Hollywood’s Greatest Trick is a documentary that aims to uncover and shine a spotlight upon the unrest in the visual effects industry today. The 24 minute documentary looks at how the industry uses tax models, the fixed bid model to land and complete projects, and how visual effects artists struggle for fair pay, representation and recognition for their work. You can read more and watch the entire film via the Fresno Bee website.
Hollywood’s Greatest Trick
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First time I came across the image you used was in Futurama and looked up where that reference came from. Having read up on it, you picked the perfect picture for this documentary!
Thanks for posting this here. Depressing but at least it’s talked about more than a few years ago.
If you think about it, the situation must be much worse in the so called 2nd and 3rd world countries.
let me play the devil’s advocate here.
sorry to break it to you but it’s first world problems we are talking about here.
secondly, it’s a poor documentary. there is no counter part. lets say for example we’d go to india or china and do the same interviews over there. or show them the footage of the german guy bought a porsche doing the same work they do. they would look at LA (the *hole that is is) being ‘el doardo’. they would have their jaws drops seeing someone basically ‘making it’.
if we break this documentary down to the core we have people that work on a product that make millions of dollars and they don’t get a piece of the cake. now where else do we see that. everywhere, literally everywhere. it is probably the most common business model in the world. take any big brand in any industry and you will find that same structure. but lets take a sewer for nike, do you think any of them would ever be able to buy a porsche? now i understand your average vfx ‘man’ is not able to buy a porsche but it being an part of this docu it needs a mention.
i agree in a perfect world if you work on a product and that product makes a lot of money yea you should get a piece of the cake. but we are unfortunately not living in such a world. in a local small environment/community it is in fact possible. but in a global world… nope. it does not matter if you make a beautiful picture on screen possible or you sewing a shirt for a big multi-corporation. we are all part of this economy and this is currently the way things are. will it remain like it is now. probably not. will it crash. it already did several times. and for some countries so hard that they are basically out of business.
of course none of these big 6 was available for a commentary. why would they!? from a business perspective they are successful, so what would you want to hear from them? finishing the documentary on that is just as weak as it gets.
the UK example with the union it is probably the way to go, and yes maybe even international. but good luck. i have worked in china, been in post studios in india…. good luck, it’s not going to happen. these people are grateful to just have a job. you think any of them care about some kid loosing his job in “hollywood”?. i assure you they don’t. so we come back to this being a first world problem. neither me and probably no one is going to share a single tear for you. considering most hollywood movies (that are mentioned in this documentary) being the up most crap and i don’t understand how anyone can be proud to contribute to it. why would anyone want to work on a shi*y hollywood movie… seriously, why???
we the artists workers are a bunch of introverted, autistic people and we will always be taken advantage of by the opposite, namely narcissistic business people that know how to make money with us because they went to business school while we where learning repetitive stupid work such as retopology, rotoscoping setting a million keyframes on a hand animation. why do you deserve the 62 million ‘sandy bullock’ made on gravity? you probably don’t. there are people talking about this very smart one of them being ‘mike monteiro’ i’d suggest to listen to his speeches and apply it to your live and your environment if you can.
don’t get me wrong i’m on the artist side just as most of us. but the level people complain on just makes me throw up. go travel, go work in a third world country for once in your live to broaden your perspective on life a little bit. but the whole i cannot fulfill my promised “american dream” out of LA mentality. seriously ***.