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As people we very naturally focus on
changes in events. Deltas or endings
and a lot of people look at twenty-five years and then we go out of business
in year 26 and it's kind of like
well what did they do wrong, is the question, right?
I'm sorry twenty-five years what did we do right
What do I love about Rhythm & Hues, mostly the people
It's not corporate it's very familial
We moved into our first house, my husband and I, because my husband worked here too
John Hughes is one of the people who helped us move our stuff
I think our first contract was actually a film logo and that was back in 1987
computers weren't all that fast and then there was no way of
outputting it so we had to shoot it to film
We were just trying to get something anything to keep us
employed in being able to pay each other and make computer graphics. I think the
majority of the unifying factor was that we
saw character animation as kind of a long term future
[Babe sings]
I look at some of the work we do and
I just don't know how we do it you know to me it's just magic
The work that goes into the Tiger
or so many other things we do it's just beyond belief
As an animator I just like the creativity of it
I can take a blank slate and create a performance out of nothing
They're like you know concert musicians concert pianists that are playing at the
LA Philharmonic. They're at the top of their game
We're at our peak, our pinnacle. So exciting
All of us over I think at the end of the day
are driven to create and that's what really gets us excited, what drives us
The challenge with that is that
in many cases that can takeover
or at least if can cloud your judgment You're gonna put in extra hours because you wanna go
the extra mile
and you going to try to push things as far as you can as an artist
Even if the project
and the money for that project
do not require or facilitate that happening.
Nobody's doing this for the money anymore maybe they were at some point
but they're not doing it for the money anymore
People are doing it because they love doing it which is why I do it
It's not done by the computer
It's done by a lot of people and there's a lot of people
in the background working away night and day take it
the project's done
We as visual effects artists and as visual effects companies do not
participate in the profit in any of those films
The visual effects business is a broken business model right now the only
people who
thrive in this industry in the movie industry seem to be folks who have
profit participation
At the beginning of 2012 we knew that we had to raise money
I made four trips to China I visited Taiwan a couple times
Hong Kong a couple times you know we hired an investment banker
You hear little rumors. You hear things in the hallways little whispers
"Have you heard this" "Have you heard that"
It just gets your mind reeling All the hypotheticals of what could be going on
but you don't know. 20 months of delays at between 1.2 to 1.6 million per month
that's anywhere from 24 to 30 million dollars of
additional costs that we had to take on
Other projects were supposed to take the people onto that project and that
project got delayed and all these projects getting delayed
puts you in a really, really bad situation. You know I was prepared to
sell my shares of stock for a dollar if somebody would invest
the fifteen to twenty million dollars that we needed. And then we had investors
standing by
who fell out at the last second. We even had wire transfer information, bank account
information here give us the bank and we'll
submit to you, wire you this money by Monday morning and over the weekend
we're like okay great, this is good we're gonna get the money in because everything's been
signed and come Monday the money just didn't show up
and then we went bankrupt
It's not to make this studios out to be the bad guys, it's just the model
of how we have set up this business is flawed. We built
500 shots for ten million dollars or so and that's what it is
We'll hire up based on the contract and sometimes
things just change. The making of a movie is not a precise science
There are creative issues in a movie
as it's being done during the post-production process and sometimes
even during shooting
the movie starts to evolve
If the movie extends and we suddenly have to work for three months more, or four months more
from the studios perspective they paid us ten million dollars for 500 shots
but from Rhythm & Hues' perspective now we're paying for the same artist for three more months
that we have to continue paying their salaries
There's no other source of revenue then coming out of
Rhythm & Hues' own pockets. So our choices were to
cut people's salaries or
to lay off a significant number of people
or to work people over time without paying them for overtime by
restructuring their contracts so
those kinds of changes are very difficult changes to make and I felt
that any one of those
would have so dramatically altered
the culture of Rhythm & Hues
that they would have destroyed Rhythm & Hues
and well instead were in bankruptcy so
I ended up destroying Rhythm & Hues anyways
you know maybe I should have done
something along those lines in order to have tried to preserve Rhythm & Hues
We've had to chase a price point that's been
dropping very rapidly and the reason the prices have been dropping quite a bit one of
the fundamental reasons really is
the tax subsidies that have been provided in Canada and the UK and in
other places
If a studio decides there's a $10 million dollar project
they want to take over to say Vancouver and award to a Canadian company
the Canadian company will bid it at ten million dollars but
the studio gets three million dollars back as a tax rebate so the only way
to even get considered for that film
is to bid it at seven million dollars and so we're now getting less money for the same amount of work.
