The article doesn't do a good job of explaining the core problem, but this video about the VFX studio that created Life After Pi and then collapsed at the same time that the movie got an Oscar has better info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lcB9u-9mVE
The core issue is that the studio's decision-makers negotiate a fixed cost contract and then keep making changes that require the VFX studio to work extra hours without getting extra money. This is in contrast with other people in movies who get paid per day of labor when shooting the film. So the director has an incentive to make the shooting of the film as efficient as possible and then they just "fix it in post" because there is no marginal cost to them to cram more work onto the VFX shop.
In theory, the union will probably get the VFX people fair wages. In practice, I'm betting that studios will invest heavily into generative AI. Either way, the recent Hollywood union actions will end the exploration of VFX professionals.
I'm not well versed in the business side of things so I want to ask : Isn't fixed cost contracts considered usually a bad idea in creative-technical endeavors?
I spent about 10 years or so working in AAA games and I found that I had to work in a way that was essentially anticipating major changes. Essentially a totally different approach to programming compared to the other programming jobs I've had (robotics/finance/academic).
Many games I've worked on, the shipped product is completely different from the initial prototype that was sold.
My understanding was generally you get into a contract with a publisher and have a payment schedule every N months. At each checkpoint the publisher can assess whether they want to continue with the contract or let it go.
I can't imagine this kind of project ever working with a fixed-cost contract. Extreme change is the norm when you have creatives at the helm of the project.
Scott Ross, founder and former CEO of Digital Domain, spoke for years about this. The issue is there are just a handful of film studios capable of keeping a large VFX facility busy, so they have a lot of leverage when negotiating contracts and setting prices.
Because that part of the film process can run offshore, VFX studios find themselves fighting for these contracts and/or accepting unadvantegeous terms. I remember him saying that film studios can strong arm a VFX facility to open in a place under heavy tax breaks, and they are expected to 'forward' the cost savings.
Thanks for the info. That sounds like quite a rough situation. I guess games aren't really an analog despite being one of those creative/technical industries.
> Isn't fixed cost contracts considered usually a bad idea in creative-technical endeavors?
Yes, but Marvel is one of the largest (if not the largest) buyers of VFX work in Hollywood and is known for keeping a list of studios they will and won’t work with, which gives them favorable terms with the VFX houses.
I don't think it's a problem if the requirements are clear, the artist knows how much a work like it takes, and it's understood that it will be delivered as is; there might be some room for input from the customer, and some rework negotiated in, but you're not putting in unexpected new work.
The scope doesn't change. When a product has been completed, with all negotiated re-work, the final bill is due, or you pay for more work. Intellectual property transfers after final payment. It doesn't have to be this hard.
Dont forget that Steve Jobs and others colluded illegally back in the day to squash the original VFX union (and software engineers) and then got caught and settled for an "undisclosed" sum (rumoured to be quite large). But in the end they won because there is no VFX union
> What prevented them from trying again? I doubt the settlement had a clause that said "you can't start a union".
Why wouldn't it have one? I'm sure the lawyers involved here wouldn't miss the obvious question. Seems like a sound way to make the issue go away for a while: pay the instigators a bunch of money with the stipulation that they not continue to instigate.
Nothing stops other people from trying again, but buying out the ones in charge of the effort goes a long way towards setting it back. Plus, by settling out of court, the company avoids the risk that the court decide its behavior was illegal. The courts may do so in the future, but it would take getting caught again. In the meantime, the company can refine its methods of limiting unionization while better avoiding obviously illegal behavior.
Most of that is contingent on setting existing unionization efforts back, to buy time for efforts to be mobilized or improved. The easiest way to set any social movement back is to eliminate key points of coordination. Putting an NDA and other clauses into the settlement agreement achieves that end and puts the law on the company's side.
All that's left at that point is to figure out everyone's price.
I imagine writing down the ways in which you're agreeing to break the law doesn't bode well if the government comes after you and that document gets presented in court.
Likely the illegal bits were whispers, winks, and head nods.
I mean, is it actually illegal to add terms to the settlement that require some party to (essentially) promise not to go back to doing the thing? It seems like it follows the same principles as non-compete stipulations that come with certain forms of severance, right? I think those often take the form of "we'll pay you this severance, and in return you'll agree to not work in the industry for a couple years". Or am I just uninformed and those are illegal, too?
Can you ban unions via a settlement to a civil suit? That would be madness. Oh these other people decided they wanted a big payout instead of a union, so no unions for anyone forever!
I think the problem is that unions can be quite hard to create to begin with. Lots of people have to stick their neck out, and often lose their career. Not that many people at any given company have much power. Most people are trying to make ends meet.
The article is about Marvel's in-house on-set VFX crew, not about those working at outside shops, so the problems you're referring to does not apply to these workers.
However, actions like this might trigger a domino effect across the entire industry.
The same scope creep thats faced in other industries. For consulting mostly this is handled by scoping as tightly as possible and then issuing change requests for out of scope requirements that are billed. I guess hard with a films fixed budget though.
Generative AI is not going to allow media companies to not use VFX companies. They still have to employ someone to use generative AI (and other tools, it can't do everything yet), and that person is a VFX artist. The whole "It's just a tool" thing isn't a joke or a rhetorical device, it is literally true: this software needs to be used by someone who is trained in how to use it to get good results on a commercial level, and for the products we're talking about (Marvel movies) they are also going to need to be proficient in the rest of the VFX skillset as well. Generative AI replacing VFX workers entirely is a fantasy until the point where a company can hire/rent/buy/build a whole AI system (or company of such systems) which are plug-in replacements for human workers that are working remote. In case it's unclear what that means, that is human level intelligence. It then needs to be cheaper to pay for the computation that system requires than it would be to pay a human for an equivalent amount of work. I'm not saying that will never happen, it probably will, but it is definitely not the case with current generative AI tech and it's not on a reasonable five year time horizon.
The major impact generative AI tech will have on VFX is that because VFX workers who known how to use it well will produce significantly more or significantly higher quality output than those who don't, the bar is going to be raised significantly for how much work VFX houses are expected to produce. Given that, this is a pretty normal time to try and unionise, because with anticipated productivity windfalls the working class and the owning class are going to fight over who gets how much of those productivity windfalls. It's a possibility that less VFX workers get employed overall as a result of higher productivity, but I really doubt it. We have seen this story play out in VFX for decades: as tools get better and enable higher productivity, demand rises and more people are employed (still in shitty conditions though). You can also see it in the games industry, often with the same technology: did generative technology for tree asset production cause job losses in the games industry? No, it just dramatically increased the number of games (and films) that could have large numbers of realistic modelled trees, back in 2009. Since then demand for games and films has only increased and so have job numbers in both industries.
Current generative AI tech, when applied in VFX/games asset creation and post-production is basically a better version of SpeedTree for a wider variety of assets. It is likely to have similar economic effects to what SpeedTree did, which is to say higher productivity in cases where you can use it and higher achievement peaks in the the films and games produced. It shouldn't fix poor job conditions and it shouldn't make them worse in an objective sense. What will determine job conditions is union action or lack thereof, so it's good to see VFX workers doing their best to unionise right now.
