Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500728
Summer 2023 – LOCAL695.COM 63 healthcare. This situation leaves these artists vulnerable to exploitation and poor working conditions, with many news stories recently discussing long working hours and inhumane conditions. Despite the value they bring to production, Visual Effects Artists and companies are not compensated appropriately, with even Academy Award-winning VFX houses being forced to shut their doors or file for bankruptcy due to an inability to make ends meet (such was the case for Life of Pi VFX house, Rhythm & Hues, which was forced to file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy just two weeks before accepting the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 2013). By choosing to assign this additional labor of "virtual production" to VFX houses instead of hiring IATSE workers under their contract rates and benefits, studios are perpetuating an unethical and unsustainable system—all while violating the contracts that the employers sign with the IATSE. At its core, virtual production technology is an evolution of the work that Local 695 engineers have been doing for decades. It is derived from the Rear Screen Projector/Camera Interlock Process shot, a system originally conceived and developed by IATSE member Henry V. Miller in 1930 (a story we covered in the Fall 2022 edition of this publication). Though LED panels, networking systems, and video throughput workflow have been improved upon with almost a century's worth of innovation, the primary function of the job has not changed.