The Impact of Visual Effects Subsidies

The Impact of Visual Effects Subsidies 

This was a post in regard to a conversation and postings on a mailing list.  I'm paraphrasing the original comments here so these are not the true quotes. I've also augmented it based on some of the discussions that followed.

Steady Employment

"While subsidies are a problem, they're not nearly as big of issue as people make them out to be.  What we really need is need is enough profits to provide steady employment and not lay people off. "

While it's a nice idea, even Hollywood hasn't employed people on staff since at least the 1940's.  The film factories used to have production people move from project to project but those days are long gone. Films, television and commercials are done on a project by project basis. Crews are hired, work the length of the project and then are laid off. The studios do not continue to pay the crews once the project is done.

No matter how much profit a vfx company may make, it will lay people off if they don't have work to do. Even places like ILM would routinely lay off half the people working there since they weren't on projects. Now if a vfx company has a contract for another project and think they can put workers to productive use in a relatively short time then they will be willing to hold on to them for that short duration. There is of course cost involved every time they have to hire someone, train them, get them up to speed, etc. But that cost is unlikely to be enough for them to hold onto the majority of people for months at a time with no specific projects or tasks.

That's how visual effects was done. With things like Harry Potter when there was a known amount of work coming in and where places in the UK were booked for 2 years in advance (in part thanks to subsidies), people got the idea that that would continue and that they were on staff. [Note that some people in subsidized areas take these things personally. I've been in the room with studio executives, vfx company managers and others. In many cases the studios don't even request a bid from a non-subsidized company. This is in no way reflects on the capabilities of people or companies in these areas, simply what has happened and continues to happen regarding the business aspects. That's the reality and that's what I'm reporting.] But since vfx is a service business and film are not scheduled based on the whims of the vfx companies, the work will continue as feast or famine. That's how projects work.

We don't make widgets at a set rate with a constant demand. We don't work in retail where there's a reasonably consistent amount of work all the time with thousands of customers. We're more like the workers at a summer park that have seasons where they hire people and seasons where they will let them go.

If management is on the ball and the stars align, then they can get in projects and try to adjust schedules to keep crews moving from one project to another but that's more of the exception than the rule.

The only places with some real control over their work flow are animation studios which control the creation of the work, the amount of work and the scheduling. And even that isn't a given if there are market issues (a film does poorly) or if an internal project gets canned, people are laid off.

The places that don't lay off people are even more likely to go under. The burn rate for hundreds of people is staggering and unless that's being compensated in some major way, it will bring a company to it's knees.

Subsidies Imapct
So while the subsidies weren't necessarily the main reason for DD and R&H problems they certainly played a role.

DD went under because the CEO saw how little margins they were making in vfx and his idea was to expand out into other related areas. Get local governments to fund much of it. Take a % of a feature film, invest in making your own animation content, start up a school, get into medical & military related media. In the end there wasn't enough real funding to cover all of that and it takes time.

R&H suffered from studios pulling work, among other things.

So why do vfx companies have terrible margins and weak contracts? Why do they have so little leverage?

vfx companies spend up to a million dollars setting up facilities in places like Vancouver, Montreal, etc.  Why do they do that, especially if money is tight? It would make sense if they were a retail chain and could get new customers. It would make sense to a mining or lumber companying wishing to access new resources. vfx have no new customers in subsidized areas. They have no more resources in subsidized areas. The only reason they setup shops there is because they are subsidized and the few clients they have demand it.

The subsidizes don't create more work, they merely spread the work around based on politics, not on efficiency. The subsidies encourage more training and local employment in the subsidized areas so you end up with more workers than the global vfx industry can support. And those workers will be fine until the subsidies in that area are reduced or another place offers greater subsidies. And that will happen just as Michigan saw with Louisiana and just as BC and UK are seeing with Toronto and Montreal. So now you see the erosion of worker wages. And those companies that expanded to the subsidized areas then have even more workers on their payroll, meaning trying to maintain staffing while low on projects becomes even more impossible.

How do California based companies such as DD and R&H compete for work? How do they lower their costs by the 60%* it may take just to match another governments subsidies? They lower their prices to the bone and then some. Add this type of competition along with the cost of opening branches all of the world and you can start to see why vfx companies are becoming weaker and weaker.

[* People ask where the 60% comes from and assume I'm making it up. It comes from the cumulative incentives offered in some of the Canadian provinces if you study their own government documents. Note this is for visual effects work done and includes things like DAVE in BC.