I don't think you've root caused this yet. There are other areas where studios do not/ cannot behave this way. Take something like electricity or catering, both of which are typically critical to production (even if unglamorous). No electricity company is going to let studios pay on a flat fee basis no matter how much they draw from the grid. No catering company is going to bid on a fixed cost basis letting the studio double the number of days that they have to feed people. So why is it that VFX companies keep bidding themselves into trouble with overstretched goals?
IMO this is an industry with chronically over-optimistic bidding practices, fueled by a consistent influx of wannabe low-cost entrants motivated by the "cool factor" of working for the movies. If you have other insights, very curious to know.
The reason people usually only work at VFX companies for 9-16 months is because they have to underbid, bidding higher means no contracts, lays them off, then another studio springs up that them and their coworkers all go to and the cycle repeats.
Somebody is always going to bid lower, go bankrupt/ skeleton crew, and another studio springs up with idealism that there’s will be different.
Same reason you see so many never-gonna-happen startups in the Valley.
There are two rules to remember in markets like this: (1) If things keep happening, someone is getting paid. (2) If you look around the table can't can't spot the sucker...
Why do they have to underbid? Why is somebody is always going to bid lower? This does not really happen in most other industries, which know their cost structures and don't underbid themselves into the ground.
The real reason is that VFX is not a major cost driver/bottleneck for movie production. If you make VFX cheaper but acting still takes up the same amount of time, you can't expect that more movies or series will be released to absorb the VFX staff. The real economy has a leontief production function.
> If you think Generative AI is at the level of current VFX artists, you understand neither the tech or those people’s jobs.
“GenAI will just mean fewer VFX workers but should also mean better wages for them” doesn’t mean “Generative AI is at the level of current VFX artists”, all it means that a VFX artist with Generative AI can be more productive than one without. (Well, and also that they have the negotiating power to capture some of the value of the productivity increase, which is probably the most questionable bit of the whole thing.)
It used to until about 1965. Then mysteriously labor’s real wages went flat and ever since all productivity gains have been captured by the managerial class and their principals.
You’re not operating under the delusion that your reading comprehension is such that you were able to understand what I wrote, are you? (Do you see the unnecessary condescension in your writing? Worse still when you didn’t parse the sentence properly.)
The operative word “should” shows very clearly that I haven’t assumed better wages. I expect better wages, but neither assume it nor guarantee it.
I did however state that I expect fewer workers in the space. This isn’t entirely clear either but I will go on the record to state that I expect it. It’s possible that the GenAI tools will enable such productivity increases that we see a surge in induced demand and a massive influx of content. My expectation is that this won’t happen as I believe we are likely close to a saturation point in content and expect then that the productivity increases will drown out any induced demand yielding fewer workers.
Marvel is a showoff, but besides that, VFX are everywhere, and not just for flashy magic.
Practical effects, large sets, location shots, live animals, large crowds, etc... are really expensive and/or hard to work with. That's why VFX are used, and done well, you don't even notice and it makes for a better movie for the budget.
The VFX industry constantly chases the tax incentives. Every state (and many major cities) with any exposure to the movie industry have tax incentives that subsidize this industry. I did a quick search on News.Google for articles about VFX and tax incentives -- dozens of articles per year discussing where the new tax incentives are and which countries feared losing their foothold in the industry because their tax incentives were not racing to the bottom quick enough.
Also, the bidding per scene is difficult for VFX houses and their employees as scenes are qualitatively (and quantitatively) different. The VFX houses want to continue to get business from the studios, so they put all of the pressure on the artists without pushing back on requirements from the studios.
I'm curious if there is jurisdiction triage in a contract like this (where the studio is in a state which may be bound by strong union laws, but the contracted VFX houses may be in states that do not enforce union laws/contracts). If so, a unionized VFX industry in the US might just chase most future contracts from {US, Canada, EU, UK} towards {East Asia, SouthEast Asia}.
I worked in games for years, but the people I have known that did VFX is like a whole other level. At one point my local breakfast place was run by someone that had done the opening sequence for a major film, and never saw a cent from the work. The few times I've contracted peripherally in that industry getting paid is like getting blood from a stone.
We're rapidly reaching a point where people in developed countries cannot afford the option of creative employment.
Hollywood accounting... I was once approached to do some work for a (Dutch) movie and they first came with that having your name on the credits was the door opener to a career that would surely make the missed income look like peanuts. When that fell on deaf ears they suggested I do this one for free, but get paid for the next. Guess how that went.
> by someone that had done the opening sequence for a major film
I used to work in VFX (tools programming) and this makes no sense. Major films have VFX crews that number in the hundreds; nobody does anything on their own. Even if they were only doing a credit sequence, that's dozens of people's work over weeks or months.
And "never saw a cent"?? Sure, VFX studios don't get residuals or a percentage of gross, but they do get paid.
My main confusion was with the claim that one person did an entire "opening sequence" of a major film. That's simply not possible. It's like claiming a skyscraper was built by one guy.
Not every film is a Marvel movie. Many films use VFX even if it doesn't look like it. The opening sequence could have been for a romcom or something that only needed a bit of light work to touch up some frames or remove a wire or something.
Because plenty will do creative stuff for free/near nothing. If something is enjoyable enough and the barrier to entry is low, it rapidly becomes a hobby.
It is like writing. Writing hardly pays anymore as plenty (admittedly including myself) are willing to provide magazines with content for nothing or near nothing.
I think there's a combo of "I like doing this work", maybe not fully grokking a residual structure, and ultimately feeling like all of the work is contractor base.
It's kind of like how everyone in games was so underpaid, but since everyone was like that you just kind of accept that as the status quo (especially if you're just out of college and don't even really grok that you can't live on a ramen budget forever)
In the cases where theres scamming involved, thats scamming. If the industry generally has a high scamming %, then demand upfront pay. This might result in some lost work, I have had a couple of clients I demanded upfront pay from, and I have also lost some due to it, but I will not be scammed
> It could just be that im out of touch with reality, but WHY are they agreeing to this? arent they the very problem? just demand money for a service.
My guess is desperation.
There are a lot of people that want to be artists. Some of these people find any other type of work to be unbearable. So they're either deciding to roll over and take it, since the alternative of working any other non-art-related job is too painful, or they're incorrectly thinking that if they do a good enough job on one project, they'll earn a name for themselves and get paid handsomely on the next.
> "I don't feel like it" doesn't sound like desperation to me. It sounds more like entitlement.
What a condescending attitude towards someone trying to break into a difficult industry, who has probably been aiming for this for some time, and likely went to college for that express purpose.
Fuck you, pay me is a wonderful talk that should be required watching for any creative looking to start a career. Doubly so if striking out on their own.
The anti-union messages in North American work culture were so effective it takes an incredible amount of abuse before a workforce actually seeks out a union.
