Category: ves
Cinesite group secures $235m funding package
https://www.televisual.com/news/cinesite-group-secures-235m-funding-package/
The Cinesite Group has agreed a new long term financial arrangement that ensures our ability to continue supporting our talent and customers across the world, which is a massive vote of confidence for the talent working within all the studios and what has been built within the Cinesite group
How to learn to become a VFX artist
- Structure your learning time
- Consistency
- Retention
- Mental health
- Don’t feel intimidated
- Don’t feel rushed
- Be kind
- Luck is when preparation meets opportunity
Former WarnerMedia CEO, Jason Kilar: Streaming Wars Will Produce ‘Multiple Business Casualties’ in Coming Years
“In this scenario, no more than three global entertainment companies are likely to attain the streaming-service scale required—300 million global subscriptions at an average of $15 per month—to generate attractive cash flows.”
Kilar made sure to note that he believes that Prime Video and Apple TV+ are exempt from this vision, as those streamers are both tied to giant tech and commerce companies with multiple revenue streams.
Nickelodeon Studios Production Workers Go Public With Wage Concerns During Union Drive
“With a union, Nickelodeon production workers say they are attempting to boost wages — which several claimed Monday are currently untenable for those living in the Los Angeles area — and lower healthcare costs. “The current pay gap for production roles makes it near impossible to survive in Los Angeles. Many of us have taken the shame of asking our parents for money so we can pay rent and eat,” says production coordinator Ryan Brodsky said in a statement. “We’re working full time for one of the largest corporations on earth and there’s no reason that our parents should be funding this multi-billion dollar corporation.”
CG asset production coordinator Minh-Chau Nguyen added that “many” colleagues have attempted to earn more by taking on side jobs, working more overtime, taking out loans or asking friends and family for help. “This unsustainable model of working more for less needs to end now. With voluntary recognition from Nickelodeon, my hope is that the future generation of production workers can focus on building their career instead of worrying about unlivable wages, work-life imbalance, and inadequate benefits.”
Technicolor (MPC, Mikros, The Mill) shares sank 87% over four days
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/movie-effects-company-technicolor-now-144937131.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/yyn1kx/the_buzzards_are_circling_technicolor/
“The increasingly bleak financial outlook of Technicolor Creative Services, parent company to MPC, Mikros and The Mill was announced by top execs on a hastily arranged shareholder conference call this week. In the call, TCS’s CEO and COO admitted that several factors are contributing to a much lower earnings forecast for 2022 than previously expected.
Among the reasons given was “persistent attrition” among employees. It was estimated by the execs that around 30% of employees at Technicolor had left in 2022 alone. Many of these employees include senior level creatives and sales workers responsible for drawing in big accounts at Hollywood movie studios.
The loss of senior level employees has also caused “efficiency” at the company to plummet to an estimated 50% with the reasoning given by execs being that less experienced employees left over at the company are now having to pick up the slack from the workers who quit. In other words, it now takes twice as many people to do the same work as before. Conditions, in the words of the COO, are “not improving.”
Reduced “efficiency” has also led to significant cost overruns on multiple shows, and has also resulted in missed deadlines for clients’ projects. In the call, execs lamented that missed deadlines have also caused their clients to reduce the amount of work awarded to MPC as their confidence in MPC’s ability to deliver has been diminished.
Trying to keep things positive, the execs mentioned that their strategy for 2023 would include a greater focus on KPIs (key performance indicators), although they declined to discuss them in detail, and a bigger push of work to India, despite the fact that India is already where a majority of their work is now done.”
Sony Pictures Entertainment Acquires VFX Company Pixomondo
“Under the deal, Sony has acquired 100% of Pixomondo. The company will continue to be led by CEO Jonny Slow, who will now report to Ravi Ahuja, Chairman of Global TV Studios and SPE Corporate Development.
It will maintain three LED soundstages and seven offices in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Canada.”
Patrick McIntire – how much real money does a $25 million film that grosses $100 million at the box office make?