Disney covered some of this at the VES Production summit:
They focused on Canada where different region have different incentives. And many of the types of incentives add up. (i.e. they may have a labor incentive, a production incentive, etc so these can be  cumulative to a large amount)

"Using the example of a $1 million dollar project – in BC a production could get back $379,000. In Ontario credits can be combined to return $437,000 and in Quebec the return rises over 50% to $572,000." (from fxguide article and my notes)

So that's 57% from Disney estimates. It's also covered in the VES White paper on the state of the industry. While you can argue about the precise percentage and the requirements,  in any case it's a substantial amount, much more than simply a sales tax rebate. And still a major percentage to try to compete against.]

Subsidies encourage even more competition than would have resulted from technology and normal evolution. Free money being offered by governments has a way of distorting markets to no advantage except the final recipients. Companies in some area have grown much larger than they would have if left to their own. More people jump into the fray when they see free money. So now you have so many vfx companies that they will all underbid their actual costs in an attempt to stay in the game. And they are covering their crew costs, or at least attempting to do so, while being paid less than it actually costs them. How in the world are companies supposed to provide stable, continuous work to all their employees between projects when they can't even make profits while working on projects? And the sad part is most vfx companies are operating in the red, even those in subsidized areas.

There is a limited, finite amount of work so it's impossible to employ all the people currently in vfx all the time. The subsidies have encouraged more companies and workers than the industry can really support.

Is there little wonder why then vfx companies have so small of margins? Or that they have weak contracts and no leverage? The studios have plenty of other subsidies and companies to threaten any one vfx company with.

So no, subsidies didn't cause DD and R&H to go out of business but when you're in a weakened state of running in the red and trying to compete, the smallest bump may be your last. And this applies to vfx companies around the world. How long can any company operate in the red? Some in the UK have been doing it for at least the last couple of years. How stable do you think it is in subsidized areas where 75% work is there only be because of subsidies? Subsidies are no guarantee of stable work. The subsidies are controlled by the whim of politicians in all areas and as we know that can change quickly. And how stable do you think it is working for companies operating in the red year after year? At some point their owners or creditors will say enough is enough and close the company without warning or notice. The next DD or R&H can happen anytime, anywhere. The subsidies have created a very fragile industry and for those who think if only the companies made a little more profit and kept all their workers employed during the slow times I suggest you start looking at the actual situations, including cause and effect.

Film Production
So why have most Hollywood film crews (Directors, writers, camera, grip, sound, etc) been able to make being employed project to project work in the past? Even without the stability of permanent work at one studio? Because there was a concentration of studios in one area and each had a variety of projects in different phases at any one time. With a number of sources of employment it was likely a new opportunity would start up in a reasonable amount of time. Work on a feature and wrap that (be laid off). A couple of weeks later you may get 2 days of a commercial shoot.  Then maybe off a couple of months and then get work on a television project that may last 6 months. If you're lucky and the tv show gets picked up then you may be off for a few months and know that a project is waiting for you at the end of that time.


Some people have stated that I'm advocating for project based hires. I'm simply documenting that the work in reality is project based. We do service work for studios who do not maintain a consistent level of output of films, let alone visual effects shots. That's simply the nature of the business for better or worse. It's possible on television vfx to have a little sense of the amount of work required per week and maintain the staff accordingly. But once the show wraps for the season and has no work coming in until it ramps up again I suspect most are given unpaid 'time off', if not laid off. When there is too little work at a company they can either go into debt quickly or they can lay people off.

It was also mentioned that vfx is special, because we do R&D and pipelines and other things that we should be employed continuously and not be hired like interchangeable grips. Why vfx professionals choose to view all the crew as grips is beyond me. Maybe why they see us all as technicians. You'll notice the directors, writers, cinematographers, production designers and many others are guns for hire as it were. I don't consider any of them interchangeable.  Right how most vfx companies do hold on to key people in management, R&D and even some in production if they decide they can't risk losing them. But just because you may want to work on the pipeline does not mean you're able to continue to pay everyone from roto to animation to TDs.

And the other thing to note about R&D is it was originally all R&D. Figuring out skeletons, facial animation, skinning, texturing, painting, etc all required work. Most places had to write code to do just about everything from animating to rendering to compositing. By now you can purchase or rent software that handles the majority of those tasks to a large extent. There's even project management, databases and render queue software to handle at least a percentage of the work used to done by the pipeline people. Water, fire, hair, fur and other speciality software are all available to some extent for purchase and the number of projects requiring speciality and custom software is shrinking. For a typical show is a large shop with 30 people in R&D (full time) going to be as inexpensive or as necessary as a team which simply buys their software with minimal R&D support?

