... A group of visual effects companies -- representing businesses from around the world -- met on Thursday to discuss struggling business and the potential for a trade association.
Following the meeting, the companies said in a group statement: “Is a VFX industry trade association in our future? It's still too soon to say. But, an informal meeting to explore the possible formation of a trade association for VFX companies did take place. The assembled group discussed the current interest in, and potential benefits of, having such an association. We plan on continuing that dialog.”
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Exploration is a fine thing. But at some point, town and cities need to be built, and crops planted. Everyone with functioning frontal lobes knows what the problems are:
A) Studios (mostly owned by fine, entertainment conglomerates) make big, flossy films that require lots of visual effects.
B) Studios put the effects out for bid among various VFX subcontractors.
C) VFX subcontractors, in the same way piranhas feed on floating cow carcasses, go into a frenzy of bidding.
D) Studios choose the best bids (which usually have tissue-thin profit margins).
E) Work commences. Skilled digital artists get squeezed ... and/or paid late.
F) Dazzling visual effects are created. And one more VFX company goes belly-up when its tiny profit turns into a loss.
This is the way it's been since I started paying attention in the mid 1990s, although there was a brief detour from this business model. (Late in the last millenium, most of the majors took a run at setting up their own studio visual effects shops in-house. They quickly discovered that doing effects this way cost an arm and two legs -- what with studio overhead and all -- so most quickly exited the business.)
From that time to this, sub-contracting visual effects work in the least expensive way possible has been the thought for the day, every day. It's been wonderfully cost-effective for movie companies, but shitty for everybody else (from VFX houses to the boys and girls slaving away in front of the computers). And now, of course, conglomerats cheerfuly chase tax subsidies and lower wages around the globe.
Everybody says it has to change, and that "something must be done!" But I'm damned if I know the best way to go about the changing. Maybe if some tent pole projects blow up and cost studios major money, corporate hearts and minds will be changed. Maybe if there are some riots in the streets. I always take solace in the wisdome of Rober Miller:
"Everything changes a little and it should.
Good ain't forever and bad ain't for good."
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2 comments:
I think the reason the vfx companies are stalling is because the owners themselves aren't lising their shirts, just the workers and the business. Biz goes bankrupt, but the personal wealth of the owner is protected while the artist's last month wages disappear. Its a great way to exit a biz because vfx is notoriously volatile. You can hang a shingle, starve the company, line your pockets, hide the profits from your other biz in the red ink of your vfx biz, until its time to punch out.
Thats why a trade org is bad for the vfx "business". It would mean you want a sustainable biz, not a tax shelter.
What you say sounds about right.
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