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Overworked And Underpaid

December 29, 2023

We all heard by now that the situation in Hollywood is not very good at the moment. A lot of Visual Effects artists are overworked and underpaid resulting in some atrocious CGI like in The Flash 2023. Studios even considering replacing those overworked and underpaid VFX artists with AI technology. Because it can make better images and complain less about its conditions at work.

One of the negative comments I've got for Moria's Race was comparing its CGI work to The Flash 2023. And thinking about this, I can say that Moria's Race is the ultimate Overworked and Underpaid project ever.

Conditions on Moria's Race

I worked on Moria's Race mostly alone ( with an exception of an early talk with a person I credited for story, who didn't even help me write the movie. And another person who voiced the characters of Dani an Moria for me ). I worked so much that I barely had time to sleep, or eat. My day was broken down into two halves: first I work for money at a normal job. Then I come home, eat as quickly as possible. And work on Moria's Race till I go to sleep. Allowing myself only 6 hours everyday. So forget gaming. Forget watching movies. Forget cooking. I had to rely on stuff that can be prepared in seconds because otherwise I loose too much time. Forget meaningful relationships. All of them take time. And so on and so forth...

So how much was I paid for all of it? Well zero!

You can technically say that the first half of the day I did work on a normal job. And that brought me some money. But even that was overworked and underpaid. Since the movie came out I changed my job a few times. I hated that job I did so badly. I worked on a warehouse where for 10 hours everyday you pickup heavy things ( from 15 to 25 kilos ) and move them elsewhere. And you get about 6 thousand shekels total for that, per month. At the current rate it's $1.6K per month. I saw a lot of people leave this job because it is unbearably hard. But I just didn't have time looking for a job. Because the rest of the day I had Moria's Race. I finally quit it when the movie came out since now I had free time and that meant I could find something else.

Couldn't I make a smaller film?

Talking to people online about my movie I understood something brutal about film. Nobody gives a damn how hard it is. Everybody wants perfection though. People on various platforms told me that perhaps I should not have been working on Moria's Race only for 3 and a half years. But rather I should have spend at least 10 or so years. And maybe it could start looking good.

People look at Moria's Race an immediately compare it to Avatar 2. And in comparison to Avatar 2, it is total shit! I don't have 300 million dollars worth of people to be overworked and underpaid with me. I have only myself and a little of money to keep myself alive. Of course it's gonna be shit compared to something like Avatar 2.

Other people say that I should have worked on a shorter movie. Like instead of it being 28 minutes long. It should have been 3 minutes long. And that could have brought the quality up.

I have two problems with that proposition. First of all I'm not making demo-reels. I'm not trying to get hired somewhere. I was making Moria's Race not because I wanted to make a cool animation, but rather because I wanted to tell the story of Moria getting her race. And the story ended up being as short as I can make it. I would rather spend more time establishing the characters. There is a mention in the movie of another attempt that she made but failed. Perhaps I could show that too. That would made the movie even longer. But I knew that I had a limitation on how much I can do, therefor I made the story as bare-bones and possible already. I have a script for a feature length movie laying around. And I want to do all of it. Not a short 3 minute long piece of crap.

Second, even with a short 3 minute long piece of crap, the amount of work on assets and alike would be the same. If you want to get one frame of Moria and Dani in the car in the city surrounded by other background cars and chased by the truck with Paps and Jack in that truck. You still have to model, texture and rig Moria, Dani, The Car, The City, The background cars, The Truck, Paps and Jack.

So the real answer for good graphics is to focus on something small. Like one shot of, say, clock ticking away. Clock is a relatively simple object. It has relatively simple motion. And so if I worked on this one clock for 3 and a half years. You would not believe that the clock was CGI. But I don't want to work on a single image of a single object. I want to tell stories for god's sake! You know. Where characters do shit that effects other shit.

Competition in Film

Somebody once said ( I can't find the quote ) that: Film will be art only when it's as cheap as a canvas and some paint. Which is a completely unrealistic proposition if you look at today's block-basters which cost 200 and even 300 million dollars each and the artists are still overworked and underpaid.

