An Open letter to the DGA (It affects us too)

[Scott Schroeder]

Quite a good article;

http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/open-letter-to-the-dga/

 

TL;DR version is this.

 

"The largest cost in visual effects is not labor, it is waste due to lack of live pure direction.

Wasted time, wasted money, and even worse, wasted creativity. On the traditional movie set the meter is always on. Each second costs money. The director is compelled to be present at all costs.

 

In this world, the lonely visual effects artists will make what they think is the right image based on a paragraph, an email, someone whirling their hands about in a circular motion on a fuzzy video chat, or worse with a little red laser dot or a transmitted and childlike mouse drawn overlay. After this guess work, their lead will suggest changes, the sequence supervisor will suggest changes, the shops vfx supervisor will suggest changes. The artist finds themselves on version fifty and the vfx supervisor on the client side has not even seen a thing yet…never mind the director, or the studio executive holding the strings and stirring the pot. Supervisors add their colors to the mix until the palette is a bland brown. Wash, rinse, repeat this waste. Wasted time, wasted energy, wasted creativity and eventually the most valuable software you have, the mind of the artist, gets the virus of apathy, and valuable creativity is stunted and lost. The system that is in place becomes a creative tomb, the movie gets a cryptic version of what it could have contained and this all slips past us and is unmeasurable… until it fails.”

 

Does this sound all too familiar with the architecture industry?

[M V]

Sounds even more depressing.

[Nic H]

sounds even more depressing than dealing with architects and woe betide if anyone from any kind of marketing department tries to get involved and remove the shadows or add life to retail.

 

the more people involved the blander it gets. it gets tiring sometimes trying to push your view. sometimes its just best to sit back and do the things these men in beige request, get paid, charge extra for any changes, keep yourself clean of blame, get out and look for the next decent job.

 

sounds a lot more frustrating working on larger film features. sounds like a nightmare to be honest i really dont see the appeal its like slavery with better branding.

Edited August 5, 2013 by nicnic

[Tommy L]

sounds even more depressing than dealing with architects and woe betide if anyone from any kind of marketing department tries to get involved and remove the shadows or add life to retail.

 

the more people involved the blander it gets. it gets tiring sometimes trying to push your view. sometimes its just best to sit back and do the things these men in beige request, get paid, charge extra for any changes, keep yourself clean of blame, get out and look for the next decent job.

 

sounds a lot more frustrating working on larger film features. sounds like a nightmare to be honest i really dont see the appeal its like slavery with better branding.

 

I read the whole letter and actually dont think its applicable to our industry. Its rare that I deal with a hierarchy structure that dilutes a creative vision. On the contrary infact, I find one of two things happens, either Im considered the smartest guy in the room and my guidance is sought for creative direction or the person assigned to guide me is my only point person and they are responsive to requests.

[M V]

any kind of marketing department tries to get involved and remove the shadows.

 

Funny, I had that happen 2 weeks ago. Remove the shadows?!?!? Really???

[Chris MacDonald]

I had a client come back with "it's a different colour to the colour swatch" (I had colour sampled it and corrected it to counter the lighting in the scene so it was as close a match as you were ever going to get given the scene lighting)...

 

I tried explaining that it can't all be the same colour as in the colour swatch, otherwise you won't have any difference between shadow and direct light, bounced light, etc. He didn't understand and came back with "yeah, but it doesn't match the colour swatch though".

 

Facepalm.

 

I felt like taking the image into photoshop and selecting all of the colour in question and applying a "paint bucket" of the colour swatch over the top to completely flatten the colour in it to match exactly and see what he came back with. In the end I just gave up.

[Scott Schroeder]

I think it really depends on where you are in the process, or who you work for. The first company I had worked for originally had 1-2 people in charge of a certain projects look and it worked well. Then, after a few years and they over-expanded way to quickly, they got in in their head that we needed a studio director, a creative director, and art director, a senior project manager, a project manager, and an animation lead all to comment on your images. Plus you had feedback from the two owners and this is even before the client saw the images. Then they had their own army of commentators from marketing, architects, interior, etc.

 

Where I work now, there really is just me making the creative decisions. However, that doesn't stop the myriad of idiotic comments you get from the client side. I had a recent project that I had to email the same animation to 10 different people within the client's organization. And of course most of those people are just going to comment for comment's sake and to try to justify their job as secure.

 

I think for this industry, it is a lot less in house and much more on our client side. You really have to make sure you manage the client's stupid comments or else you'll get buried in them. Like the interior designer that picks white walls, white floor, white trim, and white furniture then complains that your render lacks contrast.

[M V]

I had a client come back with "it's a different colour to the colour swatch".

 

Yep, had this one last week. The swatch was from the manufacturers website and it was a PDF scan of a real metal swatch. The thing was greenish in tone but the client insisted it was brown. I had to take a screenshot showing that it color picked as green.

 

I have no problem making it brown and then slap a disclaimer on my renders that say images are for artistic purposes and that physical swatches should be referenced.