A week ago Lee Stranahan wrote an article in the Huffington Post titled: Open Letter To James Cameron: Fairness For Visual Effects Artists. Lee has opened a wider dialogue for a topic we have been championing for years. We discuss what led him to write the article, the reaction, what should happen next and issue a call to action to artists worldwide to continue this discussion.
Links to the original Huffington Post piece, Lee’s blog and several forums and related articles can be found after the read more…
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Some links mentioned in the podcast and other related links:
Huffington Post: Open Letter To James Cameron: Fairness For Visual Effects Artists (and comments)
Lee Stranahan’s Blog post (and comments)
AWN: The IRS and the Freelance Dilemma
VFX Wages: Relevance (article that states that animation and VFX is 2/3 freelance)
Motionographer article by Bran Dougherty-Johnson:
Questioning the Freelance Dilemma
Some google research on James Cameron and unions:
Slashfilm: How James Cameron put down a mutiny on the set of Aliens Some infor although the title reveals that they were quite off the mark as box office estimators:
Has James Cameron, Hollywood’s scariest man, blown £200 million on the biggest movie flop ever?
The Variety article by David S. Cohen (may require subscription)
[…] Cameron last week that has received a lot of attention, prompting an article in Variety and an FXGuide podcast on the issue: Why is there no union or collective bargaining for the majority of Visual Effects […]
Nice.
Thanks for doing this FXguide.
Really appreciate you guys supporting this cause.
b
[…] Light and Magic and founder of Digital Domain. I was interviewed on this topic by Jeff over at FX Guide , and Motionographer also did a really excellent piece on it. It was even discussed on […]
Just wanted to slide my foot in the door here, there IS some very good discussion about this going on in other places than CGtalk.
VFXtalk has a great thread going about this article with proper intelligent discussion:
http://www.vfxtalk.com/forum/open-letter-james-cameron-fairness-visual-effects-t23743.html
Thanks again.
Thanks for the link, following now – also the comments at The Animation Guild blog in a post about a New York Times article about the mis-classification of workers as “independent contractors” instead of “employees” has exploded with comments: http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/sub-contracting-scam.html. The NY Times article mentioned at the top of the article is key to read before the comments.
[…] Cameron last week that has received a lot of attention, prompting an article in Variety and an FXGuide podcast on the issue: Why is there no union or collective bargaining for the majority of Visual Effects […]
It seems that the need for VFX services is growing more each year, yet the way the effects artists are being treated is becoming worse. For a studio to stay alive in this economy, it needs to have something special and unique about the talent that is creating their projects. Artists need to be in demand and offer something that most studios could not get from a newbie in the industry. That being said, I know it
[…] without health care. I know the artist that Lee Stranahan was referring to in his interview with Jeff Heusser who contemplated suicide because of a perceived fatal medical condition.
[…] like to think these are all unique incidents but then I listen to the fxguide’s podcast with Lee Stranahan and found myself agreeing about the depressed feeling he had for the humanity of artists when we […]