Thursday, September 13, 2012
Visual-Effects Artists Fear Reprisal If They Voice Support For Unionization
ibtimes.com: A lot has changed in the visual-effects industry since 1902, when Georges Méliès shot a fake rocket into a man's face for the pioneering science-fiction film "A Trip to the Moon." But perhaps the biggest change is where visual effects now stand on the box-office totem pole. The wattage of star power has long been on the wane, and today's young moviegoers line up not for big names, but for big effects.
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7 comments:
As a student, I am clearly not a member of AEA, or any other entertainment industry union, and of course am subject to the whims of the people who hire me. I don't get benefits, but short term contracts that a theatre company doesn't have to renew for me. This has happened where I was working with a theatre company, and without warning they didn't give me any new contracts, and soon I found myself without a job. This was devastating, but nothing life changing, I was still in high school, living at home. But the fact that Sony is pulling that with the visual effects artists is ridiculous. If I had lost those contracts while living on my own without a backup plan and without warning, I'd be screwed, just like the un-unionized visual effects artists are right now. I hope these people can unionize very soon; no one deserves deplorable working conditions.
I want to address the first part of this post. Although it maybe that the mass market is only interested in films with advanced special effects that does not mean that there will not be an important market for films with higher quality actors. I think that the people who watch the most films probably are not as interested in flashy special effects. So perhaps the market for Visual-Effects Artists is not a important and growing as it might seem at first glance.
I am learning much more from these articles than I had anticipated I would. I am once again shocked that there is not already a union for Visual effects artist to join. I believe that is extremely unfair especially with how popular those effects are these days. Akiva Id have to disagree with you, especially with films like Avitar around which has a seriously overdone plot, but millions came to the theaters just because the visual effects were so amazing. I feel that visual effect artist do just as much work as all the other artists that work on film and they deserve to be compensated for that work just as much as everyone else. And as far as unions disrupting the "the best artist gets the job" concept I dont really think that will be the case. First of all many of the other artistic fields in film are moving forward just as quickly and all those artist are unionized. Also even though there are unions for most every type of film and theatre artist out there, there is still non union work available to those who want it.
I agree with Akiva and April in that I was also surprised that VFX people were not already apart of a union. But then I remembered that VFX is relatively new and has been riding a wave of success that is only picking up pace. These artists are getting great jobs and are constantly working, organizing themselves has not come naturally (yet). Theatre people have been around for centuries, it makes sense that they would evolve and come together. VFX people will get there eventually.
The market for these guys is ever expanding as people find new ways to utilize these talents. Hopefully they will not continue to be abused. If they grow in numbers, which i believe they will, then there will be an even stronger need to organize themselves.
So long as Industrial Light & Magic run the show of Visual Effects (and make no mistake, they DO) the "little people" who toil and do most of the trench-digging will fear unionizing. But if movie-making blockbusters continues in this trend, they will become a force to be reckoned with, nevertheless. It might not happen this year, but it will. It is inevitable and it is only fair.
It does seem a bit ridiculous that the VFX industry has not been unionized yet, though given how important reputation and word of mouth are to getting jobs in the entertainment industry, perhaps it is not all that surprising. It is good to see that SupiUnion is meeting with IATSE to start moving VFX down the unionization path. I am curious about what VFX unionization could potentially mean for the movie industry. If hiring visual effects workers becomes more expensive, does that mean that we will see a dip in the production of movies that employ extensive use of visual effects? Is that perhaps a good thing? Maybe making visual effects a more expensive proposition would force directors to think harder about whether or not they actually need all of the excessive visual glamor they had been planning on, or if they could get away with a more creative, less expensive option.
It is shocking that visual effects artists are working in such abysmal conditions. These cinema artists are of utmost importance to the movie industry; without them, blockbusters such as the above mentioned "The Amazing Spiderman" would never have been able to make it to the big screen. I am ecstatic that the first step toward unionization has finally been taken, and I wish the artists all the best in procuring the benefits and protection they most definitely deserve.
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