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Comment by DoctorNick | Hacker News Reader

It's a simple reason for why practical effects were abandoned for CGI: film crews are unionized, 3d animators are not.

Yes exactly. This is just another essay about this that misses the forest for the trees about this stuff unfortunately. Not only does this have negative aesthetic side effects, it is produced by what is widely reported as an overworked, underpaid labor force.

The rhetorical lengths some people go through to avoid talking about the actual, material reasons for these things. We are in general much more interested in just lamenting society, instead of complaining.

It's fascinating to me that a movie production with a budget of 10^8 dollars can't slice off a tiny bit of that for the people that literally make the movie.

I'm not sure what you mean by a tiny portion of that, virtually the entire budget of a movie goes to paying the people who make it.

I was trying to square the existence of GP's mentioned "underpaid labor force" with the gigantic movie production budgets I hear about.

Not for nothing, I wish more people here would pay attention to forces like this in IT. I feel like there's a lot of people not following the money when we discuss things like, e.g. Wayland.

For now. There's a failing 2d animator field in Japan. Either the die or organize.

That might only be a second or third-order cause. The real one is cost. I doubt unions are what drives the difference; it's that an animator can do what a crew of 10 did before.

There is a 3D animation union. M.P.S.C. #839

Representing animation artists, writers and technicians since 1952.

https://animationguild.org/

Now, that only covers a small number of studios. So, of course, not every studio can be part of it. But it is a union and it does drive some of the industry standards and expectations.

This. George Lucas and Steve Jobs really screwed over the VFX industry in the late 90s. God damn conspiring tech trolls.

It’s an interesting observation but why would the union have any impact on the use of CGI ? I never read that before.

It's cheaper to underpay and overwork your workers, both harder when the workers are unionized.

They don't have the collective bargaining power of a union and are paid much less/exploited, resulting in better profit margins for the owners of the film.

Unions tend to push members wages higher and improve benefits, conditions, etc.

That makes non-union labor cheaper in comparison.

Cost is the only thing that matters. I don't believe the budgets of today's movies are any smaller than they were before CGI, CGI artists are very much expensive and there are tens of thousands of them working on a movie.

Can it be two reasons? CGI is also less work.

22 year veteran of CGI here. It's not less work. It's certainly different work. In fact it probably takes more time because directors think (and studios let them) do do-over after do-over. But once a giant set is blown up, that's it. Once you've flooded the set and soaked your actors it's prohibitive to do it again.

CGI in most scenarios is more work and takes longer (and is frequently more expensive). What it offers is the ability to tweak endlessly.

(Full time colorist here)

Is it more expensive for a given result? Or is making "perfect" CGI as expensive as one shot at practical effects, whether you get it or not?

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