I’ve heard for years from friends who work in visual effects that the conditions for working on a Marvel movie are shit. I’ve heard crazy stories that aren’t mine to tell, but a visual effects artist is fed up with it and tired of being “pixelated” by the studio. He offered some insight into what’s going on behind the scenes, and that’s in line with what I’ve heard.
Sure I love watching Marvel movies, but it sure feels like a hell of a hell of a experience working on the visual effects work for them. This information was shared by Chris Lee and was published in Vulture. This is sure to create a bad press for Marvel.
The article begins by telling how in a film he worked almost six months of overtime every day. “I worked seven days a week, averaging 64 hours a week over a good week. Marvel works really hard on you. I have had colleagues who sit next to me, break up and start crying. I’ve had people who have had anxiety attacks on the phone. “
I can honestly say I know how it is. I’ve never worked for Marvel, but I’ve worked in post-production houses in the past where the pressure was so intense I broke and suffered from anxiety attacks. Not funny at all. Those experiences really messed me up and hit me in the long run, with PTSD-like effects.
It has been explained that the studio has a lot of power over effects houses, and if you upset them in any way, there’s a good chance Marvel will stop working with them. So, “the effects houses are trying to go out of their way to make Marvel happy.” One example is a visual effects house that couldn’t finish the number of takes and takes that Marvel asked for in time, so “Marvel had to outsource the work to my studio. Since then, that house has actually been blacklisted to get a job at Marvel. “
As for what it’s actually like to do work for Marvel, it feels like a complete disorganized mess! “Marvel is famous for requiring a lot of changes throughout the process. So you’re already overworked, but then Marvel is asking for regular changes far above what any other customer does. And some of these changes are really important. Maybe a month or two before a movie is released, Marvel will make us change the entire third act. It has really tight delivery times. So yeah, it’s just not a big situation all over the place. A visual effects house couldn’t finish the number of takes and takes that Marvel was asking for in time, so Marvel had to outsource the work to my studio. Since then, that house has actually been blacklisted to get a job at Marvel.
This is madness! Does the studio not realize that if they had a complete and solid script before shooting, they could avoid all this bullshit? Marvel is rolling out so many projects now and there are set dates for these projects and those dates are “very strict”. But that doesn’t stop Marvel from making new takes “and big changes very close to the dates without moving them up or down”.
As for the term “pixel-fucked”, this is a common term used in the visual effects industry “when the customer picks every little pixel. Even if you never notice. A customer might say,” This isn’t exactly that. I want “and you keep working on it. But they have no idea what they want. So they’ll say, ‘Can you try this? Can you just try it?’ They will want you to change an entire setting, an entire environment, quite late in a movie. “
Good heavens, it sounds awful. What the hell is Marvel doing over there !? The article points out that the main problem with Marvel movies is the directors they hire. They “are not familiar with working with visual effects. Many of them have just done small indies at the Sundance Film Festival and have never worked with visual effects. They don’t know how to visualize something that isn’t there yet, that isn’t on set with them. So Marvel often starts asking what we call “final renders”. While we are working on a film, we will send in work in progress images that are not beautiful but show where we are. Marvel often asks for them to be delivered in a much higher quality very soon, and that takes a long time. Marvel does this because its directors don’t know how to look at rough images at first and make evaluations. But that’s the way the industry has to work. You can’t show something super cute when the basics are still being worked out.
The lack of directing experience falls on the shoulders of the visual effects houses and that’s not quite right. Another problem is that there is no cinematographer involved in the post-production process and this causes serious problems. They use Black Panther as an example of how things can go terribly wrong. “Physics is completely out of order. Suddenly, the characters jump around, making all these crazy moves like action characters in space. Suddenly, the camera makes these movements that didn’t happen in the rest of the film. It all looks a bit cartoonish. He broke the visual language of the film ”.
Yup! Those Black Panther the fight sequences at the end of the movie were crap, and this isn’t about the visual effects houses, but about Marvel.
As for how things can be fixed, there are two things mentioned that need to be changed. The first is that Marvel “needs to train its directors to work with visual effects and have a better view out the gate. The studio needs to keep more of its directors’ feet on fire to engage in what they want. “The second thing is to unionize. It is explained that there is” a growing movement to do so, because it would help ensure that the effects houses visuals can’t accept offers without having to consider what the impact would be. Because most of the time it’s like you could work on a Marvel show and you’ll be working on it for less just because it’s great.
This is a pretty explosive article and I’m sure now that all of this has been unleashed, Marvel will start making some changes. better! They seem to be causing a lot of problems in the visual effects industry. What do you think?
by Joey Paur
Source: Geek Tyrant