Unions

The freelance project to project work process is one of the reasons  why there are film unions. So you can go from project to project and know that there will be some minimum standard all the employers have to meet. You know they all have to follow labor laws and union regulations. You also get continuous health care, pension and other benefits even though you could be working for a different employer every week. And that's also why most people involved in film crews are paid above average working rates, because they are not guaranteed full time employment. They are taking on some of the risk themselves. Yet those in the vfx industry accept their rates as the norm and expect full time permanent employment.

Locations
The concentration of both studios and film crews in a few specific areas made all of this type of freelancing possible. It was good for the studios since they didn't have to employ entire crews permanently. When they needed a crew they simply put out the word. It was good for film workers since they could reasonably find more work at other places.  There are reasons why this types of clustering happens in certain industries. There is a reason why there are places like NY Broadway or the London West End. You have a concentration of theaters, actors, directors, musicians, etc. There are other examples of other industries clustered in specific areas. These are eco systems that have developed overtime and are somewhat self correcting as the work ebb and flows. Throw into that balance subsidies where the work is literally forced to go elsewhere and you'll soon destroy it.

If you were a dentist or retail clerk, you could probably work just about anywhere. But if your career is in a specialized field, such as vfx, then chances are you will have to go to a few specific areas. It's hard to be a professional snow skier and live in Florida. You may love to have the state fund a ski resort and fund man made snow for it so you can live in a place you like and still work in your profession but most other industries don't have the luxury of governments throwing money at things that no corporation or business person would support.

So what happens when that same amount of work is now spread worldwide due to subsidies? Now each area is setup with less than enough work and film and vfx crews can no longer easily move from project to project. Instead of having a few concentrated areas of healthy business you now have many more which are all operating in a less than healthy and stable situation. More people have been trained and employed in a specialized business than the business can truly support.

Outsourcing
"If subsidies went away then we may be stuck with Fresno, Waco, or places in China doing the work to keep the labor costs low and we wouldn't be able to do anything about it."

More FUD. Studios do the work where they can get the quality and type of work they need, with little risk, with cost as a factor. Otherwise they'd be in China and India 100% now. And as the new owners of DD have said, most of the vfx work coming out of China now is very poor. We in vfx seem to be more than happy to make up boogeymen even when they don't exist. True, places like China and India will be getting better, especially since companies are more than happy to setup there and train their own replacements.

Subsidies also don't guarantee that they will be nice areas. Another  myth is that the current places that are king of the subsidy hill at the moment will always be the king of the hill. They will not be. Economics and politics at some point will move and shift that work and you will have absolutely no control over it. If a place that was the armpit of the world offered better subsidies and the studios thought they could make it work, then your job in Vancouver could be gone in a weeks time.

In terms of companies and people moving to Fresno or Waco - Seriously? Any business can look at some of these lower cost areas and know what it will truly cost to setup there in terms of time and money and it would take a very long time to  offset any costs, if at all. And unless there are a number of companies in the area then you don't have an eco system. In those cases you have to cover full employment even during times with few projects. Even ILM had difficulty getting people to come up to the bay area because they were the only game in town for awhile. Even better if vfx companies operated as businesses and refused to setup shops in locations that make no economic sense. And if workers took the same business stance and said no to these types of proposals.

Workers continue to undermine just how much power they have in these situations. The work is 100% dependent on the workers and yet we act like we have no leverage or say in anything. If the majority of workers simply said no, just like if the majority companies had enough guts to say no, then the industry could get back on track. But as long as there are companies and individuals more than willing to undervalue themselves and the rest of the industry, things won't change.

And you're right, there are other problems for the industry and removing subsidies won't solve everything. But subsidies are the largest problem the vfx industry faces. Anybody can come up with a very long list of problems in the vfx industry but many items on that list will be directly or indirectly caused by or linked to subsidies.

And yes, vfx companies could work more with studios and directors to do the work more efficiently. To reduce wasted time and money but again take a look at that situation.
Can a vfx company guarantee to be 60% more efficient so they can do the work less than a subsidized area? When that exact proposal has been made to studio heads, they say fine, make it more efficient in the subsidized area. And the subsidized areas offer something else - money in the bank which is much more alluring than talk about trimming costs and doing things more efficiently. A studio can call their bankers and say we have $100 million movie but Canada (or whatever country/state) has agreed to pay 60% of the costs. You (the bank) can fund a $100 million movie for just $40 million. The bank will say "Where do I sign?"

