Ailing f/x sector spotlights creaky tentpole foundation | Hacker News Reader

Ailing f/x sector spotlights creaky tentpole foundation

variety.com

16 pointsbsenftner8 comments

> "They know what our margins are and they won't let us make any money," he said.

Wow. When you depend on your customers to "let" you make money, you simply don't have a business.

Come back when they need your service, and then force them to cover your expenses with some profit thrown in. Until then, go do something profitable.

Studios do need their services. FX uses to be a huge margin industry, until it became marginalized.

However, there are now so many competitors in the market, domestic and foreign that margins are thin or non-existent.

In a nutshell, it's what is going to happen to the tech world when programming skills become marginalized.

No, studios don't need their services because there are now so many competitors in the market, domestic and foreign.

I don't need the services of Nobu, but that doesn't mean that I don't need to eat.

Studios do need their service. They don't need them to provide that service.

This is a fairly accurate depiction of the current state of the industry. It's fair to say that it's difficult to think of a good reason to stay in vfx other than that the work itself is so darned enjoyable.

Yeah, I spent 7 years at R&H. Stayed because I loved the work. I left because the work demands require your entire being, day and night, leaving you no life at all.

Why is that? It always seems the case that vfx eats up everyone time, but it always seemed to me that it was that projects were terribly managed, and if they weren't, this wouldn't be as much of an issue.

It's a death of a thousand cuts: "We'll fix it in post", shots created by compositing multiple shots together (with different camera and lighting) and your job is to add the VFX and integrate it all so it looks realistic and natural, being informed the director has changed his thoughts about 1/3 of the film, that other vender working with us just went belly up and here's all their work with no deadline adjustment, coworkers crumbling and their work being distributed among every other surviving team member, wife/child/significant-other begging you to come home while they are awake just once...

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