Hasta La Motion!

"I can’t pay you for your work, but you will get a credit on my film! And that should be good enough because it’s going to win a ton of awards!"

"this is an unpaid job, but its a chance to develop your skills. of course, you still have to do it the way I say."

"there’s no money, but you can keep the shots you created (on your own, without compensation) for your reel. That is, after we give you permission, when the film sells and we all get famous."

"if I could pay you, I would."

"my student film has twice as many VFX shots as all three LOTR movies combined, and the quality needs to look ten times better. you’re definately the person for the job! by the way, our VFX budget is $600, and the work needs to be delivered in a month."

"work for free on this project, and when I get famous, I’ll pay you to work on my next project."

and my personal favorite, the response I’ve seen in virtually posting from anyone who is serious about going into this field and is inquiring about salary…

"Hey man! you’re supposed to be an ARTIST! If you’re JUST in it for the money… blah-blah-blah….."

look, I’m not trying to ruffle anyone’s feathers, and I’m not picking on anyone specific, but I think this needs to be said.

this post is intended for those who make their living as professional artists, not so much for the hobbyists or students. I welcome feedback from everyone, but if you’re going to reply, please state your position (working professional artist, student artist trying to get into VFX, unpaid hobbyist, etc…) so that way we know where everyone is coming from.

Personally, I started out doing digital art as a hobbyist, and I got to love it so much that I went back to school for several years so that I could do it professionally, and now I can’t imagine doing anything else for a living. However, I think the concept of "for a living" is starting to get lost on some people.

Don’t get me wrong, unpaid (aka, "spec") work has its place in this business. As a student, I helped out many of my fellow classmates on projects where the only expectation was a little publicity, and maybe a favor returned down the line (this was rare). Most of the time, I was just happy to be working on something with my friends.

I’m not going to drop names, but several months after graduating, I was very lucky to land my first freelance gig working for about 4 weeks with a group of artists on a last minute shot for a feature they had been working on for several months. Some of the people I was working with were 20+ year veterans, some of whom had worked on the original Star Wars and Raiders movies (though the company I was at wasn’t ILM). The pay wasn’t much, but the experience was worth it just to see how the people in VFX who are the best at what they do are usually the most helpful and least arrogant about it. In subsequent jobs at other companies, I’ve found the opposite to be true as well, unfortunately. This first job and the people I worked with (you know who you are) came to be the measure for every job I’ve worked on since.

After that, I continued doing spec work for people, but something felt different. I was no longer a student, and the people I was doing it for weren’t just friends from school. There was less of a sense of pride in the work, because it was ultimately subject to other people’s input, and I wasn’t even getting anything out of it. People would hit me with "but you will have the shot for your reel, and next time when the big project comes along, I can hire you full time." Well, the big projects never came for most of these people, yet some of them somehow felt entitled to give me notes on the work I was doing for free. As a student working with my friends, this didn’t bother me. As a professional starting out in the business, it did. At that point, I had enough, and here is where this post comes in….

Very few of us, if any, got into this just for the money. Many of us spent years learning how to draw, how to sculpt, how to paint, and how to use the digital tools, and the most dedicated among us continue to invest their time in honing their skills. Some of us are new to this business, others have been doing it for most of their professional lives. Needless to say, this business is competitive by nature, and in order to thrive, one needs to develop artistic skills that most people don’t understand or have.

My question is why then are we chastised on the subject of fair compensation for our work? It’s bad enough that we’ve allowed it to get to the point where producers have us underbidding each other to the point of going out of business, but it seems like the majority of e-mails and postings I read are from people who are asking for professional results, but think they can get it ridiculously cheap or free.

I’ve seen postings (craigslist has the real dregs) where the person writes something like “sequence where the truck is driving away from the tornado, and it gets sucked up in the wind, then there’s some bullet-time, then it explodes in slow motion, blah-blah-blah. $120 flat free for the entire project.” At that point, it’s just insulting. Personally, I found that unless you charge a fair amount from your clients, they don’t take you seriously as an artist.

It seems like many of these people who write these postings for free or cheap work have these lofty expectations that they’re making the next Star Wars or Toy Story, and that anyone working on their project is lucky just to be there. That may well be the case, but more often than not, it isn’t. This didn’t bother me as much a few years ago, but it seems like these postings are starting to outnumber the serious ones.

Maybe it’s the changing culture of VFX itself. There seems to be more of an awareness of this art form, thanks to DVD documentaries, and there seems to be more people trying to get in, thanks to the art schools who churn out graduates year after year (regardless of whether or not they’re any good). The funny thing is, in a conversation with a well-respected VFX veteran (again, I don’t have this person’s permission, so I’m not going to name-drop) he told me that 30 or so years ago, they had trouble finding matte artists to work on movies, because many artists looked down on photo realistic painting. Today, it seems like despite the amount of money these summer blockbusters are taking in, the VFX business seems like it’s moving in a direction where it will not be able to sustain itself long-term. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Anyway, I’m getting a bit off my own topic. I decided to write this posting because recently I’m seeing a lot of colleagues allowing themselves to be taken advantage of by having to sell themselves short. No doubt this is due to the current economic state (at least in L.A.) but I have a feeling it also has something to do with the mentality among producers that “well, so-and-so just graduated and will do this job for pennies on the dollar.” Personally, I didn’t work this hard to learn what I know (and to avoid any implied self-righteous tone, I assure you there are plenty of people higher than I am in this business who I look up to) just to get financially screwed. If I want minimum wage, I’ll work in fast food.

If you have taken the time to read my entire posting, I thank you, as it was cathartic to write this evening. My goal is to stimulate intelligent discussion among the members of the community, and see how the opinions of the professionals compare to those of the students and hobbyists.

Discuss 🙂