Take a look from your own perspective. You wish to have a house built. It can be built in a town a little closer and more convenient to work. And the contractor there has said he will work closely with you and can keep the costs down provided decisions are made. You don't know exactly how much savings you can make and you'll have to assume you'll need to get a loan from the bank for the full amount and pay it off.

Or the other option is to build the house in the next town. It's little more of hassle and a little further away but the town has offered to pay up to 60% of the cost of the house if you use contractors there!  No strings attached. You can go to the bank and tell them you're buying a $500,000 house for just $200,000. The appraisal shows it as a $500,000 house. Yet you only have to pay off $200,000 The bank will sign you up instantly. You could turn around tomorrow and sell it for the full amount and keep all the profit since the town has offered the money not as an investment but as a totally free gift to you. Free money is fun.

Summary
While there are a lot of problems in the vfx industry, the subsidies are top of the list. And that's the one thing we can't address as companies or as workers. We can work on business models, efficiencies and other issues but we have no control over subsidies. And yet that tends to trump all. vfxsoldier is the only one to have come up with a proposal to try to nullify subsidies so that the industry can become healthier and so companies can make a difference in their own future.

In regard to the business model solution, which could be a big win, which company will be proposing a new model (cost-plus?) to their clients? Because right now vfx companies have refused to join or create a trade association which could potentially have the clout to change the approach. Will a company attempt it on their own and will they have enough leverage to make it happen?


If anyone has other solutions for any of vfx issues please post them. We already have plenty of lists of problems.


Related posts
Visual Effects Tax Incentives / Subsidies
Risk and subsidies
Oh, the mess we’re in!
The Miracle of Visual Effects, will it continue?

DD cutting wages, VFX Union update

Hmm, maybe part of this should be done as a title crawl against a star field.

Digital Domain, one of the largest visual effects companies in the U.S. has been going through some rough times. They were purchased by an investor a few years ago and went public a year ago with the mentality of creating an animation group to make their own movies (the IP that everyone says will save a visual effects company) along with setting up a school for visual effects students in FLorida with students paying tuition to actually work for free on some of the projects Digital Domain Media Group was planning to make there.  They chose Florida because they (John Textor, head of DDMG) was able to talk the state and local governments to pay for much of this. And of course that all fell apart and the company went bankrupt... but not before they were able to sell the core of Digital Domain, it's visual effects company, to Galloping Horse (a media company from China) and Reliance (a huge company in India).

And of course this last week the employees there were given ultimatums to work at reduced salaries or consider themselves resigned. They have to decide by Monday. Evidently this applies to even those with contracts and at all ranges of jobs there. This occurred while they are working on large Hollywood projects.

Why was this done? I'm sure 'business' people in the acquiring companies looked at the numbers and wanted them to be even better. The easiest thing in the world to do for company management is to lower wages. That avoids the time and hassle about thinking about how to cut waste and how to be more efficient. Focus on the short term, ignore the long term issues. Forget the fact that the most important part of a visual effects company are the employees. Otherwise it's just a building with computers which anyone can setup.

I'm sure over a year ago most people working there thought everything was going reasonably. Not great and with need for improvement but at least they had jobs and DD was still in a reasonable place. No one would have predicted what actually happened this last year.

Those who signed on to work on the animation project and the 2D to 3D conversions and moved themselves and their families to Florida had no idea the rug would be pulled out from under them with no notice.

Those working at DD in Venice would have no idea that their company would go into bankruptcy and acquire new owners.

Those working at DD had no idea they'd be asked to reduce their wages out of the blue while working on a project.

I'm sure those working at Sony's New Mexico facility had little notice before that was closed. Or the Sony artists who were told they could work in Vancouver or quit.

And Double Negative recently laid off quite a number of people that didn't expect that to happen.

I think the key lesson here is no matter how safe you think you are, even if you're with a large company, even if you're in an area with plenty of film incentives, you may find the rug pulled from underneath you at anytime. You can't keep your head buried in the sand forever. You can't live in a magic bubble. Your incentives will not protect you forever.

Will you be willing to move to China and work in poor conditions at a fraction of your wages? Because that's where it's all headed at this point. The Chinese company that bought DD will be using it to train people to work in China.

And yet most of this seems to fall on deaf ears. According to many commentors on other forums they have no issue moving every year and dragging their families with them for no logical reason. Good luck with that.