Patrick McIntire
Motion Picture Producer at Universal Pictures & Part Time Instructor at UCLA
“So how much real money does a $25 million film that grosses $100 million at the box office make? Not nearly as much as you think…
First off, the exhibitor (theatre chain) takes 50% on average of the box office receipts. So now your $100 million is down to $50 million. Then there’s the distribution fee, which domestically averages about 30% (in this case, about $15 million). This brings your $50 million down to about $35 million. But we’re not done yet…
P&A (marketing) averages roughly the same amount as the budget of the film worldwide, or about 60% of the budget domestically (US). This varies depending upon the performance of the project. But we’ll use the average (60% of $25 million (the budget) is $15 million). This is then taken from the $35 million, taking you down to $20 million roughly. A far cry from the advertised $100 million gross.
If the project was privately financed (equity investor or investors), they get first monies in and first monies out. At a $25 million investment, the remaining monies go directly to the investors. Leaving $0 initially for producers. Yes, ancillary rights will make up the losses (cable, streaming, airlines, etc.), but this is to show how a movie’s box office claims are not as they appear. Studio films with larger budgets see much higher costs and often don’t turn a profit at all. Profit sharing (backend) can be next to nothing if the film is a bomb. This is just an example and only takes into account domestic box office. But it’s meant to show how misleading a film’s advertising that claims $100 million at the box office can be. Gross receipts are exciting to share. Net receipts? Not so much.”
Comments:
“this equation needs add the variable that in the majority of studio film and tv projects, the taxpayers of the municipality where the production is based and posted pay up to 40% of the cost of the production in the form of a rebate and other financing incentives while the profits on the movie are taxed in another location usually chosen to minimize tax liability.“
Skyrocketing Costs Hit U.K. TV Industry
https://variety.com/2022/tv/global/bbc-itv-channel-4-pact-strawberry-blonde-1235395993/
“With inflation hitting record levels, a looming energy crisis and rising interest rates, the whole of the U.K. has been left reeling. But for the domestic television industry, which was already dealing with a post-COVID skills shortage and industry-wide inflation prompted by the streaming wars, the situation has now become critical.”
“According to latest figures from the British Film Institute, U.K. production will require over 20,000 additional full-time employees by 2025”
studiobinder.com – What is Fair Use: Definition, Policies, Examples and More
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-fair-use-definition
“If you produce YouTube content or do any work with intellectual property or copyrighted material, then a thorough understanding of fair use copyright law may be absolutely vital.”
“Fair Use is a branch of copyright law relating to the reuse and reproduction of copyrighted material.”
Fair Use Policy (Determining Factors):
- Purpose and character of use
- Nature of the copyrighted work
- Amount and substantiality of the portion reused
- Effect of the use upon the potential market
AI Data Laundering: How Academic and Nonprofit Researchers Shield Tech Companies from Accountability
“Simon Willison created a Datasette browser to explore WebVid-10M, one of the two datasets used to train the video generation model, and quickly learned that all 10.7 million video clips were scraped from Shutterstock, watermarks and all.”
“In addition to the Shutterstock clips, Meta also used 10 million video clips from this 100M video dataset from Microsoft Research Asia. It’s not mentioned on their GitHub, but if you dig into the paper, you learn that every clip came from over 3 million YouTube videos.”
“It’s become standard practice for technology companies working with AI to commercially use datasets and models collected and trained by non-commercial research entities like universities or non-profits.”
“Like with the artists, photographers, and other creators found in the 2.3 billion images that trained Stable Diffusion, I can’t help but wonder how the creators of those 3 million YouTube videos feel about Meta using their work to train their new model.”
Actor Bruce Willis Becomes First Celebrity to Sell Rights to Deepfake Firm… or does he
BBC: Bruce Willis denies selling rights to his face
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63106024
https://collider.com/bruce-willis-sells-rights-to-deepfake-firm-deepcake/
Disney’s Price Hikes Usher in Era of the Not-So-Cheap Ad Tier
“When Disney+’s ad tier launches, in December, it will cost U.S. customers $7.99 a month, the current price of the service’s ad-free tier. The price of the no-ads version will be hiked to $10.99.”
