The Tragic Plight of Hollywood VFX Sweatshops is from a retweet by @alba of a tweet from Erik Van Horn
It's a posting on sinisthesia.blogspot.com and is worthwhile read for anyone in the vfx industry or thinking about getting in the vfx industry.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
The Tragic Plight of Hollywood VFX Sweatshops
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scott, you can't be taking this guy's post seriously. His crux is that foreign third world studios are comparable to california vfx studios at a tenth of cost. Maybe for a select few studios (imagi and lucasfilm, which are not third world but in asia, r&h's india branch) this might hold up, but the vast majority have no real quality yet (and lucasfilm is not 'cheap', even if billed internally). In another ten years, maybe the quality gap will lessen; but believe me, in ten years the cost of outsourcing will not be as enticing as now, it'll be more like 50-75% of us costs, and then it's almost pointless to go there and deal with the overhead of outsourcing.
ReplyDeletethe contractions and expansions of our industry are natural. Not having a union only hurts workers. At the very least we should have a california guild that will provide portable health insurance with membership (if health care is a 'right' it shouldn't be subject to qualification as in the ves).
-k
I would agree we're not there yet but there are obviously a lot of developments that seem to be accelerating. It's always interesting to hear different viewpoints from people within the industry. Like you'd like to see real healthcare and other benefits for VFx artists.
ReplyDeletePart of the issue is more perceived quality levels and where that balance is of cost versus quality from the studio and audience viewpoint.
I think the first post above hits the nail right on the head.
ReplyDeleteThe countries most threatened by outsourcing are countries like China and India. While the quality does improve, its not in line with the rise in costs. I'll write a post about it.
Regardless, it's great to see more vfx artists openly writing about the industry. Once we exchange these thoughts, we can better correct the record as to what is really going on.