VFX Community Protest at 2013 Oscars

[Charles]

Hollywood is full of self serving cowards. You really see it in the way this went down last night. The actors who are unionized and the musicians who are unionized and the audio techs who are unionized. All of them should be supporting the efforts of VFX artists.

They should have said HELL YES let them say it!

Instead they're just puppets of a corrupted system.

You see for yourselves what the Hollywood system is truly about!



TIME TO GET IT TOGETHER PEOPLE !!!

[SNAKEBITE]

Seems like a trend. Get unionized, loose your balls.

[skynet]

I don't know, maybe Hollywood studios are a sham run by bloodsuckers and the celebrities and others are just puppets that help keep everyone distracted. No?

Isn't it only about about money for them? The amount of crap that spews out of Hollywood should be proof enough, and the way they've been changing the rules and rigging the game so they can squeeze as much money as possible out of everyone. Everything's rigged everywhere you look. Not just in Hollywood.

Money and power has a way of making most humans void of all the things that are good.

Anyway, you might want to checkout some of the conversation going on over here:
More than 400 VFX artists protest at the Oscars...

And a couple other sites posted something about it.

guardian.co.uk: Oscars protest by visual effects workers over Life of Pi

Is The VFX Industry Going Extinct? The Dark Shadow Of Rythm & Hues

BTW: I thought Paranorman was much better than Brave.

[SNAKEBITE]

I hear all that, Skynet. To think that all of this is NOT designed would be naive. They don't care about integrity, its about making money...and, on a personal perception, I believe its about making you dumb too. They want to control what we consume and that includes what we watch and listen to.

[Charles]

Go Green!

Notice the sudden proliferation of green avatars on Facebook?

That's cuz without VFX artists all you've got is a big green screen!

Here ya go. Feel free to use it...

GoGreen.jpg (19.14 KiB) Viewed 151 times

[Greg B]

I saw the Rhythm & Hues people accepting their awards and they guy who went over the time limit who started complaining.

The Oscars isn't where you do that. It's an award ceremony that far too often in the past people used as a platform for there political or religious or personal bullshit. I can see if the movie winning the award covered a topic like exploitation or whatever, but if you're getting an award don't foul up the night with your foolishness.

Rhythm & Hues has no one to blame but themselves. They ought to take responsibility and face reality that no one is going to come to their rescue but themselves with solid administrative policy that protects themselves. In the past 12 years we've seen nothing less than the biggest scandals in every walk of life from politics to military to religion to banking to real estate and now the medical industry. Damn near half the population of the U.S. is on assistance or broke and you expect people to leap to the aid of a Hollywood special effects company?

Don't hold your breath.

I was around when Soft Image was debuting and my pal Tony was Microsoft's top seller of the product. Used to cost an arm and a leg and you had to use those Silicon Graphic work stations. We figured the prices for special effects would go down over the coming years and they didn't and got bloated. Now there's outsourcing? I wonder why?

I'm not going over this again and again. Stockholders/shareholders again are the enemy. Companies make them a profit or they get sued.

Remember, Michael Eisner only got fired because of one reason: The company's stats dropped.

That's the bottom line.

[Charles]

I'd like to add that we should ALL take more responsibility for ourselves and learn to not be as dependent upon a system that trains us to be dependent.

A career that's based entirely upon a work for hire model is inherently vulnerable. Especially when you're creating content for others.

You can be DEPENDENT or you can work towards being more INDEPENDENT. Even if you have a full time job you can parlay your professional experience and your creativity in ways that can supplement what you do. Many people in animation and other areas have been doing this for a long time with success. I know of artists and animators who have no professional experience at all and have huge online followings that support them. They don't want to be working 80 hours a week with no overtime in an industry that has as many problems as VFX. Instead they're developing their franchise.

The model of work for hire without residuals, profit sharing or equity participation of any kind is simply not the way to go today and it shouldn't be something that the creative community embraces with the mindset that they're going to be okay in such a dysfunctional system.

Think about it folks!

http://www.unitedwebrand.org/

https://www.facebook.com/UnitedWeBrand

[Charles]

Well they did it again! The video of the blatant [youtube][/youtube]disrespect of the VFX community at the 2013 Oscars has been taken down from YouTube. Let's try again.

The truth will set us free...

[Greg B]

What disrespect???

Dude wouldn't shut up. He thanked everyone except Santa Claus and then after going over his allotted time he then brings up Rhythm & Hues. If it was that important to him he should have started off with that protest.

[SNAKEBITE]

I agree with Greg.

We also forget that the VFX community profited largely off other jobs being lost so their field could emerge. Remember when VFX meant hand drawn animation....practical FX...animal trainers. Set builders. Stunt drivers ETC.

VFX as of now was purely created for bottom line reasons, why would they be untouchable?

Not to mention they are obligated to their stock and share holders to show profit margins rise by any means necessary. The way our country, money and commerce is set up is corrupt. Good luck trying to change everyone.

Content is king, get back to creating it! The only way the audience will care.

[Charles]

Those are good points. I was thinking the same thing. Set designers, carpenters, stunt men and women, even cell painters in animation all lost out to more efficient and powerful technologies. No tears shed for these people when they were on the way out.

The VFX situation is complex. What it all underscores for me is how unappealing Hollywood has become.

VFX workers are creating content that they have no equity participation in. Even union membership won't fix this or even address it. Meanwhile an obscure but talented artist someplace other than here has just wrapped up a crowdfunding campaign for a project they own and control and they don't have to deal with any of this.

Work for hire is nice when you've got it but it ultimately becomes a dead end street in this biz.

Own your work. Don't let it own you.

I still support these guys even though they don't support us. I'd rather see them win than Hollywood.

[ChanceRaz]

http://bit.ly/Y4pPul <---- Learn exactly what is going on in the VFX biz and WHY!

Here's a great article blurb and sound bite (go to the site and click Listen - upper right) that explain (and tend to agree with) this perspective on the VFX plight. Definitely worth the 11-minute listen! Accurate and informative!! Let's educate ourselves!!!


When In Doubt,
Chance It!

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