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.
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
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 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.
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.
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!”
> 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
[+] [-] sxp|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ClimaxGravely|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Melatonic|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rtsil|2 years ago|reply
However, actions like this might trigger a domino effect across the entire industry.
[+] [-] thelittleone|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucubratory|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] yafbum|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] creddit|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thephyber|2 years ago|reply
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}.
[+] [-] fidotron|2 years ago|reply
We're rapidly reaching a point where people in developed countries cannot afford the option of creative employment.
[+] [-] jacquesm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riotnrrd|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] throwawaysleep|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] thrillgore|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redeeman|2 years ago|reply
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.
Im sure all my clients would love to pay me a big fat nothing. Do you know who wouldnt love that? ME
my god, say no to this shit?
[+] [-] mmastrac|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|2 years ago|reply
https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-hi...
[+] [-] Alupis|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mardifoufs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ETH_start|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] menus|2 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eALwDyS7rB0 The first minute of this video describe the conditions they work in.
[+] [-] ETH_start|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] aiisahik|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] esafak|2 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensating_differential
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.
[+] [-] DizzyDoo|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] headcanon|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mschuster91|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] frozenfoxx|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] netbioserror|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] yafbum|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] byw|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] glimshe|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Aeolun|2 years ago|reply
Shoe repair worker seems like a very sustainable job to me. People will never not need shoes. Why would this be affected by AI?
[+] [-] endisneigh|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cogman10|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] FirmwareBurner|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mschuster91|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] vkou|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tomrod|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] TheMagicHorsey|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tamimio|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Melatonic|2 years ago|reply
HOT STRIKE SUMMER
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[+] [-] puffyengineer|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] doctorpangloss|2 years ago|reply
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