Animation Guilde -Persuasion

The Animation Guild Blog has a posting regarding their union.

Reworking Blog

Reworking the blog and updating the template. Will have to restore many things so it may be awhile.

More on VFX Time Crunch

fxguide
has a follow up to the Variety article on the crushing post-production schedules for visual effects. This was touched on in my Wasting Time post.

The problem here is the studios are making very expensive movies and want to reduce the amount of time they’re paying interest on what is essentially a huge loan. Since they can’t shoot in any less time, especially with a lot of locations and stunts, the burden falls to post-production and primarily to visual effects.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact visual effects are now the fix-it step for the filmmakers. During the course of production it’s now common for those involved to pass their problems off to the visual effects team.

“We don’t have time to move that big crane in the background.”
“Do we have to move that 12 by 12 silk? Can’t you just paint it out?”
Speaking about a large object in the middle of the shot “Would it help if we painted it green?”
“We don’t have the right eye contacts. You’ll have to fix it.”
“We haven’t decided what location this scene plays in so we’ll have to shoot it bluescreen and figure it out later.”
“It’s not working so you guys will have to fix it later. We don’t have time to do fix it now.” (Referring to a stunt, prop or practical special effects)
“You guys can remove the (rain, snow, sun, shadows, etc) right?”
“We can’t afford to do that as planned. (alternate: We don’t have time to do that.) You’ll have to do in post.”
“Isn’t that easy to do? You have computers. It’s got to be a touch of a button now a days.”
“It was never built to do that. You guys will have to make that part move.”
“I know we promised to never to look that way but that’s how it goes.”
“You’ll have to extend the top and bottom of set since they didn’t get the larger stage.”

All of these would be funny if they weren’t real quotes from a shooting set. The VFX supervisor and producer raise the issues (cost, time, quality) frequently onto deaf ears.

Everyone from the production designer to the wig person to the production manager may pass their time or budget limitations to the visual effects people. In the end they come out looking like heroes for finishing on time and budget. Some of the production people even get bonuses for accomplishing this. Unfortunately the buck stops at the door to the visual effects team. There’s no one we can pass the problem on to. Also note that any budget or time savings production gets from doing this is not passed on the visual effects budget. Ultimately it comes out of the same overall budget but for accounting reasons their separate.

Months later when some of production people see the final shots they will have forgotten that they didn’t allow time to shoot that sequence correctly or that you saved their production schedule.

So at this point the visual effects supervisor has to explain to his vfx team and the studio vfx producer they now have another 100-200 shots to do and the pre-planning that was done for some sequences was tossed out and will now have to be done using plates that were shot in the worst conditions. (such as FG bluescreen with fictional lighting and angles to match BG plates done later) Personally I push for less shots done well than a lot of shots done poorly.

As long as the studios make money on the films under compressed time constraints and qulaity isn't the highest thing on the directo's list they will continue to compress the schedules more and more.
It won’t surprise me in the next 2 years if a big tentpole vfx film has to have its release date postponed or to be released with major vfx problems clearly evident to average the audience. And of course the visual effects people will be to blame.

Should the visual effects people be the ones to bare the brunt of the studio money and time issues and be forced to sacrifice their time and family life?

The reason most of us got into visual effects was to create great work and because it was fun. If that’s now boiling down to trying to crank out as much work as possible with lower quality the fun factor will certainly be gone.

Time's a wasting

Click on the Post title above to go to the Variety article on the time the studios allow for VFX on feature films.

Some film producers like to brag how little time they have and how close they came to finishing right before the release of the last movie. Personally I look at that as a sign of poor planning.

What the article doesn't really address much is the difference between planned and unplanned work. If you have 3-4 months of post time but it's all prepped and ready to go (models are built, R&D done, concepts are done,locked sequences from editorial, etc) then you have a fighting chance of getting good work done. Unfortuantely if the entire film edit is being revised on a daily basis and there are major concepts (look of creature, key effects, etc) that the director still hasn't nailed down, then it's going to be a rough ride. It gets worse if the studio decides they want to have creative control in the last 2 or 3 months.