And so the motion picture studios
told the visual effects facilities that if you want to get this work
you have to do it in Vancouver where you're spending a million a million five
building a facility there
Of course what happens is another country or region, state
says oh well that's a good idea we'll do that, we'll take our
money and we'll take it from our taxpayers and we'll give that to the
movie studios
and then of course all those people now go to this other place because
what the state and the countries don't realize is
every movie they take a look at what's the cheapest way
So you moved to Vancouver find the house live there for about nine months or a year
and then ultimately wind up getting laid off
[Crowd cheers]
It is good to be in LA
This is one of America's economic engines hundreds of thousands
of middle-class jobs
There's still no better place to make movies and television and music then right here
in the United States. Entertainment is one
of the bright spots of our economy and that means that we've got to do what it takes
to make sure that this industry and every great American industry
keeps that competitive edge so the more folks
can find career paths like many of you had and get good middle-class jobs
that allow you to support a family and get ahead
I lived a life of what some of my comrades that started a Facebook page called the Pixel Gypsy
you know it's not that I've never been good enough to land somewhere for the
duration, it's that there never is a duration. I've been on a staff of
five visual effects shops that were really well known did amazing work
that all went bankrupt most of them owing the artists money
you know you're constantly on the go chasing which
government's going to give the greatest handout back to the studios
I've taken to just living in hotels the past few years it's a lot simpler
I got suitcases that were designed to fit in the truck of my car
It all layers in there
Yay VFX
I got a king size bed, a jacuzzi in my room they have those little soaps
that make me feel like I'm on vacation
everyday I love those little soaps I love the way they feel when you open them up
Rhythm & Hues was like a new girl in my life I fell in love again
you know what I mean. And at a Friday meeting I had my heart broken just like I have a million times
and now I'm just this kinda strung out gray-haired old bachelor
People want to have lives and families and houses and just like anybody else
They're not trying to live rich they're just trying to live their lives
and you can't do that you have to live in a different city every six months
because you're As the studios chase the tax incentives
a group of artists have to follow
I don't think studios want visual effects companies to go out of business
because they have a lot of work that needs to be done
and they want us to be healthy however
they like any other person that has a job they're given a budget
they're given a movie that you have to do this work for this amount of money
Remember this is a fixed bid you absolutely cannot charge us more than a fixed bid
You said there were some changes to the boards
what VFX are involved. The additional shot has running footage of a
car driving across the salt flats
the car then turns into water and morphs into seven unique animals
all made of water but one is made of fire. That may be a little more than we
bargained for
This is a fixed bid. A fixed bid would be you bid to work and then no matter what
the work is that's the price
you get filmmaking nowadays is very much a fluid situation
the shots changed dramatically you know be easily half of the shots that we bid
could disappear and be replaced by other shots. You know this is the filmmaking
process and its
really difficult to go in know exactly what you want
Most construction you see, most houses skyscrapers
airports they're built on a fixed-bid
which makes sense because there's a blueprint where everything is laid out
down to every screw every high beam every piece of glass
People always compare it with building a house you know if you go to an architect and
you wanted to make the changes
but if you agreed to a plan and laid the foundation to the house
it's going to cost you to rebuild that house. In visual effects it doesn't work
that way because we're not
paid by the hour that work we get paid by the completed project. If shots change
if they are lengthened or shortened if you had characters
you can ask for work an overage, but unless we can prove to the studio that
they were additional shots
or that there was in fact a very
clear change of direction on the part of the director
No, we just don't get much in the way of overages
Now we've got this fixed price you know this fixed price
bidding model where there's a fixed price for and the director just
doesn't even have to really be there because the visual effects artist can
