Posted on Dec 29, 2022
Avatar 2: What is the future for visual effects?
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2009's Avatar was considered the pinnacle of his filmmaking prowess. It remains the highest-grossing film of all time thanks to a re-release in 2021 and 2022 to push its cumulative box-office total to $2.85 billion. Narratively, the story might best be described as a rehash of the 1992 Australian animated feature FernGully: The Last Rainforest; a white male saviour similarly teams up with the indigenous inhabitants of a lush ecosystem of flora and fauna to fight back against colonial industrialisation. But visually, critics and audiences across the globe lauded the innovative world-building of jungle-covered moon Pandora and the new VFX realms Cameron and WētāFX (the digital effects company founded by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson) took cinema goers to. "Avatar is a joyous celebration of story craft and the visual possibilities of cinema," Anne Thompson wrote in a review for IndieWire. "Cameron had set his sights on taking the technology of film where no one had gone before. And he delivers."
Avatar 2: What is the future for visual effects?
Posted from bbc.com
Movies
Culture
Technology
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 3
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Yet as advancement in technology gives filmmakers greater freedom to realise their wildest cinematic dreams, progress needs to be made to create a better, healthier working culture for the VFX artists to deliver increasingly complex demands. "With high-speed video communication and the expansion of VFX companies around the globe, it means someone, somewhere is working on the VFX of your film at any hour of the day," says Squires. "Those supervising and monitoring the work may now have to have reviews at 8am, 5pm, midnight and 3am."
He suggests unionisation as the solution, and that seems to be the consensus for making the VFX workplace healthy again. "The lack of international unionisation and any cooperation by the visual effects shops is hurting workers," says the second VFX artist. "Visual effects shops frequently underbid each other, and Marvel (and other clients) know this and pit them against each other, consistently leading to massive overtime and burnout from the artists," he alleges, "and then the visual effects shop eats losses, and the cycle begins again."
"Right now, there's no incentive for a visual effects studio to give their employees better hours, better benefits or a better life balance," adds the first VFX professional. "There's no way for a single employee to push back but if you get a bunch of them, VFX studios have to prioritise that."
..."Yet as advancement in technology gives filmmakers greater freedom to realise their wildest cinematic dreams, progress needs to be made to create a better, healthier working culture for the VFX artists to deliver increasingly complex demands. "With high-speed video communication and the expansion of VFX companies around the globe, it means someone, somewhere is working on the VFX of your film at any hour of the day," says Squires. "Those supervising and monitoring the work may now have to have reviews at 8am, 5pm, midnight and 3am."
He suggests unionisation as the solution, and that seems to be the consensus for making the VFX workplace healthy again. "The lack of international unionisation and any cooperation by the visual effects shops is hurting workers," says the second VFX artist. "Visual effects shops frequently underbid each other, and Marvel (and other clients) know this and pit them against each other, consistently leading to massive overtime and burnout from the artists," he alleges, "and then the visual effects shop eats losses, and the cycle begins again."
"Right now, there's no incentive for a visual effects studio to give their employees better hours, better benefits or a better life balance," adds the first VFX professional. "There's no way for a single employee to push back but if you get a bunch of them, VFX studios have to prioritise that."
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