic numbers for Multimedia Artists & Animators working in the Motion Picture Industry.
You can see the national employment and hourly rate info for the group.
>>Seventeen months after the lion picture, Toy Story made its debut. And though nobody knew it at the time, traditional animated features were on their way out.<<
Some of us knew it while others refused to believe it.
Are overall animation salaries down from the 2D days? Yes. But is there still a rather large pay discrepancy between amazing CG animators and your average CG animator? Yes. Because there is a concrete, measurable, demonstrable difference in the quality level between CG animators, which was my point in the discussion.
Interesting that my animation storyboard artists salary has remained the same from 92 to today but the price of a movie ticket has grown by 300%
92 to '96, board artists' wages went up, way up. Salaries were in the middle $2000s then.
Around '92 a studio exec (now out of the biz) told me:
"[Artist X] made a deal for $2100 a week. But first day he was here he came into my office and said he had another offer and now wanted $2200 a week! I'm desperate for good board artists so I gave it to him, but he stuck it to me.
I'll remember."
Those days are gone now. The '90s were kind of an anomaly. Many at the time thought contract minimum rates were irrelevant, their salaries were so high.
Turned out not to be the case.
yes, I guess I started making between 1800-2000 in '96, which is pretty much what I make today and as far as I know is the going rate.
In regards to Steves comment here posted on April 12, 2012 12:10:00 PM Part (1)
Seriously guys, we can't have this game of individuals playing the passive aggressor in one on one wage negotiations. Sure you can seek & expect more for your proven & dependable talents, I’m all for that, but don’t be a nob. Because it taints us all in their eyes as self indulgent & unreasonable folk & opens the gate to forms of studio corner cutting reprisal. Jeeze, what one couldn’t do with over 2000 a week, I really don’t know. This is where trying to grind out your own brand of personal leverage can really break the bank, sour negotiations and burn all of us in the long term just because one phenomenal artist aggressively pushed for higher wages.
What we need to do is get to a standard where people employed anywhere feel that they are being payed fairly & enough for their time & feel secure enough in their position to take the general issue of personal finances off the table. From that point THEN we can have this whole Pro Baseball Player mentality of hard earned, true & respected talent bonus fee negotiations, but done so with a level clarity to these lunch time backroom deals. Perhaps even present these bonus earnings anonymously to the studio staff through the Guild as an incentive for the little & new guys to try that much harder at building & showing their skills & the possibility of seeing themselves eventually getting to the same place over time (well, not simply over time, but through a strong, dependable & measurable body of good work AND time). It’d also make for some interesting data to track in the long term.
By all means if you are truly worth it, do so, but Do so gently. If you’re a big man on campus who feels he as the right to ask for a bit more then try maybe and have a representative like Steve or someone as your contract mediator and go to lunch with him & the relevant studio folk & bosses and have a good honest & open chin wag negotiation session about it. I know it might sound odd to involve other people in your affairs, but that way there’s more accountability and no one on one confrontation with unspoken words & resentments because it involves an open & outside point of view & perhaps even a record of the way things were agreed upon, which makes everyone feel more secure legally & ethically. Just continuing to think out aloud here but PS: Sorry Steve, I don’t think it would be fair if you were to get any form of commission for such sit-ins as an individuals personal mediator. Perhaps you could be tipped at the discretion of the individual in regards to wether he or she felt your presence genuinely helped in their private talent bonus negotiations, at the less at very least you’ll get a free lunch out of it…though I still think that if such private individual talent negotiations where to ever be commonly conduct through the Guild it would be part of your TAG duties & services as our industry envoy...
In regards to Steves comment here posted on April 12, 2012 12:10:00 PM continued Part (2)
The problem I foresee is that you don’t want to get to the stage where you’re mico-managing too many individually & revising wages for everyone based on their game, there needs to be some tipping point. So how do we openly discern the top talent tier among us without bruising egos? Perhaps it should be put to an open review & voted by members every 6 month & those that incur enough votes or star power attributed to their work & dependability have such Guild moderated individual bonus negation services made available to them. Perhaps that’d be too pragmatic to work with temperamental creatures like us, but you never know. I ponder all this simply because form the individual; seeing a system in place & future rewards built up from a stable starting base would really help form a sense of community & network amongst this old guild, which in general seems a bit lacking & I’m sure everyone [including you TAG men] feel a certain level of frustration with folk in general because of the lack of something more evident to form a strong & lasting community with someone to engage one another around. I know it might sound a bit wonk, but do you see at what I’m getting at?
Another thing I hope for as part of future dealings the Guild might be able to arrange with studios is to including a way to go about discussing & consistently measuring the amounts of overtime folks work as part of on location in studio reviews as a way to solve how often & why folks are working any overtime, with guild reps present for these studio based reviews & discussing if anything can fairly be done about it from the point of both sides. Crunch time & the crunchers Vs the crunchies & how to maintain a healthy balance for both staff and studio. Rather than have artists dishevelledly trying to organise one another to loosely pitch up to a town hall guild meetings from a variety of different locations & vocations and vent at the TAG men and go away feeling the whole ordeal was an unresponsive event. Town hall meetins should still exist, but for broader community based purposes. While on site at studio occurring as a regular form of review similar to art or shot reviews but every, lets say 2 - 3 months. I feel this would be a far more direct & repeatable process in helping to solve & air specific conditions & problems and such things would be made known to both artists & studio management far more directly & openly discussed & kept in house rather than through some form of broken telephone system with TAG reps pitching up for a discussion with the studio based on consultations & grumblings about the conditions at their shop.
The things I’m suggesting are just spitballing ideas that might help lighten any unease while also helping to form a stronger guild community.
Thanks for taking the time to read & consider some of these ideas & hopefully nurturing a discussion on how we could perhaps revise & implement them.
Sorry Steve, I don’t think it would be fair if you were to get any form of commission for such sit-ins as an individuals personal mediator.
To let you know, as union rep I can't negotiate individual contracts. I'm not a lawyer, nor an agent.
I'm happy to offer suggestions, give artists advice on negotiating strategies. What's a no-no is me negotiating with an employer on behalf of a single member.
Fair enough. Would it at all be possible for there to be personal Agents or Layers associated with or recommended by the Union that could act as direct mediators in such hypothetical instances so we’d at least have some form of this kind of support made readily available to members through TAG in some way.
Again, this hypothetical idea is more about TAG putting more tools on its belt, or hooks for members to hang their hats on if needed, and helps folk feel a greater sense of validity as union members, which would in return help reciprocate a greater sense of community with the old motto of “We’ve got your back”.
Post a Comment