IATSE: Visual Effects (VFX) workers for Saturday Night Live (SNL) are unionizing with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), and have won official recognition of their union, IATSE announced Monday. The group includes sixteen VFX Artists and VFX Leads who unanimously signed cards indicating their support of unionizing with IATSE and whose labor is central to making Saturday Night Live’s pre-recorded digital shorts pop.
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It is super interesting to note the dichotomy between all the workers absolutely loving their work but also recognizing the fact that they are extremely overworked and have very high demands with not enough time to complete those demands. This article really made me think about what it will be like to work in the entertainment industry and whether my love for the work and the art will overcome harsh working conditions. I feel like the answer is obviously yes because in order to go into the industry and survive, you have to love the work but I wonder if I am ever going to find a job that I would work crazy crazy hours for and still keep my love for the art. It is also amazing that the VMD department was the only department that had not unionized and that they only recently demanded a voice at the table. If I were them, conditions allowing, I would have tried to unionize a long long time ago seeing that the rest of the departments had unions and that my department was the only one that had not unionized.
I really think that Saturday Night Live is such a funny show, but it requires so much on the technical side of things. I think it is really great that the visual effects team is unionizing because they really are the backbone of this show. It takes a village, it really does so it is great that these workers are using their voice! All 16 members of this crew and now members of IATSE, which is the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. Personally, I am super interested in working with Film, movies, and live television so reading this article made me question this dream, and I still would say I’m still super eager about pursuing something like that. I also want to learn more about visual effects and video media design, so I hope that I can learn that sometime in the future. But, I am really happy that these 16 members working on SNL got to unionize!
I can really connect with the SNL workers’ push for recognition within their union. My neighbor, who writes for SNL, was recently out of work during the 2023 strikes that had affected so many in the entertainment industry. Seeing him go through this uncertainty of the strikes was a big reminder of how important it is for everyone to have access to the pay they deserve, whether behind the scenes or on the screen, its so important to have fair treatment. For the VFX team, it’s clear they’re not just making cool effects they’re putting in long, intense hours to help bring SNL’s sketches to life under this major pressure putting up a different show every week is so hard and I know there working them to the bone, and sometimes with just hours to deliver complex work. When they say they’re the last group at SNL without union representation, it’s eye-opening. Everyone involved in putting on a show like this deserves a stable career with fair pay and reliable healthcare.
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