You deserve more than this.
You deserve more than the 80-120 hour work weeks. You deserve more than the dark rooms where you labor away with your cold lunch on your desk for 16 hours a day. You deserve credit for the work you’ve done, acknowledgement for your artistry and better treatment across the board.
I’ve worked for 10 years in film – 7 of those in VFX and I marvel at the fact that of all the workers who labor passionately to bring a film project to life, the VFX workers are the only ones in the film industry without a union or guild protecting our rights. We don’t have health care, paid time off or any sort of job security. I’ve seen hundreds of employees laid off at the end of a project so a company can struggle to keep afloat and while most of those people have overtime pay, not all of them do.
I recently found out from a friend of mine in nursing that if her shift is changed within 10 days of the date it was scheduled for, she’s entitled to doubletime pay for the entire shift. Shoot – I’ve had my own shifts moved, extended or appear out of thin air with less than 10 minutes notice. I was once expressly told to take the day off because of the amount of hours I’d worked the past 13 days (no weekend) only to get called in at 10am to be there ASAP. I’ve been forced to text VFX crew members at 11pm, 1am and even 6am to tell them to be there the next day as early as 7am.
The problem with out industry is not subsidies and foreign governments with lower wages. Those are symptoms of the problem. The problem is that the VFX market is not being treated as an ART form by Hollywood. The studios hiring the VFX houses that hire you are not looking for the talented crew that did X – they’re looking for what they can get cheap and fast.
No self respecting movie studio would go to an Oscar wining actor and say they really liked working with them and want them to do the work, but unknown Joe-Bob over here will do it for half the rate so can Mr. Big Wig Oscar Winner match the rate? But that’s exactly what they’re doing to VFX houses. So VFX houses are forced to squeeze the employees with short term contracts, no medical coverage and increasingly poor working conditions.
Why wont Hollywood recognize the talent and skill in VFX? Why did Rhythm and Hues file bankruptcy a mere 11 days before winning the Oscar for best VFX? An Oscar that the academy clearly cut the winners off before even mentioning R&H. I’ll tell you why – because those talented artist were not being treated as artists, but as commodities.
I worked on the set side – I’ve worked union gigs. Hell, I was a member of IATSE when I was on set. They’re for standard pay rates, healthcare and safe working conditions. You better believe there’s fees too for not giving crew enough time off between shifts and the like.
When I’ve been in VFX the only person looking out for the crew was the production team and maybe one or two studio folks. But that was more of a manage the pain than actually doing something about it.
I have experience going to the studio HR with a formal complaint and being told it wasn’t real – never mind the fact that people were suffering. I have seen people being worked so many hours that their doctor actually tells them they need to stop working for their health. I have killed myself in VFX working to make a project come to life only to have my name removed from the credits because the producer didn’t like me.
I was put through the wringer on a project with absurd amounts of overtime and then asked to roll straight on to another project because the studio had too much work and not enough people – I’ve seen dozens of people do the same. We’re wrung out for everything we have to give, wrung one more time for good measure and then tossed aside for another newcomer to take up the work. It only seems to be getting worse in recent years as Studios give VFX less and less time, direction or money.
Right now, I’m fighting the VFX house that has wronged me, the one that caused my health to deteriorate so deeply that it’s taken me the better part of 2 years to be a functional human again. I’m doing that because what the VFX industry does to people shouldn’t be allowed – we don’t need to put up with this.
We deserve to be treated like artists. We deserve to be treated like humans. I encourage you to express your interest in IATSE there’s literally no reason not to but every reason to do it. I don’t want to see more people crushed by this industry. We’re making movies this should be fun, not torture!
The Story Block 