There is a certain misunderstanding of film production from film audiences and even sometimes film directors themselves. For example, a lot of people tend to give CGI a bad wrap because for them it's "easy" and therefor if a movie used CGI it seems like the movie was made with less effort. While CGI and VFX are so complex and utterly hard to learn that watching even mediocre CGI in film is rewarding for those who know the craft.

But the nail in the coffin of film being art comes from film inherent need to return on investment. People spend so much to make them that they need to squeeze as much money as they can from them. And that means do whatever the audience demands from them. Which makes the audience more demanding. And creates a feedback loop that now makes people in the industry overworked and underpaid.

Using CGI heavily doesn't help this either, even though it seems like the studio heads and film directors think that it does. A lot of people in charge of movies do not even know how CGI even works. So for them to make decisions on visual effects is to make unnecessary work to the visual effects team in post production. For a director to say "we will fix it in post" is so easy. But then somebody would actually need time and effort to put into figuring out how exactly to fix it in post. And then execute that fix.

Christopher Nolan had a very interesting joke about this. He told that he once showed the VFX supervisor on one of the films he made the screen of what he sees from the camera. And there was an object that he didn't want in the shot. A ladder if I remember correctly. So he asked the VFX supervisor is his team could remove that ladder. And the answer was: of course they can. And then he said: No, like now.

A lot of directors would not even move a muscle to move something out of the shot if that would be inconvenient. Because they can take it out in post and pay somebody else to do it for them. For some things it does make sense. Some shots in Raiders Of The Lost Ark required a team of people to remove antennas from a very large amount of houses, so they could make a shot with a background of the city. Today that would be done with VFX, because begging strangers to live worse for the sake of your movie is a bit of an asshole move in my opinion. This is by the way why it was so hard for me to even make the recordings of the voices in Moria's Race. I don't want nobody to suffer with me. It's my own ordeal.

But then in the same time everybody demands more effort and more quality from everything all the time. To be relevant Hollywood movies should be bigger and better than anything that comes before them. There were films about sea and there was Titanic. There were films with monsters and magic and there was Lord Of The Rings. There were sci-fi movies and there was Avatar. And with every such move forward in terms of quality and grandeur, the expectations of the audiences also moved forward. But since this move is not organic, since movies aren't cheap and move with quality of story / shot composition, but rather with how much money was spend to make everything as big and as grand, competition in film is almost impossible. Especially when all you have is yourself and a computer.

I know I can do better

If I overwork myself more and eat / sleep less. And if I will work more time. I can do better. I need to forget about all pleasure. I need to forget about rest. And I need to forget about life in general. I need that my life will be consisting of one thing and one thing only. Improving myself.

Just typing it made me feel how utterly unrealistic it sounds. Even if I could defeat every ounce of laziness I would get tired. I would just get overwhelmed and die one day while animating. I will need to defeat hunger, fatigue, no having motivation, not having desire to do anything. And all for a slightly better movie.

I know that I don't know human anatomy that well. My rigs are falling apart when the characters start to walk. And faces look like I barfed them. Perhaps I can attack the human anatomy. And obsess with it the way I like to obsess with things. And then I could do a movie where people look a little bit better.

Why not work with more people?

I like the idea of working in a team. I don't think I am a good team player myself though. I worked for a little bit with a guy called Ayyzee on a game one time. We did a little bit and then he disappeared. This is the best kind of collaboration I could wish to have. When I recorded voices for Moria and Dani with that anonymous woman. I had to prey to her multiple times just for her to do it once. And then she heard what she sounded like and didn't want it to be anywhere near released. So I had to promise her to be anonymous for her to even consider finishing the voices. I could not hope for her being there throughout the whole project. So I had to get out of her everything in one go. So then I could relax, and not think about her not being available anymore.

To make a movie together is to force another person to suffer with me. To force another person to give up life and social interactions. To force another person to give up pleasure and fun. For what? For that a movie that will never make a cent of money will be a little bit better in quality? I can't do that!

Happy Hacking!!!

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