For better or worse, we are at that point. Support of unions amongst the public is at a 57 year high, historically speaking. Very exciting to see organization efforts ramping. As the kids says, “go go go!”
support in opinion polls, maybe. but actual union membership continues to fall and is at historic lows. Maybe if the current wave of strikes score some high-profile wins, that could start to reverse.
And IMHO it's not surprising that fascism is back as well. Fascism has historically always been in the favor of those in economic power.
For me, the worst thing is: as a German, I grew up with "never again" and "at least us Germans learned from our own history, even if barely anyone else did" - and it's all been bullshit. We've learned nothing, we forgot everything once the last living reminders and witnesses from 1933-1945 died.
> And IMHO it's not surprising that fascism is back as well. Fascism has historically always been in the favor of those in economic power.
That's more to do with authoritarianism (ie. a strong state) than just fascism. In such a political climate, you're forced to be cozy with the state, because of how powerful it is. Doing so can get you favors with the government (eg. lucrative contracts, favorable legislation/foreign policy), and not doing so can result in your competitors outcompeting you or getting investigated and sent to the gulag.
Maybe saying it the other way around would have made it clearer. The ones in economic power have always (in case there was strong fascist movements) been in favor of fascism.
That's not an opinion but a historical fact. The Nazis in Germany were supported by large industrialists (Thyssen, Krupp, IG Farben), how made a killing (quite literally). Similarly in Italy and Spain, the Fascists were supported by the big capitalists.
I think you will find out big industry supports any party/movement that is currently in power. Observe the war machine that was the USSR, or even modern day China.
It's self preservation, more than anything. Cross the powers that be, and you'll find hard times ahead (Jack Ma...). That's true regardless of political ideology.
My original point was some people's definition of fascism is absurd given historical or modern contexts. But it's a fun whip to crack.
The industrialist supported the Nazis, Fascists etc getting into power. That was certainly not the case in Russia or China. Saying that industrialists supported the regime in the Soviet Union is also a bit rich, considering that they essentially did not exist.
So what is a correct definition of fascism in your opinion? Are you contesting that the Nazis in Germany, Mussolini in Italy or Franco in Spain were Facists? The whole point the previous poster made was essentially all of these got into power with significant support by the ruling economic powers.
What Russian or Chinese corporations supported the communist revolutions that arose in those companies? Modern Chinese SOEs do not count, they are a creature of Dengist reforms introduced decades after the initial revolutionary victories.
> The anti-union messages in North American work culture were so effective it takes an incredible amount of abuse before a workforce actually seeks out a union
It's more complicated than that.
For starters, fewer industries need unions these days. Unions don't help most office-work and white-collar careers, where pay is on-average sufficient or high, and hours are standardized already (nobody in Accounting or HR is working 12 hour days on the routine).
Additionally, in some sectors, unions are a net-negative. Take software for example, where folks routinely make bananas money for regular work. In those environments, unions typically protect unproductive peers, and limit high-performer's maximum compensation.
Union does not always mean better...
As an aside, people do need to learn to say no to work. Just because you want to work on say, video games or VFX doesn't mean you should accept a job that compels you to work horrendous hours for little pay. Just say no and move on... the market forces will correct and adjust accordingly out of necessity. AI will not replace creative work anytime in the near future - these folks are needed but they accept the abuse and therefore there is no market force to correct.
I’m sorry but this is a perfect example of how anti-union messaging worked.
These are literally anti union talking points dressed up as some kind of “reasonable considerations.”
No
If you choose not to be a part of collective bargaining then you are actively ceding power to the board and your management.
You’re saying neither you nor your coworkers deserve equal say in how the organization treats you all.
None of what you say actually happens in the real world. Find me a court case or any actual third party judgement, not hearsay, that has found a Union to be shielding one of these “unproductive peers” from doing work or otherwise somehow breaking contract.
It's amazing how you can call something propaganda, while offering nothing but propaganda yourself.
Few of us actually need a union to advocate for us. We're perfectly capable of securing higher pay, and benefits through performance or threat of leaving for greener pastures.
That's not propaganda. That's worker's rights... which pro-union people are supposedly in favor of.
These days, Unions protect under-performing staff and enrich the Union leadership - all while negotiating a token raise once in a while. You can see it with your own eyes - just go work somewhere that has a union for at least one group of it's employees.
> You can see it with your own eyes - just go work somewhere that has a union for at least one group of it's employees.
I gladly had ~500 AFGE employees under me as CTO two jobs ago. I worked regularly with the Union representatives and we had multiple high stakes situations that I was glad to have them there for (I was not covered by the Union because I was too high rank).
What has been your first hand experience with unions such that you can make such claims?
I suggest you be more open to those who may be less capable, if you are so capable as to be in such high demand. Think about others.
> The goal of a union is the antithesis to this question. They enforce a minimum standard of pay and work conditions.
So the answer is that person doesn't get hired...
That person never gets the chance to grow into the job, because the union wouldn't approve it. Fun...
The idea that workers are like cattle... and that each one is the same and deserves exactly the same compensation is absurd, is demonstrably untrue, and is de-humanizing. Funny, because unions are supposed to be pro-worker, no?
> These are anti union talking points
The pro-union folks need better come-backs than "anti union talking points" or "propaganda". It's a classical technique - assert your opponent is spewing propaganda while you promote your own propaganda as "truth" in it's place.
Unfortunately we've had decades to judge unions - and people are well aware of their issues. There's plenty of reasons unions are not as pervasive today as they once were.
> and you and I both know that is not what unions do.
We do? That's news to me.
It's rather interesting seeing people support unions but won't admit any of the downsides.
It's almost like the pro-union folks have a theoretical idea of how a union should work, but that's in stark contrast with how they do work.
> I’m not going to respond after this
Almost like saying you have no real argument to offer so we'll just take our ball and go home.
Anyone who says anything negative about unions is clearly a Anti-Union shil spreading false propaganda. It's a tired tale...
Reducing people's opinions and arguments to "propaganda" or "talking points" attacks the individual instead of the argument, and attempts to misdirect through means of actual propaganda. Not one time have you offered an actual rebuttal... Which is pretty damning on its own.
You sound like a European trying to argue unions with an American. (I'm pretty sure the person you're arguing with is American.) The two of you basically live in two different universes as far as unions are concerned.
> We're perfectly capable of securing higher pay, and benefits through performance or threat of leaving for greener pastures.
Just because someone is brilliant with computers or electronics or any other tech job does not mean automatically that they're capable of securing the best working conditions, pay and benefits that they could have. Labor negotiation is a skill in itself.
We can also nit-pick regarding how great these entitlements are, especially when it comes to things like: vacation, job security, empowerment, how much you're at the mercy of someone that ruin your life and make it miserable.
These are areas unions can help with. "Good" benefits in the US can be pretty bad. I can take like 2x week long vacations. The rest gets used for odd days (which is nice). This is the "super deluxe" benefit I should be over the moon for?
I learned first hand in my last job that getting on the bad side of the wrong person can be miserable and career altering; guess you could argue that a union just adds one more of these people, but it also adds an advocate. They may defend "anyone", but that also includes people that have been marginalized and may be underrated, due to being unpopular.
