While Hollywood celebs gear up to attend the Oscars tonight, hundreds of visual effects artists are actually planning to protest the awards ceremony in hopes of bringing the plight of their profession to the public eye. With visual effects advancing from the manipulation of cameras, high speed motors and models to digital artistry, there’s no longer a need for a studio to produce these effects and film companies can outsource the job anywhere in the world. And, because of foreign tax incentives, they are.
According to Daniel Lay, a visual effects artist who also writes about the industry for the blog VFX Soldier, Sony Pictures not only recently laid off hundreds of workers, but gave the ultimatum to the remaining workers to move to British Columbia or lose their jobs. Part of the problem seems to be that the industry lacks any unions or guilds to protect workers. According to David S. Cohen, who writes about visual effects for Variety, the industry is “disorganized, lacks lobbying power and no one’s counting how many jobs are being lost or what the long-term economic consequences could be.” With visual effects being such an important aspect of movie-making these days, it’s hoped that the planned protest will have the desired effect and the industry will be supported.
Source: NPR
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