In a short time most visual effects artists will have to make a decision if they haven't already.
Those at DD will have to make this decision by Monday.

1. Suck it up, roll with the punches and let the companies and studios disperse you randomly around the world for whatever wages and working conditions they choose.

2. Quit. Give up what you love. Go into something with more stability and less crazy hours.

3. Stand up and do something. Speak up. Group together. Stand together. Join a union. Think of better solutions.

Starting a visual effects company is not a solution.

Welcome to the new world order.

Site by and for Digitial Domain artists in regard to this issue

From VFXSoldier  Digital Domain pay cuts
From this blog VFX Artists don't need to be taken advantage of


DD Info from VFXSoldier
Digital Domain purchased
DDGM files for bankruptcy
Digital Domain financial problems
 From this blog:
Digital Domain plans to have paying students make up 30% of work force

Visual Effects Industry overview
Pass me the nail
Waiting
What Happened?

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Reminder for those in Southern California tomorrow:

Understanding Unions: The Good, The Bad & Unknown Of Forming A Visual Effects Collective Bargaining Organization


Be sure to RSVP at VES Event page


Saturday, December 1, 2012 from 9:30AM to 12:00PM
Los Angeles Film School Theater
6363 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028

Hopefully it will be clear and informative and not be rants about the auto industry and other chestnuts.


[Update 12/3/2012  fxGuide has a write up of the meeting. Video should be available at some time in future at the VES website for members. And yes, the auto industry was mentioned.]

Maybe they'll have pins tomorrow

Related:
Visual Effects Guilds
Visual Effects Union, Take 2
Unions, the Middle Class and Visual Effects
Using the nail
Unions, VFX working hours and environments
How do these things tie together?

Digital Domain plans to have paying students make up 30% of workforce

[Update: 9/15/2012 DD has now closed their Florida facility. Some of the classes have been put on hold and certainly students won't be working at the DD facility as planned. But the post is still useful read since it clarifies some of the attempts to take advantage of workers, students and the visual effects industry]


In case you haven’t already been made aware of this Digital Domain (DD) is starting up a school in Florida which is funded by the Florida State government. I won't do a detailed recap here since that's already more than well covered on other sites. And thanks to VXFSoldier from bringing this up.

For more info and to see an extraordinary video: (I urge you to read the comments as well since most commentors make valid points. Check out Dave Rand’s comments as well.)

DD "Free labor is much better than cheap labor"  - VFXSoldier
"Paying to work for free" business model  - VFXSoldier
Questions and Reactions  - VFXSoldier
LA Times on DD Institute  - VFXSoldier
Paying to work for free - Motionographer
CEO brags about exploiting animation students - CartoonBrew
Free labor! - TAG, Animation Guild
Working = money, right? - Canadian Animation Resources

DD will be making money off of the students ($105k tuition) in a for profit school (as other most for profits- turning out more visual effects graduates than there are openings). But the additional kicker is they setup a studio in Florida where 30% of the workforce will be made up of students.

For those who might think that would be good for the students and don’t see the harm:
1. it is against Federal law to have interns and others working for free doing work that is productive (i.e actually paying positions).

2. The reason this is a law because any business could simply staff up with non-paying positions (interns, students, experienced… doesn’t matter). There are enough people hungry for certain types of jobs that would be happy doing them for nothing. Businesses would be more than happy having free labor, even if it meant more poverty. That’s why there are also minimum wage laws. (unfortunately they’re still below the poverty line). In a perfect world businesses would be a balance of making great products or services, making money and treating people fairly. In the real world today the name is greed. In days past a mom and pop store tried to be responsible and to consider the consequences. Today most companies are owned by stock holders and investors who’s one and only focus is squeezing more of a return out of company. The CEOs and others in management fall in line so they can get their slice of the pie too. They take no responsibility for these types of actions and simply blame it on the shareholders.

3. These students are paying a lot of money to work there. So they’re not just working for free, they’re paying to work. Double bonus for Digital Domain to get paid by clients and workers.

4. Once it becomes possible for a visual effects company to staff up to 30% of their labor with students paying to do so, it’s possible for not only other visual effects companies to do so, but any other company to do so.

5. If 30% of the work force are students paying to work, why would companies hire people? Why should they hire you, an experienced visual effects worker, when they can get someone better than free?

6. This leads to the question of where all these graduates will be working. They’ve paid$105,000 to do this and likely taken out loans to do so. They expect to be hired since they’ve be taught specifically in visual effects. DD in Florida will already be staffed up. They have a steady stream of students paying every year so there will be little need for them to hire these graduates.