You can be fired for any reason. Your employer might be hesitate to put you on the firing line for political, and legal reasons, but that's not a guarantee anything.
Labor unions have good social effects and bad social effects just like literally every other organization of people. Sometimes the good outweighs the bad, and sometimes the reverse.
> How about just not working for abusive workplaces?
You tell me, why do people work for abusive workplaces, sometimes despite sexual harrasment? Have they literally never thought of quitting, they are that dim?
So no one should make art, since it's exploited. Versus just unionizing, or investing in your suppliers a bit?
Minimum wage and weekends only exist because we rejected the "if you don't like it, work somewhere else" mentality... oh yeah, and because of unions, too.
> So no one should make art, since it's exploited.
That's a bit extreme. Nobody should agree to abusive working conditions - there is a difference.
And no, unions did not grant us minimum wage or weekends. There was a strong labor movement happening regardless of unions at the time.
Minimum wage - you probably don't want to use that as some sort of argument crutch anyway, because it's original intended purpose will not support your position.
People who support unions seem to believe unions are the only way to gain better employment opportunities or fix conditions they believe are wrong. Which is where the pro-union people lose the general population...
Unions have been mal-actors for decades. People see what they do... including doom an entire generation of children recently. People have largely rejected unions in modern times - for very good reasons.
Today's unions exist to serve the union. It's pretty sick how they turned out... but what do you expect from any sufficiently large and long-lived bureaucracy.
Ah, so you don't understand how abuse works. You should probably think about it, and maybe read up on the subject before talking about it?
People in abusive relationships often perceive that there's no other option. They think they will be lost without the relationship, or that they will find no one better.
People stick around for some really good reasons. Some people struggle to face uncertainty. Others lack the will to leave. Often, there was something that attracted them in the first place: love for the person, pride for ones job, ect.
What's crazy is you'll see examples where none of this seems to be present... it's not necessary. People with great support systems fall for people/jobs, that never treated them well, and are even flat out disgusting and stupid. (literally or metaphorically, eg. a job can be "disgusting" because of harassment)
We've all seen it. It's like "what do you see here"... but that's the thing about abuse. It's exactly what you're criticizing. Abusers see that the person can't and so will never leave the relationships, then they step in to do the abuse. So when the partner gets thrown down a flight of stairs and has her dog injured, he knows that she's gonna stay anyway. They've found a hack to exploit.
So your questions are nonsensical. It's not their fault some shady person figured out how to hurt them.
PS "Fan theory": I think there's probably some instinct in us to stay in bad relationships. First and foremost, any team is better than none.
If you think throughout history, lots of relationships have been exploitative. Perhaps it's useful not to be the one that leaves and tries to make their own way. You'll just get picked off or rounded up.
Very dark, especially considering how it effects women, who have had to put up with a lot to survive. It shouldn't be such a shock that so many women wind up in abusive relationships :(
I mean I personally know three family friends in unions who are incompetent and protected by union rules so they will never be fired. (One in immigration, one a court officer, one a public school teacher).
People in software are not making "bananas money," they are capturing just a tiny amount of the wealth that they are creating.
If you think a negotiation between a single individual vs. a company of tens of thousands (or, likely, a cartel of companies of millions of combined employees a la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...) is anywhere close to an even fight, you're naive.
I would posit the SAG doesn't actually do much for your Brad Pitt's and Angelina Jolie's.
Those top-tier actors represent the SAG more than they are protected or benefited by the SAG.
Your top tier actors literally fill seats - so like Sports Stars they are compensated by their star power more than anything else. Brad Pitt deciding to accept or decline a role can earn or lose a movie millions.
Meanwhile, your typical working union compels high school kids to pay dues for what exactly? Minimum wage, and a lunch break?
A union in SFX will result in gatekeeping a ton of people out of the industry. It will raise wages for a select few that were blessed by the union and allowed to work in the industry, and everyone else will have to find alternate industries to work in. Doesn't sound like a net-win for everyone...
With SFX in particular, the issue is there's a zillion people willing to replace you and work for less with even more demanding hours. I don't know how you fix that industry-wide, but I'm betting a union's solution isn't as rosy as people think.
As an aside - where was the SAG during all these Weinstein and Polanski situations? These went on decades and nobody was protected from being abused by powerful gatekeepers. What does SAG even do?
Somehow I feel like asking a union to stop an employer’s criminal behavior is outside the scope of a union. Maybe you’re thinking about law enforcement?
A union represents the employee, and if that employee is prevented from securing a position unfairly, or that employee is abused while in that position, it's entirely on the union to represent that employee and demand a resolution.
This entire discussion revolves around a fictitious VFX union resolving abuses within the industry... so why would SAG receive a pass?
The SAG pretended like none of this was happening. We probably only know about the tip of the abusive-iceberg countless actresses endured.
It’s not just actresses. A friend of mine worked for entertainment news and was “propositioned” by Harvey Weinstein. As far as I know it was an open secret in the business.
A union can’t just take action by outing the women who could have complained. And largely the affected women decided that they would rather make money than be disbelieved by media and courts on a rape allegation. Let’s say the union has your back: then what? SAG can’t guarantee you won’t be silently blacklisted as a troublemaker by individual directors making hiring decisions. They can’t guarantee you’ll be taken seriously by the police and courts. #MeToo was a watershed moment, and it’s hard to see how a union could have made the social structural stars align in our entire culture any earlier than it actually happened.
See also, the NBA. The average person in tech is no where near as talented at their job, hard-working, or disciplined as the average NBA player, yet the latter has a union while the former do not.
> nobody in Accounting or HR is working 12 hour days on the routine
Do you know anybody in Accounting? Quarter end closing is a lot of work that can't be done until after the end of the quarter and must be done within a small amount of time. Public accountants suddently get an awful lot of work come the ides of March when everyone realizes their taxes are due in a month. And another bunch when the extension filers all come back when the real due date hits.
Who's to say VFX would be a creative union? Majority of the work your average VFX person does is cookie-cutter stuff. It's more similar to being a cog in a SaaS shop than being an actual artist.
>Creative unions establish minimum pay and working conditions but not maximum or promotion.
Is the type of union that you're getting up for debate when people are voting for unions? My impression is that "voting for a union" just sets up the organization, but you'd need to wait for it to be established and for the representatives to be voted in to know how it turns out. Absent a concrete plan that's being voted for, "voting for a union" could easily turn out to be a brexit type of situation, where people have different ideas on what a "union" (or brexit) is, but no single idea actually has majority support, so most people end up not liking the outcome.
> Just because you want to work on say, video games or VFX doesn't mean you should accept a job that compels you to work horrendous hours for little pay. Just say no and move on... the market forces will correct and adjust accordingly out of necessity.
Yeah, they'll go offshore instead while you try to navigate an intentionally kafkaesque maze of red tape to apply for fucking food stamps.
> try to navigate an intentionally kafkaesque maze of red tape to apply for fucking food stamps
This is a bizarre, and unrealistic take.
Realities are, so long as there's a zillion capable people willing to step in and replace you with a moment's notice, then your job will have downward pressure on compensation.