This is balanced out by the company’s plan to keep the rate of content spending for all its platforms at around $30 billion for the next few years and its measured revision of subscriber goals. “It now looks like Disney+ is tracking towards tightened and trimmed sub guidance, while the ad-supported tier + price increases + content rationalization = a much improved long-term profit outlook,” Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall wrote in an Aug. 11 note.
Amazon’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ to Cost $465M for Just One Season
“The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Amazon will spend roughly NZ$650 million — $465 million in U.S. dollars — for just the first season of the show.”
“Amazon’s spending will trigger a tax rebate of NZ$160 million ($114 million U.S). This is somewhat controversial in New Zealand as the government could end up on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars to help subsidize Amazon’s elves-and-hobbits drama series. Stuff reported that the country’s treasury has labeled the show a “significant fiscal risk” given there is no capped upside to how much Amazon — and therefore the government — might spend. ”
‘Bullying is a problem’: visual effects artists speak out against Marvel
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/03/marvel-disney-visual-effects-artists-speak-out
“The visual effects industry is filled with terrific people with lots of goodwill who really care but, at the end of the day, there’s nothing in place when their backs are up against the wall and Disney is making crazy demands,”
https://www.thegamer.com/marvel-mcu-vfx-artists-deadlines-crunch-stress/
“VFX artists are speaking out against Marvel, with many refusing to ever work with the entertainment giant again. This comes as artists share accounts of unworkable deadlines and immense pressure leading to stress and unsatisfactory final products. Many have requested to never be put on a Marvel project again, saying that the studio has the “worst VFX management out there”.
https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/she-hulk-cgi-marvel-vfx-artists-1235332644
“Maslany, Gao and Coiro had been asked by a journalist about their experiences with the “She-Hulk” VFX artists and “how you feel about the finished product,” noting that “there have been numerous accounts lately that VFX houses … they are feeling incredibly crushed by the studios in general and Marvel keeps getting called out.”
https://www.slashfilm.com/941931/why-so-many-vfx-artists-are-fed-up-with-marvel/
“The studio has a lot of power over the effects houses, just because it has so many blockbuster movies coming out one after the other. If you upset Marvel in any way, there’s a very high chance you’re not going to get those projects in the future. So the effects houses are trying to bend over backward to keep Marvel happy. […] One visual-effects house could not finish the number of shots and reshoots Marvel was asking for in time, so Marvel had to give my studio the work. Ever since, that house has effectively been blacklisted from getting Marvel work.”
https://gizmodo.com/disney-marvel-movies-vfx-industry-nightmare-1849385834
“There’s a joke in the visual effects industry that goes like this: Someone hears you work on films, so they ask you, “What movie made you cry?” The artist will respond, “In theaters or in the office?””
Will Artificial Intelligence End Human Creativity? The Future of Immersive Computing
Autodesk – Brian Pene
Netflix Acquires Animation Studio Animal Logic
https://deadline.com/2022/07/netflix-acquires-animation-studio-animal-logic-1235072619/
https://animallogic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/AnimalLogic_PressRelease_Final.pdf
NETFLIX ACQUIRES WORLD LEADING INDEPENDENT ANIMATION STUDIO ANIMAL LOGIC
19 July 2022 Netflix and Animal Logic are excited to announce today that Netflix plans to acquire the
Australian animation studio.* This acquisition will support Netflix’s ambitious animated film slate,
building on films like Academy Award-nominated Over the Moon, Academy Award-nominated Klaus
and the recently released The Sea Beast
Clearview AI fined in UK for illegally storing facial images
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61550776
Facial recognition company Clearview AI has been fined more than £7.5m by the UK’s privacy watchdog and told to delete the data of UK residents.
The ICO says that, globally, the company has stored more than 20 billion facial images.
Clearview AI takes publicly posted pictures from Facebook, Instagram and other sources, usually without the knowledge of the platform or any permission.
Netflix Animation’s management reboot and cancellations
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/netflix-animation-erased-executives-fired-220251819.html
Phil Rynda, whose official title is Netflix’s Director of Creative Leadership and Development for Original Animation, was let go this week, along with several of his staff, TheWrap can exclusively report and Netflix has confirmed.
