Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Merry VFX Christmas!

VFX Soldier's campaign to end subsidies in the visual effects industry met its first financial goal yesterday around 3:00pm!

As previously mentioned, Soldier launched a crowd-funded campaign to:
challenge and mitigate subsidies that violate international trade agreements.
This campaign has been broken into stages and each stage will have a funding goal. The now-funded first stage will create a feasibility study that will determine what, if any, course of action can be taken to effectively attack these subsidies.

The campaign was briefly stopped by the crowd-funding website, Indiegogo for a few days. Solider explains that the website was seeking clarity on some matters of importance that led to the addition of this paragraph to the campaigns funding page:
Who Is The Law Firm's Client?

We have resolved Indiegogo issues and the Campaign to End VFX Subsidies is now back on-line. In response to their diligence, we have clarified that the law firm is preparing a feasibility study with VFX Soldier as its client so that it receives direction from one client and does not have independent attorney-client relationships with each contributor to the campaign. Once the feasibility study is completed by the firm, that work product will be transmitted to the client, VFX Soldier. If and when, as a result of the feasibility study, VFX Soldier and the law firm determine that there is legal action that is worth pursuing, those parties will reevaluate the representation, redefine its scope, and, potentially, after consultation with any appropriate additional parties, redefine who the law firm's client is for the next stage.

The fact that the first stage reached its funding goal so quickly shows that the this "race to the bottom" now faces its biggest fight yet. The realities of these subsidies, how they are funded and who really benefits, are starting to be understood by the artists and employees who are suffering their effects. These visual effects professionals now have the chance to act, in solidarity, to make lasting and positive changes to the field they've chosen to make their careers.

Working collectively to establish working standards and conditions that the professional has a voice in forming?! Hmmm .. I think I've heard that somewhere before ..

http://vfxunion.com

2 comments:

Staloren said...

Couple of questions come to mind.

(a) I wonder how the funding will go for the later stages. I don't imagine it will be able to meet the future goals as they will become even more expensive as they move further in the process. Unless the attorney's can work on some sort of contingency basis.

(b) Wont VFX Soldiers identity be revealed in this process? How is he going to stay anonymous? He is either going to have to back out or reveal.

Steven Kaplan said...

a) I would imagine that you are correct in your assumption. The following stages will most likely be more expensive.

b) To my knowledge, Soldier's identity remains hidden. There was some speculation as that being the cause of concern Indiegogo had with the campaign. However, according to the additional information given when the project resumed, that was not the case.

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