However, just because you can't get a good paying job in VFX doesn't mean you're now doomed to food stamps. There's no reality where that makes any sense...
Is it? Ever tried to file for unemployment? No matter the country, it will always be a nightmare of bureaucracy, intentionally designed to make it as difficult as possible to "nudge" people to rather accept shitty work conditions than to try to get money from the government.
The hoops and hurdles that have been placed in front of getting unemployment insurance money are, hands down, the biggest enabler of workplace exploitation.
> However, just because you can't get a good paying job in VFX doesn't mean you're now doomed to food stamps.
Either you accept a shit pay job, or you move towards a different career, or you file for unemployment. (Or you're lucky and have a partner or family that can support you)
The government doesn't have money to give. It's worker's money. Let that point sink in...
Nobody is owed money from the government. That mentality is wild and ridiculous.
> Ever tried to file for unemployment? No matter the country, it will always be a nightmare of bureaucracy,
No it's not. It's literally an online form and a follow-up phone call. It couldn't be easier actually, and it's a system filled with abuse. People live on it for months to years without seeking actual employment - stealing money away from hard working individuals.
> Either you accept a shit pay job, or you move towards a different career, or you file for unemployment.
Your outlook on work life is insanely bizarre and not grounded in any reality. You should check your assumptions, because they are absurdly false.
> Nobody is owed money from the government. That mentality is wild and ridiculous.
Or it's European. We expect that our governments take care of all our citizens, no matter their ability to work.
> No it's not. It's literally an online form and a follow-up phone call.
Supplying a truckload of documents, detailed financial statements and whatnot is definitely a bunch of work, particularly if the affected person has lost their home and/or possessions (e.g. homeless people), or can't read. Like half the US is barely literate enough to pass 6th grade reading proficiency. On top of that, processing of claims can take weeks to months because of understaffing. All of that was a massive issue during the COVID pandemic, across all Western countries but I also remember a lot of HN discussions at the time.
> Your outlook on work life is insanely bizarre and not grounded in any reality. You should check your assumptions, because they are absurdly false.
As said, I'm European. That y'all don't even seem to know how good a life Europe provides is a continuous source of disappointments.
Lol, so fuck you, I've got mine basically. Just because the pay is decent doesn't mean they can't exploit you. When you talk about "protecting unproductive peers" are you sure they aren't protecting minorities, people with disabilities, or who may be marginalized from the group, and not given a fair chance?
It's interesting that you think we should take it for granted that "maximizing high performer's pay" is a good idea. You seem to be convinced you're one of those. Maybe you're just friends with the boss.
I have some beef with unions, but there's plenty of reasons to have them in the office.
I figure unions can be very helpful in addressing actual contemporary worker concerns, like setting ethical code of conduct and norms when it comes to ethics surrounding for example treatment of personal data of users.
> For starters, fewer industries need unions these days. Unions don't help most office-work and white-collar careers, where pay is on-average sufficient or high, and hours are standardized already (nobody in Accounting or HR is working 12 hour days on the routine).
I routinely hear about people doing super long hours in loads of industries. Sit-down jobs. Hell, loads of people in IT get put through the wringer.
> Additionally, in some sectors, unions are a net-negative. Take software for example, where folks routinely make bananas money for regular work. In those environments, unions typically protect unproductive peers, and limit high-performer's maximum compensation.
Would you rather make the obscene amount of money or work with a bunch of people who aren't permanently stressed out from internal rat races? How many stories about people getting chewed up at places like Amazon do we need to hear about?
> As an aside, people do need to learn to say no to work. Just because you want to work on say, video games or VFX doesn't mean you should accept a job that compels you to work horrendous hours for little pay. Just say no and move on... the market forces will correct and adjust accordingly out of necessity.
Unions and labor action can make all of this happen on a way smoother time scale, and without squeezing half a generation of people dry. Why sit around and wait for a bunch of companies to collapse, people to go jobless, when you could instead coordinate efforts, figure out what people want, and move towards that in a coordinated way?
There's nuance, but employers negotiate as a bloc (in that even a single company has its own overall policies), having employees do the same just feels like common sense.
A bit of an aside: I do think it's important to look at what actual union agreements look like. Places like Netflix got better deals when they were smaller. Unions often end up with tiered payments anyways. Agreements get made over multi-year periods offering a good amount of stability. The idea that a union forces everyone to get paid the same and for a strike to be inevitable the instant the kind bars disappear from the break room is prevelant, but the reality is much more nuanced (partly because people usually just want to do work and get paid and do what they want to do).
> Would you rather make the obscene amount of money or work with a bunch of people who aren't permanently stressed out from internal rat races?
You offer this like they're mutually exclusive. They're not - and that point needs to be understood by pro-union people.
Just because a place is non-union does not mean the staff are automatically abused.
Plenty of places offer lucrative compensation and sane work hours.
> How many stories about people getting chewed up at places like Amazon do we need to hear about?
Despite the narrative, there's still thousands of engineers happily working for Amazon. Has it ever occurred to the pro-union folks that maybe some people don't share that "experience"? Or perhaps that "experience" was being touted by disgruntled, unproductive employees that found Amazon difficult to coast at...?
> There's nuance, but employers negotiate as a bloc (in that even a single company has its own overall policies
This isn't true for every company of course - and eve for companies where it is true, there's often exceptions that can be carved out for desirable people or high performers.
> Unions and labor action can make all of this happen on a way smoother time scale
Or people can just stop accepting crappy jobs? Unions once-upon-a-time fought for a standardized 8 hour workday. Today, if unions disappeared tomorrow, would anyone agree to work standard 14 hour days again? I think not...
The problem with VFX and that sub-industry in particular is the glut of people willing to do the work for next to nothing and endure absurd hours just for the opportunity of working on some project.
So unions will come in, demand absurd pay, and gatekeep tons of people out of the industry. A select blessed few will be allowed to work, and the rest will have to find a different industry anyway... so what's the difference?
The worst thing to ever happen to workers, short of a socialist revolution or major war, is unions, so the antipathy, to the extent that it exists, is fully justified, and not enough.
It's because they're desperate to work in the industry and will accept any work conditions to do so. They have to learn to say no and prioritize work-life balance over getting their dream job.
The essential problem is their messed up priorities, not the lack of unions. Once unions create barriers to working in the industry to the benefit of existing workers, then you just get a new privileged elite, who have an in with the union, and all of the cronynism and exploitation that goes along with that. The essential problem—of vastly more qualified people wanting to work in the industry than there are positions available—has not been addressed.
And on top of that, with unionization you get the harm from a less dynamic workforce with less flexible contract negotiations, which has historically harmed numerous industries. It's a net negative for workers at large, and of course the world.
> They have to learn to say no and prioritize work-life balance
Oh man its a shame noone saud this to Victorian kids that were dying of blacklung while working in the coalmines, or to the kids that mine cobalt today.
This condecenting attitute towarda others is offwnsive and suggests you think they are cretins
That was due to extremely low per capita GDP creating a general dearth of decently paying jobs. This is due to people wanting to work in an industry at any cost. So your comparison is utterly disingenuous and exactly the type people getting a union advantage would make.