Netflix shares loss may trigger a free, ad-supported streaming
Announcing its Q1 2022 results, the streaming leader revealed that it had lost 200,000 subscribers in the quarter, prompting an investor sell-off that lopped off more than a third of the SVOD’s value in after-hours trading.
Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings then revealed in an earnings call that the streamer would roll out cheaper ad-supported versions of its service, with plans being explored “over the next year or two.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61173561
Squeezed consumers are cutting back on streaming services to save money, while some feel there is too much content to choose from amid an avalanche of competition from rivals such as Disney and Amazon.
“Netflix’s wider problem, along with the rest of the sector is that consumers don’t have unlimited funds, and that one or two subscriptions is usually enough,” said Michael Hewson, an analyst at CMC Markets.
Netflix remains the world’s leading streaming service with more than 220 million subscribers. It is increasingly producing its own content and shows such as the Crown, Bridgerton and Squid Game have been global hits.
The firm had enjoyed uninterrupted quarterly growth in subscribers since October 2011 but on Tuesday it admitted it was losing customers to rivals, while struggling to expand due to password sharing.
It also said a decision to raise prices in key markets had cost it 600,000 subscribers in North America alone, while its exit from Russia over Ukraine lost it 700,000.
Rajiv Talreja on retaining talent through quality of life balance
Industrial revolution: people took a job for survival
Information revolution: people took a job for standard of living
Digital social revolution: people are taking a job for quality of life
#BrendanFraser is a righteous dude.
In November 2007 our paychecks stopped. I was the FX lead on #JourneyToTheCenterOfTheEarth for Meteor Studios in Montreal and was asked to convince my crew to stay and finish the picture with a guarantee we’d all get paid with overtime. We had a handfull of shots left.
As soon as we delivered the last shot, we were escorted out. It was two weeks before Christmas and we’d soon learn there was no money. Meteor was declaring bankruptcy.
They owed us 1.3 million dollars.
Variety put their best reporter on it and after many artists and support staff bravely came forward, I got this short terse email:
“The paper(Variety) has decided that another visual effects company going bankrupt, however sad, is really not news worthy at this time”
I kept trying to get help from the Hollywood press. I realized it wasn’t just Variety’s decision, no one wanted to touch the story. My guess was the studio had put pressure on them to bury it.
Finally, I made that rejection quote from Variety the headline of our own press release, and hired a PR company to release it. One artist, Eric Labranche, made a website for us to communcate with each other and vote, many others helped as well.
Then I tried to get the attention of Brendan Fraser, the star and executive producer of the movie. I called his “people” from IMDB pro. They said they’d tell him, they did not.
24 hours after the release, I got a threatening email from Variety and a call. I hung up. I then got a call from Les Normes the labor dept in Canada. They told me not to go to the press it would ruin our case. I hung up on them to. Then the phone rang again and it was this fast talking New York City gal with a heavy brooklyn accent. She was excited that I’d called Fraser’s people and had gotten no response from him.
It was page six of the Post, the gossip page, but we’d take it. She said the story would be live on the website within the hour. Exactly one hour later there it was: https://pagesix.com/2008/08/01/a-journey-in-search-of-pay/
My phone rang as I was reading the piece, a 212 area code, I answered to thank the girl, but a man answered and he said. “Is this Dave Rand?” I said “Yes”.
“This is Brendan Fraser, what the fuck is going on?”
He had no idea that artists were not paid on his movie. He listened intently, asked a lot of questions and promised he would call me regularly until this was solved.
First, he called the Post to tell all: https://pagesix.com/2008/08/03/to-the-rescue-2/
A vfx wave began to form. Branden kept his promise, he publically campaigned for us. The media, especially Variety, even started to cover our story. Thank you David Cohen.
We finally got 80% of our money almost 2 yrs later.
To quote the great Steve Hulett : “What runs the world isn’t what’s right, or who’s the richest, it’s leverage, and who has it.”
We’d had none, but Mr Fraser gave us wings.
He’s a righteous dude.
These days, I’m very selective, if I’ve chosen to work there you can bet they’re moving in the