BSA324, Unsustainable VFX industry doc, 23 February, 2017

Holy cats!  Don't go into VFX.  This documentary exposes the horrible conditions that exist in the VFX industry, which is increasingly called upon to generate huge amounts of Hollywood movies, for the artists and studios.  Rhythm and Hues MADE "Life of Pi" but went bankrupt afterwards.  Their financial plight was mentioned during the Oscars when they accepted their award, but then they weren't even acknowledged by the director Ang Lee in his speech.  And as they go on to explain, you negotiate a set price for the effects, then a "Pixel-F***er" comes in and complains about the size of the seagulls in the shot (James Cameron) which then costs you another day of work to complete for no extra money, times 100, and there are only 7 clients in the industry.  And if you make one mad because you object to redoing their shots over and over and over, they turn around and complain to the others and then nobody comes to see you.  Because they all want 100s, if not 1000s, of VFX shots in their movies and they don't want to pay what the artists are worth to get them done.   I got out of theatre because I hated that crap.