Everything about how much life sucks for visual effects artists may be true, but I'm not convinced it's any worse than everything that comes beforehand:
> In today’s Hollywood, compositors, along with all of their colleagues, are often left to clean up all of the messes left by writers, actors, directors, producers, and all of the other name-brand talent.
"Clean up all of the messes" sounds awfully derogatory. How about the fact that on-set you might have 50-200 people working at any given time, so doing anything that will delay the next shot by even just 10 minutes can be astonishingly expensive, and not every problem can be predicted in advance. Not to mention things like the sun setting. If something can be fixed in post, it's because it's the better more efficient option, not because people meant to leave a "mess".
> is being left to a post-production workforce that is disparate, overworked, confused, and exploited.
News flash: the production workforce is just as disparate, overworked, confused, and exploited. 16 hour days and 6 day weeks are standard for everyone involved. Not saying this is good either, but setup for each day and shoot takes so long (just think the hours spent in daily hair, makeup and wardrobe for actors) that days need to be 16 hours long just to get in a reasonable amount of shooting.
Visual effects may be difficult and suck, but everything in production is like that. I just don't like how this article seems to frame it that the regular production side of things somehow has things easier.
Well said. I also think it's worth remembering that everyone involved in the production of Hollywood movies are likely doing so at least partially because there's an immense amount of worldwide prestige in working on them. Similarly to how I feel about Tesla employees working 16h days, I don't imagine the thousands of people behind every big budget movie were under any delusion they'd be working a comfy 9-5.
> In today’s Hollywood, compositors, along with all of their colleagues, are often left to clean up all of the messes left by writers, actors, directors, producers, and all of the other name-brand talent.
"Clean up all of the messes" sounds awfully derogatory. How about the fact that on-set you might have 50-200 people working at any given time, so doing anything that will delay the next shot by even just 10 minutes can be astonishingly expensive, and not every problem can be predicted in advance. Not to mention things like the sun setting. If something can be fixed in post, it's because it's the better more efficient option, not because people meant to leave a "mess".
> is being left to a post-production workforce that is disparate, overworked, confused, and exploited.
News flash: the production workforce is just as disparate, overworked, confused, and exploited. 16 hour days and 6 day weeks are standard for everyone involved. Not saying this is good either, but setup for each day and shoot takes so long (just think the hours spent in daily hair, makeup and wardrobe for actors) that days need to be 16 hours long just to get in a reasonable amount of shooting.
Visual effects may be difficult and suck, but everything in production is like that. I just don't like how this article seems to frame it that the regular production side of things somehow has things easier.