The studios first lock in a release date and then drag their feet on giving the final approvals. Many of the production departments and shooting schedules continue as always so the post production phase is where things are compressed.

With the increase in number of vfx shots and the complexity of shots the studios and directors end up hurting their own product. Time = quality. With vfx there's a direct correlation in most cases between the quality of the work and the amount of time available to adjust the shot. Note that this applies to shooting schedules as well, that's why most features aren't shot in 2 weeks. Compressing the schedule may reduced the post production overhead but the cost in overtime and the cost of throwing everything at it (including many new shops and people) surpasses these by an order of magnitude. And studios wonder why vfx cost as much as they do. If you have 100 people at a vfx vender who now have to have 200 people working 90 hour weeks to complete the changes on time it's going to cost more.

At the end of the day the less time the studios provide the higher the cost and the lower the product quality.
It takes a strong director and producer to get the work done correctly in a time or budget limited way.

Related post
VFX Schedules

Spring cleaning

I'm doing a bit of adjustments to the blog as time permits to make it more useful.
On the left I've included permanent links to the main effects postings to make them easier to find.
I've put key tags to all (most?) so you can click on the tags at the bottom of a post and it will display related postings.
There also some more crew gear and additions to the book lists.

Topics?

I'm writing up some more podcasts and articles.
Are there specific topics people want me to be covering so I can try to prioritize them?

Preferences regarding podcast vs written articles?

Just post as comments and I'll try to sift through them.

Thanks.

Blogger outage

Blogger had a major outage the last couple of days so this web site was unavailable. Sorry about that. I'll hopefully be able to start posting new podcasts in a week or so.

More Transcripts

I've added transcripts for the November podcasts (Bidding and Pre-production, Filming, Moving Camera

Server down

Well I switched to a new provider over the holidays but it appears the server is down.
Sorry, looks like I may be moving again.
Anyone have any experience with http://www.dreamhost.com/ or other ISP that can provide service, storage and bandwidth?
Thanks.

Bandwidth issues

Evidently the podcasts have been doing too well. My service provider has warned me that I may be exceeding their bandwidth so I may have to move the files elsewhere. If you have suggestions for responsive web service providers that provide large storage and large bandwidth (without breaking the bank) let me know via email. You can click on profile on right and click on email.

[My service provider stopped my file transfers. I'm hoping to have podcasts available again after midnight tonight. I've had to remove the video cast for now]

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays to all.

I'm working on a video cast and had hoped to have it up by now but it'll probably be a few more days.

Questions for Listeners

Now that I've posted a few podcasts I thought I'd check to see how well it's working for listeners.

Do you stop by these pages much? I publish occasional non-podcast material (such as this) and wanted to see if it was worthwhile.

How are the length of the podcasts? Is 30 minutes too long?

Index-
I listed the times for the sections in the last podcast. Did you notice this in the description of your podcast application? Was this useful?
I can add actual chapter markers for ipods/itunes but this is an Apple format that's not readable by most other devices. I'd rather not post 2 versions.

I reduced the bit rate of the last podcast so it's less than 1/2 the file size. This should make it easier to fiton devices and faster to download. Is the quality still ok?

Thanks.

Update

Hoping to get the next podcast uploaded tomorrow.

I've started listing this site on various podcast directories. iTunes kicked it back for some reason and their system seems to be broken so I've been unable to resubmit it. Those of you with iTunes will have to manually add the feed for now. Sorry.

As mentioned post comments, suggestions or questions here or send me email to effectsNOSPAMcorner@mac.com (remove NOSPAM when sending)

I'm considering posting the transcripts of the podcasts here if people are interested.

Welcome

Welcome to the Effects Corner.
I'll try to cover creative, technical and business aspects of Visual Effects.

I'm working on the podcasts and hoping to have those posted soon.

If you have questions you can post them in the comments and I'll try to incorporate answers in the blog/podcast.