just do it over
The art of film-making seems to have changed a little bit over the years it used to be that
you have a script and storyboard and
you'd have all three acts and then you'd go out and shoot
but nowadays they're
days they often start shooting without really knowing what act three is going to be
you know it's really hard to have a fixed bid and a fixed deadline
when the studio and the director haven't even agreed on act three yet
It's like getting in the car to drive somewhere and you don't know where
you're going like well don't you
Do you have enough gas I don't know I'm just driving
When you're creating these huge fluid dynamic simulations like we did on Life of Pi
and they want to change this wave going that way to this way
or make the rain go completely differently that's a lot of simulation time
just to make the change and then finally gets shown to the client whose
says something like why is it even raining in the shots it's not supposed to be
raining in the shot
So now we go back we do that work
that we think we're supposed to be doing we present it again it goes back up through
the chain of approvals
Decision maker sees it they give their feedback
that goes back through the chain theother direction We find out whether or
not we're done or we have to keep going
And we understand that if you have a vision and
you're moving toward that vision but as long as you're moving in that same
direction toward that vision that's fine you know we're gonna get there
but what we see often is that you know they'll be heading towards a vision and
you might be heading toward that vision for six months and then all of a sudden
they turn around and they're heading off in an entirely different direction
If you're not a visionary or you don't have a visionary involved
in a project
and relies heavily on visual effects it's not gonna succeed
The studios would not permit a director to
shoot for a week or two on set and say tear down the set and build a new set
you know that simply wouldn't be tolerated because in the live-action
portion of filmmaking
everything is paid by the hour. Pretty much everybody who's
making everything happen on a movie set it's by the hour
so the meter's running the focus is dynamic because it
it makes the director or the decision maker whoever that person is
usually it's the director
has to be there and there's someone telling them every second what the meters at
and the creativity just rolls because everybody's so focused and the decisions
are being made in real time
but when you remove the decision maker from the process
which is what happens in visual effects the artisans end up getting diversion
15 16 20 30
the clients never even seen it yet you know if the
decision maker was wandering amidst the visual effects artists like
they do on the movie set
If there's ever a platform where that's needed
it's in visual effects
It was a Friday me that they told us that our paychecks were gonna be delayed.
John announces to everyone
that we're gonna be late on payroll. Been here long enough to know that that was
the last thing John would have ever wanted to do
and that's really when it hit home that you knew how bad it was
It was a perfect storm
of crap happening all at the same time
We've come close to hitting a wall in the past but we've I think we've come
close enough times
that there was the sense of things will be okay
and this time was different.
My phone starts ringing at like 8:30, 9 o'clock at night
people freaking out because apparently managers are now calling
people and telling them that they're being let go
9:00pm, Sunday night all of these posts
Facebook has probably the best information about what's going on
Just going down the newsfeed. You've got people being let go
at every single level of the chain you know from like custodial staff all the way up to
high-end visual effects supervisors, people who've been with the company
in some cases for like seventeen years
It is completely shock and then staying up all night
texting, emailing friends, calling friends. Not knowing if I'm about to get a phone call
Mentally preparing for that It's nine o'clock, how late is going to go until is it midnight
Do I go to bed at midnight? Do I go to bed at 1am? Do I stay up until 2?
Monday morning we had our coordinators
running around and what they would do is they would go to people's desks
see if they were there or not if they were there
then they had to find out if they're supposed to be there or they just
hadn't found out
that they've been cut. And that was just like punch in the stomach.
Sad to see all the empty seats
didn't get any work done that day. And the entire time you're going like well
why that person
why this person, why is that person still here, why's this person gone, that guy
that guy was sitting next to me and he's gone. Why am I still here?