> They have to learn to say no and prioritize work-life balance over getting their dream job.
Or… they could unionize and try to shape the job of their dreams into something sensible. If the union somehow ends up ruining the job, why would they care, given that the alternative is not doing that job at all, or dealing with unbearable working conditions?
If the principles behind unionization are rejected by society at large, it would make a significant impact on society. Convincing society at large that those principles are wrong requires speaking out against them whenever the debate over unions arises, like in this case.
Making games and movies are clearly as hard if not harder than making SaaS. I never understood why devs who work for game and movie studios don't quit and work for companies that pay 2-3x as much - other than for the pure love of what they do.
And maybe if it ultimately comes down to a decision between (1) being paid well but giving up on your dreams vs (2) doing what you love but being exploited, what you need is not a union but a reality check.
Why they value it so is obvious; they are creating entertainment that they can enjoy themselves. They can easily show and explain their work. Contrast that with your average B2B SaaS backend. You probably don't use your own product. You can't show anyone what you personally did. Explaining it would invite confusion and tears of boredom. And your work will be refactored away or deprecated with no way for you to keep a memento, unlike software from the shrinkwrap era. Even the crummiest VFX work lives on in Youtube.
Yep, working on what you love can make you do things way beyond reason. It didn't matter that you are effectively working for half of minimum wage - at least you were doing that thing of passion... until absolute total burn out. That was 9 years I will never get back, but whatever, I am in a much better place now. Just chill out and take it easy when you can.
I make games for a living, I deeply enjoy the creative freedom of working on projects independently. After university I got my start with a SaaS accounting business, backend Python stuff - I liked it, I learned a lot and worked with some very talented and experienced programmers. Still, I love that with games I get to do deep systems work, animation work, I get to paint and design, write silly jokes, and make something a bit strange that no one else is going to make.
Now, I work independently, there's no publisher or licensing partner, perhaps if I were working for Ubisoft or Activision Blizzard or Rockstar Games I might not enjoy it so much? But I found lots of things to like working on an accounting SaaS project, so if I ever did try it, perhaps it would be just fine.
Yet we enjoy the products of those who choose this path. I would rather them be doing what they love rather than sitting back and just optimizing difficulty vs paycheck.
Put another way, the "get another job" argument is basically saying that the people who have that job, who put in the hard work to create these things that we enjoy, they don't deserve to get paid a fair wage.
I disagree with your last point. If enough people get another job, the industry they are leaving will adapt or die. Since people still want to be distracted from life (big demand) the industry will more likely adapt.
Moreso than other software industries, I think gaming is one that faces a real threat from indie companies. For example, simcity basically died because of cities skylines.
> . If enough people get another job, the industry they are leaving will adapt or die.
The only way that happens is with a union. The union is what lets the workers organize for the kind of collective action that forces an industry to adapt.
> I never understood why devs who work for game and movie studios don't quit and work for companies that pay 2-3x as much - other than for the pure love of what they do.
A very real aspect is credits. If you're developing some SaaS product or whatever, you stay a nameless cog in the wheel, and in the worst case your entire work was for nothing because the company goes down in flames anyway.
In contrast, games, movies and (at least it used to be) music? That's for eternity, even if you're an accountant or someone else with barely a tangential role to the production, your name will still be somewhere on the credit rolls. Something to one day show your grandchildren and say them "that was stuff I worked on, these were my colleagues, and these were the best war stories". And your grandchildren can brag to their friends at school "my gramps used to make Marvel movies, one he worked at is still in the top 10 of highest grossing movies ever". You leave actual legacy behind, and the jobs that offer this opportunity are rare. This is why people keep going to entertainment.
> A very real aspect is credits. If you're developing some SaaS product or whatever, you stay a nameless cog in the wheel, and in the worst case your entire work was for nothing because the company goes down in flames anyway.
That really depends on the studio and publisher. I saw all sorts of credit shenanigans in my time in industry, hell I spent ~3 years on a title and because I left before ship due to insane crunch all I got was "Special Thanks". I saw people from the publisher that did almost nothing get top billing while art/dev get near the bottom. I won't even get into "developer interviews" where a large majority were from the publisher who weren't working directly on the title.
IMO if you like the space do it as a side project or gamejam/indy angle, I know of very few places from my time in the industry that were "sane".
Sure, it's for eternity. But what about food & mortgage today? This is exactly how people get convinced to work for peanuts, because they're 'a part of something' or 'supporting the arts'. But in the end if the result is a for profit thing you should simply be paid.
You're completely correct, I just wanted to provide some context on why many people choose to work in entertainment.
IMHO it's high time labor law enforcement starts cracking down hard on entertainment. Shit pay is one thing, but at least everyone knows what they're dealing with signing the contract - for me the worse issue is the blatant ignorance of working hour limits, break requirements and (at least in location shooting) ignorance of workplace safety rules, that routinely gets people injured and sometimes even killed.
Reminds me of working on a ranch for community service for high school. I assumed I was working for some charity.
The truth is that the ranch charged for service. I don't think it was even a non-profit, but even if so, it was basically just a business this one asshole owned. I have no clue why it was helpful for the community to service it.
It's unfortunate however that credit screens for software went away in the late 90s/early 2000s. It would be interesting to be able to see who made the software that I use daily, or even other physical objects like appliances.
As Marcus Aurelius frames it, everyone who cares now and will care in the future will themselves die and go to nothing in time.
What is a blink of glory in this life is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Two generations of glory is nothing really, and the glory you bequeath is itself somewhat worthless since it appears more to be resting on the laurels of another rather than going towards good acts.
If it is in your nature to work on such things, then do so and take your due as it comes. If that is truly what aligns with your nature, and the common good, a 2-3x bonus elsewhere won’t concern you, nor should your own trials beyond which is necessary for continuing along one’s path.
> your name will still be somewhere on the credit rolls.
In time, nobody will watch it and nobody will care. So much long tail stuff is effectively forgotten to time. Kids don't want to inherit our old games and movies - they want new stuff that speaks to them.
I would argue your name can live longer in SaaS, where those that come after you will continually `git blame` you and praise (or curse) your name.
> I would argue your name can live longer in SaaS, where those that come after you will continually `git blame` you and praise (or curse) your name.
Nah. With the current expiration rate of JS frameworks, your code is lucky to live five years before someone decides a full rewrite. And unless you're working for a household brand like Twitter or Facebook, chances are high that no one outside your bubble knows what your product is, but everyone knows the MCU.
Yeah and with art there's at least a chance you'll make one of the classics that don't get forgotten. Or maybe people will be playing it for nostalgia in retirement homes in 80 years.
> your name will still be somewhere on the credit rolls
This is unfortunately not true. All too often people are left uncredited or are given highly inaccurate credits that completely fail to convey the impact they had.
Source: I worked in Hollywood as a composer for about the past decade.
Hi, I work in the games industry. I worked on a still-running and popular MMO, shipped another popular and still-running MMO, and now work for a popular game tooling company. I do primarily systems work in the DevOps sphere.