7. DD can now offer a 30% discount on any work done in Florida. Actually more than a 30% discount since they’re getting money from the students. How will other visual effects companies compete? Why starting their own students paying workforce of course!

In the end this means more imbalanced competion for both companies and workers.
This means lower of rates for all companies and all visual effects workers and actually creates less opportunities for new graduates. The only one to profit from this is DD and only in the short term. Florida will gain little and spent a great deal of tax money that could have been used productively.

To potential students:
There are much cheaper ways to become educated in visual effects if that’s what you want. There are online classes, books, DVD’s, etc. There’s no need to go 10’s of thousands of dollars in debt if all you want is visual effects education. If you want to get a college diploma that’s fine and serves it’s purpose but beware of those offering it.

Getting into visual effects is hard. The visual effects industry is going through some rough transitions currently. Be ready to move elsewhere. No school can guarantee employment.

All that stuff about getting credit on films, etc. - Forget it. These days politicians, CEOs and Hollywood produce far more BS than the world needs. Those of us who have been working for a while have seen far too many examples of unkept promises and sugar coating. Don’t be suckered for these.

The CEO is surprised that more visual effects workers aren’t jumping at the chance to pickup and move to Florida. They’re not jumping because most of us know the drill. The lure of working in another place with an unknown future. Sure, we’ll be more than happy to sell our homes, uproot our family, say goodbye to friends and move. And at the end of that project when they don’t have much work you’re laid off. And without many other visual effects companies in the area you’re forced to return to where you moved from. No thanks.
[Update: 9/10/2012 Unfortunately this came true. The DD studio in Florida has closed down and the workers there were laid off without warning and without severance pay. From what I gather most had moved there from other locations, many selling their homes. These unfortunate workers are now in a location without other similar jobs so they will likely have to move back to where they were or to another location. Moving is not cheap, especially if you have a house of furniture and possessions. And trying to find a new job in this industry is not easy. ]

The CEO actually talks about VFX being a dying industry and is expecting you to work on military or medical projects after graduating. This comes after they’ve sold you on the dream of working on Hollywood movies. Most of us got into visual effects because we wanted to create content and work on films and tv projects. While I applaud the use of visual effects technology to help with medical causes, you should be aware of the distinction. For an animator who wants to bring characters to life it’s a much different job if you’re animating a heart or military aircraft. The CEO makes the mistake that labor is simply a commodity. If you went to school to be a painter of fine art, would you be happy when the school says at the end: “Sorry, there’s not much call for fine artists but there is a large need for house painters. Enjoy it.”


Those who live in other countries may think this has nothing to do with them. As I’ve said before, we’re all connected at this stage. If there’s a major change in pay or working conditions somewhere in the world regarding visual effects, then it will likely affect you sooner than you think. That 30% discount that DD can now offer is on par with many tax incentives. That alone could shift the balance. 30% of labor that pays to work will cause a downward spiral in pay. And the company you work for and the studios will point that out and say that you will have to follow suit. “After all, we have to remain competitive”. And around it goes.

I urge all visual effects workers to step away from their workstations for a moment and check in with the rest of the world. There’s a lot going on. I know it’s great focusing on what you’re doing but there are large changes in progress throughout the world that will affect you and your future. You can’t simply ignore it all and hope it never affects you.

You should also educate yourself on unions and trade associations. Please don’t fall prey to the stereotypes or the paid for misinformation. There are pros and cons of each of these and you should be aware each has different goals.

Some of the things that are happening to the industry you work in, hopefully doing what you love, should make you angry. It should make you sit up and take notice. If that’s the case, make yourself heard. If you have thoughts, opinions, solutions, make yourself heard. If you know of problems let yourself be heard. The internet and social media has opened up and connected us in ways not possible before.

For those you would like to speak out about what DD is doing in Florida, contact and tell them what you think.

Commissioner of the Florida Department of Education: Commissioner@fldoe.org

Wage & Hour division of the Department Of Labor: http://www.dol.gov/whd/america...

Bonus: Should I work for free chart

Other sites of interest:
ImageWorks artists in support of a better VFX Industry - SPiUnion - info about unions and other things

Game of Aeron Chairs: A song of beer and pixels - tk1099 on vfx unions and movement

Supermodel sets up an Alliance with Bill of Rights and push for health care and better working conditions.
Initial story
Alliance site

In the last few months car washes, sandwich places and now supermodels are either unionizing or creating a group to at least represent them and help improve their situation.
What about us?