Ebrowser Movies

[Cherish Asleson]

Ijust want to point out that while, yes R&D can be expensive and yes it takes a lot of technology and computing power to create films like yours, it is not computer chips and hard drives that are costing you so very much money. It is the artists that are helping you create your film.

Incidentally, those were the same gorgeous sunsets and vistas that your DP Claudio Miranda took credit for without so much as a word of thanks to those artists. And the same animated performances that helped win you the best director statue. Nice of you to mentionthe pool crew, but maybe you could have thanked the guys and gals who turned that pool in to an ocean and put a tiger in to that boat?

Mr. Lee, I do believe that you are a thoughtful and brilliant man. And a gifted filmmaker. But I also believe that you and everyone in your tier of our business is fabulously ignorant to the pain and turmoil you are putting artists through. Our employers scramble to chase illegal film subsidies across the globe at the behest of the film studios. Those same subsidies raise overhead, distort the market, and cause wage stagnation in what are already trying economic times. Your VFX are already cheaper than they should be. It is disheartening to see how blissfully unaware of this fact you truly are.

Welcome to the real world in which most of us live. This is a childish and petulant rant. So no-one came and personally told you how wonderful you were, how nothing could have happened without your personal involvement. Awwww diddums.

> explosiveliquid: I will if you can explain how posting a reel would, in any way, shape or form add/detract anything from my statements. Try and understand that the issue raised here is global and can be found in any number of different industries.

>Matt: I am not at all angry at any group uniting to protect their interests and move towards a fairer economic model but petulant and poorly aimed rants against one individual in the system is childish and pointless. Ang Lee sought a product, at a price. The VFX house sold themselves and their staff down the river by delivering something that was economically fallable.

We have to share the situation to our medias, press online in our contries (france done)to show to everyone the disaster. We can change a lot of things now.

Ang lee shame on you any words for artists..

Subsidies are just a smoke screen, you will not be able to hold back the tide against the effects of globalisation. The vast majority of VFX work will go to the same places your trainers are currently made. Who knows there may be an inflection in the world economy and westerners will be making the shoes for the successful Asian VFX artists to wear.

Actually, people have been attempting to combat tax subsidies and runaway production since 1998. A group called the Film and Television Action Committee has filed a 301(a) petition with the US Trade Representative. The Hollywood Reporter has an article on this effort from 2007: -petition-picking-up-steam-149619

Building houses on sand, you cant rely on the sand. Just saying. It is not a about the jobs in LA only, its about those jobs build on subsides which will fall apart as soon as subsides end. All we can agree on is, stop subsides and pay the jobs nonetheless. There is soo much work done by underpaid, overtimed artists, the work of every one could be divided, but nobody wants to pay that. so they rather create a climate of fear, do overtime, do it for less money, or you and your family will face financal problems, and in the betweentime the movies create big money., but where does it all go? thats what this is all about. that we unite, some profit less, others more from it, but in the end, so that we all can work, and that work got respected, as well as we as individuals get more respect. we are human beings with a life. but rightnow we reached slavery2.0 where we snatch the whips and whip ourselves senseless to make the client happy.

bleh , no one wins with subsides. Everyone in British Columbia likes them now, but what about when they dry up, and Montreal out subsidizes BC?

As long as the industry is driven by subsides it will never be stable for anyone. It will always dry up somewhere, and pick up somewhere else.

Bleh, why not just ask the BC government to pay the subsidies directly to the good people? Because then it would be called welfare. But at least the money would be staying in BC and not going to American studios, eh?

CG Joe, I agree with you. I believe fair competition will even the playing field, and that is good for everyone in the long term. $437 million in British Colombian subsidies is not a sustainable solution.

Problem is: WTO is a f+++ed up system. They know how to make money, and it is not the open, fait and undistorted way. You can find a lot of articles, and books on them, and how they distort the system.

But somewhere along the line between then and now, the public perception (and film industry perception) went from artist to technician. I think the fact that people believe computers do all the work now had something to do with this ?

I am no tax expert and I am not convinced that this kind of solution would work either in a globalized world.

But certainly as it stands now tax money in one country is subsidising studios in another country (mostly Hollywood studios). Surely there must be laws against this, they are just disregarded. The canadian taxpayers are giving free money to California.

The market is the only thing that reliably determines pricing, the point where a willing buyer and a willing seller meet. As long as there are people willing to provide their talents at the given rates and the clients continue to pay those rates, that is the right price.

There are only a handful of major studios and they frequently work in concert with each other to set industry standards because nobody else can compete with them. Unionizing is the right answer, because although what they are doing is not technically a monopoly, they are behaving as one.

There should be an established market price across the board that is comparable to that of any of the crew in a movie, but more because they are artists. There should be paid overtime as that job requires long hours. Each year the pay scale should go up as it does for the others who work in the industry. The show biz big wigs who seek to get cheaper labor in other countries should be taxed twice.

AniMatters, it would be nice if the buyer would actually pay the service provider what it takes to do the job, instead of forcing them to underbid against other service providers just to get the work in the door. The buyer (studios), after all, has the money to spend. The buyers are forcing the service providers in to this tenuous position.

I would have continued this useless argument more, but I need to catch some sleep so that I can go back and work in one of those Asian facilities that you so casually dissed, so that the current projects deliver on time so that everyone, be it Asian or LA artist benefit.

Hell, if Lohan and Sheen can still work in the industry after what they have done, you would think some real talent may be able to get some movement on this. I think hitting them up on twitter and getting a #hashtag trend going may raise some eyebrows too.

I think it would go along way much more than sympathy, I have had the fortune of sitting in dailies with big name directors (not allowed to speak to them of course) and the Bullshit they are feed about how shots are made and the difficulties of certain shots is tremendous to out right lying to make the studio look good so the studio/director hires them for the next movie.

1.)True. My experience is anytime you are that important they just wait for the project to be over, or have someone shadow you (saying they are your assistant) to understand your job so production would not be affected and they have an option. Usually they plan these things so nobody is so important if they lost them the production would be affected that much. I have seen many people not asked back because they thought they were that important.

I have no clue how to solve the problem, but I do think that if people with the money actually understand what we do and the sacrifice we make that would be a good start. In my idealistic world a union would do that, dunno. I have never been in a union in my life, just a freelance contractor for years now.

I own an indie video game company that has been in business 17 years. In the video game industry, the VFX team members are some of the most valuable people on the team. The idea of shuffling them off to the side is just ludicrous.

The bottom line is that the VFX in Life of Pi were what propelled the movie to greatness. Ang Lee would probably never have won if not for the awesome effects and character animation. The DP Claudio Miranda absolutely would not have won. Both of them OWE their Oscars to the VFX artists, yet they were not mentioned at all in their acceptance speeches!!! Really? I think this speaks volumes about how VFX artists are marginalized in the movie industry.

Trust me we do not blame our Canadian workmates. In fact they are hurting as well. Many companies in BC violate BC labor laws, just so those companies can do the jobs that are required to give their employers a hefty tax break.

the breaks are far higher in Canada ergo Canadian taxpayers are directly subsidising Hollywood movies and putting UK VFX artists out of work. If we are all in this together there should be a level playing field and not cheap shoddy initiatives that result in unemployment.

As for the state of the industry? blame those who have flooded it with cheap labor. The online training sites! What amazes me is that some of the people whining the loudest about the state of things are the ones getting fat off students wanting to enter the industry or artists trying to up-skill to stay in it. You wont find those guys competing for the little work available. They left the industry years ago to sell their knowledge

3a8082e126