I’m underpaid. My hours aren’t great. I also find it pretty difficult to find a new job. Why? I’m pretty good at my job most of the time (I’ve spoken at tech and hacker conferences, built a lot of “first ever” things, led teams, that sort of thing) but a lot of CICD work and building pipelines is “sysadmin first, programmer distant second” type of work that requires knowing the ecosystem and how all the various pieces and priorities from hardware limitations all the way through to customer deliverables works. That is to say I do a lot of Bash, Ansible, Salt, Puppet, Terraform, GH Actions, Jenkins, all that stuff, not rip out Go for a living. Guess what a bunch of tech companies require you to do live in an interview now? And, shock upon shocks, it gets you people who do my job poorly and burn out.
Whenever we’ve onboarded a new engineer it takes about six months before they even BEGIN to be able to contribute meaningfully and we EXPECT them to be around for the long haul. If you’re doing something that’s easy to onboard a DevOps person onto then someone else has already done it for you, typically better than you can. That’s kind of the point.
So why stay in games? I’ve previously worked for non-profits, governments, militaries…and I hated it. I was still very good at what I did and I hated every second of it. No amount of monster slaying ever makes the world better, people just keep inventing new monsters. I couldn’t do it anymore as I don’t want my legacy to be a lot of highly durable, flexible, and simple-to-run systems used for violence and oppression. My work, directly, put a lot of (admittedly TERRIBLE) people in prison.
But games, up until recently anyway, are something different. I love games, always have. I love building them, playing them, buying them, sending them to people, helping make them, being around them, hearing about how they change people’s lives. I adore them. They helped me stay alive. They saved friends and even myself from suicide. They got us through the pandemic. They gave me and so many people GOOD experiences that make the world undeniably BETTER. I’ve had Make-A-Wish kids come into my old studio before because even facing down terminal illness every single day they wanted NOTHING more than to meet the people that made them happy. I DID that.
I can do this job. I can wake up in the morning and feel my work is GOOD and makes the world BETTER, safer, HAPPIER because people can build, play, and share games. Nothing any of my friends making triple my salary will EVER do at their jobs will ever exceed that level of public good. When’s the last time you heard someone doing GOOD at Oracle? When’s the last time you talked to a teenager who wanted to make a game and made it POSSIBLE? I do that every single day.
It’s not about the money. Give me a decent, reliable paycheck, a flexible schedule, remote work, and a mission and I will BUILD THE SHIT out of whatever you need automated. Games are the only way I’ve been able to live with myself when I stopped needing to survive and needed to start finding out how to live. It’s not just a dream, it’s LIFE SUPPORT for me.
And now that industry, too, has no more bright spots outside of tiny indie studios. I cannot describe how much that hurts me personally. Now it really is just awful corps the whole way down, just like every other big tech industry player.
Why stay? Where can I GO? To do what? Make some awful rich people even more rich? Doesn’t matter how much I open source, doesn’t matter how many talks I give, doesn’t matter what tools I make and give away, none of it will ever save the only thing that made my work worthwhile in the face of a depressing sinkhole of greed.
So yeah, I can’t speak for everyone but I can speak as a vet for quite a few years.
> My work, directly, put a lot of (admittedly TERRIBLE) people in prison.
Dude you should be super proud of yourself.
If you help lock up scumbags you are a real hero. You take some piece of shit that things he is a king of the universe and only lives to make countless peoples lives much worse and not only do you make him pay but make the lives of decent people much much better.
I don't think reality is that clear cut. Unless he's talking about sex offenders (and he very well might be), the truth always has a little bit of gray.
Have you thought about what a punishment even a year in jail is. Yet we have no problem throwing 5-10 year sentence at people and calling it "light". Sitting in a cage all day surrounded by sweaty sociopaths isn't seen a harsh punishment, which is astonishing.
Given your experience in DevOps it seems that you could go work for any sort of small-mid scale software startup that is remote only and earn a pretty decent living.
Do just have a look at the who's hiring posts that are posted at the beginning of the month here.
Supply vs. demand. The line for game development and VFX work extends around the block. You will never ever ever find good pay or treatment in those conditions. If your dream is the same as everybody else's dream, consider the cost of pursuing it.
If your goal is stable and well-paid employment, the other, much more practical option to unionizing is developing a different skillset that is valuable and in-demand. Jumping into a seller's market for labor is much better than jumping into a buyer's market.
This looks like a very very small development concerning only 50 workers at one shop. The VFX industry is much larger. IMO it is extra difficult for this field to unionize because so much of the labor either has been offshored or is easy to offshore, as compared with physical jobs like set electricians, or jobs where cultural immersion is critical like screenwriting...
I feel like there's way too much VFX in Marvel movies that most of them are unnecessary. If the VFX artists worked reasonable hours and cut down the VFX by half, they'd make movies just as entertaining and profitable.
But if the VFX workers are paid fixed wages and not by profit sharing, half of them would just lose their jobs while the other half work just as hard.
I feel like employees should fight more for shares and control of the companies rather than just marginal wage increases. It seems like the sensible thing to do in the grand scheme of things for all parties, but it's rarely done. Companies default to selling shares to the highest bidders, without considering the cost of mis-aligned incentives.
Many people here are in shock that VFX artists don't get residuals. I'd be extremely surprised if they did - low demand for their services compared to the availability of labor always lead to poor wages and certainly no equity compensation.
I wish things were different, but what makes them different from the vast majority of workers who get no equity at all?
Due to AI, the demand for their labor will go the same way as shoe repair workers. It's sad but it's hard to see any other outcome. We need to invest in retraining these workers in other lines of business to make up for the disruption.
People are buying new shoes instead of repairing them, it's a pre AI disruption. In part cultural shift, in part the result of increased productivity and sophistication in shoe production due to automation.
Though I generally applaud this move, I have an unpopular opinion:
Anything that lowers mobility is bad. Whether it’s rent control, or unions, in the end people try to create arbitrary pins in the mobility to certain individuals benefit, which again is not inherently bad.
But the true issue remains. Why is it that vfx workers are overworked and underpaid? Supply and demand gaps with far too little mobility on the employment side and too little leverage.
These folks are competitive with Vietnamese and Korean outlets willing to do 80% of the work for 20% of the price.
The whole thing needs to be reworked. Though I’m sure many would think it’s a good thing - but a world where everyone is unionized I don’t think will have great outcomes. Progress requires incentives which means disproportionate reward, but the pendulum has swung too far in one direction for now. Hopefully it lands in the middle instead on the other end.
Hopefully the recent Hollywood strikes result in corporate coming back to the table with fair deals, likely at their and top actors expense.
Unions do the opposite, they raise mobility. The only mobility they inhibit are shareholder's mobility.
Companies are incentivized to treat employees as poorly as possible. Cutting benefits, salaries, positions. Overworking employees. Denying raises. All of these things are in the best interests of companies because it makes their bottom line look better at the next earnings report.