For me this workplace and this
my job it's all about my interaction with other people and I have my best friends
in my whole life I've met here at Rhythm and people at
you know I'm very attached to and so it's very sad
I didn't really expect to hit me as hard as it did
Still hurts to talk about
I asked him today I said John how are you doing
and he's really really sad. He's very very sad that we're in bankruptcy
he's really sad about
how many people are going to be affected by this and I feel sad for that
You know we run this company for the people and then
and then to have hurt them so badly it's really the antithesis of
what we wanted to do
You know 2012 was a great year for movies Hollywood shattered box-office
records with ten-point eight billion dollars in domestic sales
In fact studios accountants have never had to work harder to prove
nothing made a profit. [Crowd laughs]
Life of Pi is the most rewarding experience I've had since I started working in visual effects
Now this is gonna be a big night for some you people because as we all know winning an Oscar
guarantees a long successful career in the industry
To have two nominations for the company
was incredibly exciting and validating and on the other hand
full of irony the company was shattering at the same time
that all of this recognition was being heaped on us
so the night at the Oscars, what a mess
This has been a very dramatic juxtaposition
of being up for two Oscars and declaring bankruptcy at the same time
[Crowd claps]
And the Oscar goes to
Life of Pi
[Crowd cheers]
Having worked on this for many years
you know I wanted to thank some people I thought that was very important
To our director Ang Lee you're an inspiration and you made an incredible journey for
all of us
Everybody had this little bubble
of hey look at this we did it and
and then this odd slap in the face. 45 seconds in I started seeing the red
flashing light in the back saying you gotta wrap it up
and then when they start playing that stupid Jaws theme it was just
insulting enough I mean in any other year that might have been actually kinda funny
My children Christopher and Thomas, thank you for inspiring
me every day
My mom and dad thanks for telling me to do any crazy career choice I wanted
Finally I want to thank all the artists who worked on this for over a year
Including Rhythm & Hues, sadly Rhythm & Hues
is suffering severe financial difficulties right now
it's, I urge you all remember-
Bill gets completely Jaws offstaged
It was emblematic of something that is wrong with this industry
I don't know how they felt about the protest going on maybe they didn't want
anything to be said about that
I really don't know what was in play. If I can get the phrase
being sharked into the culture lexicon I think that whole experience could've been worth it
Then to top it off you've got Claudio
the cinematographer and Ang Lee not thanking
the people who really did about 75 percent of the movie
I cannot make this movie without the help of Taiwan
My Indian crew, my Canadian crew, Tom Rothman
Jim Gianopulos, Gil Netter, David Womark, David Lee
My agent, Carin Sage and lawyer, Ira Schreck
Joe Dapello, I have to do that. [Crowd laughs]
Unfortunate is not a strong enough word but it was
However look at what it did it galvanized an entire industry
Ironically I think the fact that my mic got cut off
has done better to get the message out to the public then had I
actually said onstage that night
It gelled the entire
VFX community into being
horrifically pissed off at how they were being treated
It's a catalyst for the change in this industry that's
that's going to put it in the right direction.
Hi everyone it's David Begnaud and this is Newsbreaker
Hop on your social media account and you may be seeing green
people are swapping their profile pictures into green squares
you know like a green screen it's all in solidarity with the visual effects industry
Teague Chrystie tweets if you've see a bunch a VFX artists with green icons on Twitter
and Facebook we're just showing folks what movies look like without us
We've got some fantastic conversation happening
you've got people who are getting little green screen pins to wear
showing that they at least support the idea of having these discussions even if
we don't necessarily at this point have a clear vision of what
the answer is. A lot of articles come out, try to go through and figure out
what went wrong with Rhythm & Hues, they had everything going for it, they knew
what they were doing they had international facilities they were
making use a tax incentives
they won an Oscar. What the hell happened?
And no one has any clear answers it's sort of like every one of these articles is
kinda rehashes the same stuff over and over again
VFX firms and post houses are like nomads roaming the globe trying to find
an economically viable place to be able to work and shouldn't be that way because
goddammit you need us and when I look into this from the perspective of someone who
wants to get into the industry
and do VFX work and I'm sitting back and color correcting my own video or
doing a chroma key and thinking about people not being able to
be paid for- it hurts
If that trend continues where we continue to do the impossible and we continue to make things
extraordinary a shorter period of time and we continue to lose money
the visual effects industry will become extinct
Everyday things change in this business
It changes like your laptop changes and technology changes
economics of the world change I've talked to plenty of people who are so
affected by this and so hurt so distressed that they're just going to
probably go do something else
I don't consider going out of business after 25 years
I don't consider that a failure quite the contrary I consider it
a success
and I think that people need to you have a little more
appreciation for how difficult it was
to stay in business as long as we did. Visual effects animation is
is a business, it's show business and
artist or whatever it is that you're vocation is here
it's still a business.
The people who are artists will always be artists and no one can ever take that
away from you, right? Nobody can ever say
Oh well we're gonna shut this business down so you're no longer an artist
No way I'll always be an artist, you can never take that for me
It's the process you have to enjoy what you're doing
and I did, I enjoyed it very much
"Oh and I need your badge"