Unions are how workers reclaim those benefits. Unions are how workers tell companies "You think your bottom line is bad, watch what happens when nobody is keeping the gears turning". It's a financial threat to keep employees well paid. And that's the only lingo companies speak. There's a reason big corporations spend so much money union busting. Because they know they'll spend more money on their employees if they don't.
More money and better benefits means more time and availability to improve yourself or your situation. That's upwards mobility.
> These folks are competitive with Vietnamese and Korean outlets willing to do 80% of the work for 20% of the price.
This has been a threat since forever. The problem these companies have are 2 fold. 1. the communication barrier/time barrier that makes everything more difficult. 2. The people they pass over ARE talented and these studios run the risk of seeing new indie film makers eat into their profit margins.
> but a world where everyone is unionized I don’t think will have great outcomes.
The outcome we have now is already terrible. We lived through a period where most working class individuals were unionize and that was viewed by most as "when america was great". The 40s, 50s, and 60s had some of the strongest unions and best social infrastructure. It was the point when most businesses bent towards making their workers happy first and shareholders second.
Bring on the unions, the only people that will suffer from it are the extremely wealthy, and they'll survive just like the Baron robbers of the 20s.
> The people they pass over ARE talented and these studios run the risk of seeing new indie film makers eat into their profit margins.
Fully agree, but not here. It's easy as an indie to get your movie in front of eyeballs or a music piece in front of a willing pair of ears, easier than ever before... but these eyeballs generally won't pay anything or they'll pay pittances. YouTube? Need subscribers and churn out content for years to build enough of a following to earn actual money. Spotify and Soundcloud are easier to get started but pay absolute dog shit.
Forget about cinema though. The large venues are all but bought out by Big Mouse (they demand the largest rooms for weeks exclusively for their content, no matter actual demand), of the few slot that remain other big distributors already have claims on, and you're relegated to absolutely weird-ass time slots or small arthouse cinemas. And TV ain't what it was either, no one watches TV and most stations have a full backlog of shit they can re-run infinitely.
Fair enough point. I'd just say that I don't believe studios are using US VFX companies out of the goodness of their souls.
My dad had his own business and one thing he told me is "I'd fire one of my employees if I could" And I certainly believe he and every other business owner thinks like that.
If it were reasonable for media companies to get the same work done for 20% the cost, they'd have done it across the board yesterday.
> Which unions are you referring to raise mobility compared to not unionized?
I'll say what I mean, but first I think we should define "mobility".
I'd argue that improved mobility is the same as improved working conditions. Because happy workers are workers with more options in life. Is this an acceptable definition? If not, please give me an alternative.
With that in mind, history is littered with union actions that have generally improved workers.
For that, you need look no further than articles on union actions such as this [1]. Minimum wage, ending child labor, the 40 hour work week with 8 hour days. All of these have their roots in union actions. More money, more free time, and more benefits. Those are the promises of unions in general.
> The rest of your post can really just be a rant against capitalism for better or worse.
I find this pretty funny. Unions are a part of capitalism and regulating them away is a perversion of the free market. Workers organizing is not anti-capitalist.
>why is it that vfx workers are overworked and underpaid? Supply and demand gaps with far too little mobility on the employment side and too little leverage.
Everyone working on set in the movie industry, unless they're Tom Cruise, has very little leverage, actors, grip, etc, you name it, but they're unionized to combat this, otherwise they'd also be working 60h weeks for peanuts with no overtime pay.
VFX artists aren't unionized (yet) because they're not part of the on-set crew, they're part of an independent third-party shop where the VFX work get farmed out remotely off-set at at a later date, competing with other remote shops across the globe in a race to the bottom.
It's kind of like the tech sector in my EU country, not innovative enough to compete with the US, not low-tax enough to compete with Netherlands, Ireland, not cheap enough to compete with Eastern Europe, so it's a limbo with few opportunities and poor pay where the unionized tram driver makes more than a dev.
> These folks are competitive with Vietnamese and Korean outlets willing to do 80% of the work for 20% of the price.
There used to be an answer to that: tariffs, and steep ones at that. Sadly, politicians 30-40 years ago started to embrace "free trade zones" in the hope of "cheaper prices" while ignoring the very real impact these would have on domestic employment.
These politicians and their younger followers sold out their populations.
> Whether it’s rent control, or unions, in the end people try to create arbitrary pins in the mobility to certain individuals benefit, which again is not inherently bad.
... but the large players, the monopolies, no matter if it's Big Mouse aka Disney who have bought almost everything in entertainment, large employers like Walmart or mega landlords/investment funds, they should be left to extort people in the never ending race to the bottom?! No.
>There used to be an answer to that: tariffs, and steep ones at that. Sadly, politicians 30-40 years ago started to embrace "free trade zones" in the hope of "cheaper prices" while ignoring the very real impact these would have on domestic employment.
How about we flip the proposition: why would everyone pay slightly higher prices for goods, so a minority (owners and employees of the factor that produces the goods) can benefit? Put this way it sounds a lot like crony capitalism.
Is it? I'm not sure the world would be a better place if you were, say, negotiating for your job every morning that you come into work for, or if your apartment would get reassigned to the highest bidder that's willing to pay for it today.
Stability is often far more valuable than perfectly optimizing some supply-demand curve. The advantages of stability are why corporations form, why multi-year contracts are signed, and why unions exist.
This kind of work is so prone to migration across borders now. My prediction is that as unions force wages up, the size of the labor force will decrease. And if unions force production houses to use the union shops through law, then the production shops will shut down and set up abroad too. And if finally the unions try to get Congress to block productions made abroad from coming onto US TV, then people will just watch the productions on streaming platforms through VPN.
The fact of the matter is, consumers don't care if VFX is made by a union shop. VFX is getting commoditized. Most shows don't need the very best VFX ... just good enough VFX (and thats commoditized).
This is a losing battle and I don't think its worth it to have this fight. If you are interested in VFX as an American, I think you should work on your own content for YouTube etc., and tap consumer dollars directly. You aren't going to get paid very well by the system as labor for hire.
I forget who was it who bragged that if he didn't make at least one VFX studio go bankrupt during the film, he wasn't doing his job. I am probably getting the quote wrong.
"One producer, according to a story making the rounds of vfx shops, is reported to have said, “If I don’t put a visual effects shop out of business (on my movie), I’m not doing my job.” "
I didn't understand what you're saying here. What does the unionizing have to do with "people caring about science"? Or about others being able to relate to what you're doing? Are you saying "people put up with abuse because at least others around them can somehow relate to their end product"? That sounds like a weird take to me...
The core issue is that the studio's decision-makers negotiate a fixed cost contract and then keep making changes that require the VFX studio to work extra hours without getting extra money. This is in contrast with other people in movies who get paid per day of labor when shooting the film. So the director has an incentive to make the shooting of the film as efficient as possible and then they just "fix it in post" because there is no marginal cost to them to cram more work onto the VFX shop.
In theory, the union will probably get the VFX people fair wages. In practice, I'm betting that studios will invest heavily into generative AI. Either way, the recent Hollywood union actions will end the exploration of VFX professionals.