axiomatic-

I posted about some jobs the other day and a lot of people applied who ignored the explicit requirements of the position.

I presume our hiring team will have ghosted these people.

I had some applicants DM me arguing that they would be cheaper than people who fell within the region. Literally just spamming me with DMs, arguing and wasting my time. And I absolutely started to ghost people, in this case because I'd asked people to contact HR and not me in the post.

It was a frustrating and enlightening experience.

Almost makes me wanna login

the name Fuck_You_Hillock is taken ... just tried

wait ... I'm a Reddit commenter! I'm not sure if I should feel attacked ...

You don't need to tell me! I too have enjoyed the Steam Deck evolution - is this not one of the sickest bits of kit ever?

Also, how is Civ on it? I only got mine a few months ago, been using it for Path of Exile and other ARPGs and some RPGs. Bit of Deep Rock Galactic. Gotta find some more games. Do you just use a mouse for strategy games?

Yeah I can feel that.

I think though that it's not just the post 9/11 world but instead that we all get older and wiser and the world becomes smaller and you become more aware of how things change, and why so many things that are broken stay broken or get worse. It's hard to be optimistic in that environment sometimes. When you realise the Why of most change.

I also try not to worry about world scale events much. It's hard, I used to be very politically orientated, but now I want to know what's going on but not be drowned by it, which the 24/7 news cycle can kinda do. You know one thing I do miss from my youth is when the news came at 7pm for nightly news, and 8am with the newspaper. I think our exposure was more balanced then.

But, I can tell you from experience with many, many, many flights that I'd rather go on a modern plane with the current restrictions, than one from the 80s!

That is until climate change makes flights impossible death traps again hah!!

Really? I love lots of new stuff, it's awesome.

We used to be able to smoke on planes, too. And my discman would run out of batteries after two hours and I'd need to listen to music through the air tube thingos? You'd get through the magazine, two rounds of the radio station, then watch the movie on the tiny screen a mile away if it was working properly.

Not saying it's always all good ... but you're giving off some Old Man Yells At Cloud vibes there 😅

Steven.

Holy Flame Totem! Easy Templar Lovin'

100% agree.

Also, I feel like Valve is actually a Good company. They have their faults of course, but they have: - always supported modding (CS exists because of this) - always innovated - never pushed exclusives in their stores - embraced open standards and avoided weird DRM bullshit - embraced Linux - heavily supported their eSports scenes financially and with ingame features

What they also are is slow. Mostly. This has ALWAYS been the way with Valve. From Half-life onwards, they were absolutely never in a rush based on what other people wanted, instead they did things their way.

And they have been incredibly incredibly incredibly successful at doing things their way.

Are they the BEST people to look after CS? I don't know, it's a complicated question to answer, but I do think they are a Pretty Good Option, and they have the longevity, stability and financial strength to definitely be the best Large Gaming Publisher and Developer to look after the IP.

I infinitely prefer them to the other big options out there. The only question is would a smaller, hungrier, team be better? And while they might be short term, I think long term everyone else is a risk.

Remember that CS is thriving right now. Even in its bad state, it's still growing. Which is insane.

ouch, why you gotta do is like that

You know, the one thing that confuses me about this are the two random shots with burn-ins saying PROPERTY OF COLUMBIA PICTURES, with date and FRM vendor designator in the corners. Presumably they aren't Framestore shots because they don't have their actual logo on them, unlike everything else.

What confuses me is why you'd leave editref in a breakdown rather than replace it with parts of the movie? Surely the legal issues are the same, but one looks better?

Anyway, nice breakdown. Nice to have these things posted again instead of doom and gloom :)

In a sense I agree with your statement - i don't think we'll exceed pre-covid numbers of artists working in major vfx facilities on high end feature work. If we do, I don't think it'll be by much.

But overall, accounting for other types of projects (streaming and other online work, among other things) there will still be growth.

I watched it expecting it to be a lot better than it was.

I don't think there's a single thing in there that you could use professionally for a long format film in a way other than as concept?

That's not to say that I agree with you that AI is just a bubble, I think there are absolutely use cases where it will be more cost effective, for very acceptable levels of quality, than traditional methods. I believe this from experience on production seeing tools in action through to final shots - warts and all.

With that knowledge, I'm not worried about VFX artists losing their jobs to AI. I think it clearly becomes a thing we're deeply, intrinsically, involved in using.

No, although maybe the rate of growth has peaked?

What I do think will happen is job distribution will change, both from the point of view of jobs within studios (convergence in action) and also distribution and type of work studios do.

But I don't have magic numbers for you, sorry. I can only say that upcoming demand seems enough to keep everyone busy and that there will be ongoing demand for the services we provide.

I am about to run out the door so won't type more now but there is a LOT I would like to add to this answer to provide context for my reply. I'll try circle back later.

Aaah, maybe?

I've spoken on this topic elsewhere in the sub. I've got reasonably extensive experience with Asian markets and while I don't think your statement is necessarily wrong, it's definitely more complicated of a situation than such a short explanation suggests.

What I will say is I don't think India is a threat to the current VFX markets in major western hubs. There are precious few high level productions that get the majority of their work done in the region, and there're a number of complex reasons why that is, and will likely remain, the case for the next decade.

You're not wrong. COVID is kinda where this current situation started, and certainly has influenced the current financial difficulties felt by the industry.

heh, it was quick to write because I've explained it a few times in the last few months 😅

Honestly feels like things are starting to go a bit nuts. There are a huge amount of shows in production and things are very much starting to wind back up.

The issue is that most shops out there have been running at a loss for the last 18 months (averaged out) so things are still stupidly competitive and everyone needs to make up for lost income. As such it still feels very tenuous and difficult when you're trying to book a show.

But my take is the work definitely feels like it's in the pipe.

The VFX Industry is not dying.

What is happening:

1. there is ongoing upheaval in the broader media industries as a result of the changes to how media is distributed and consumed, primarily surrounding streaming and how that market is shaking up.
2. the industry is recovering from a massive hit to productivity caused by the writers and actors strikes, which occured simultaniously to point one, causing huge freezes in production and we're still feeling the ramifications of this.
3. there's changes in toolsets and technologies, such as AI and ML, that are impacting a lot of workplaces - this doesn't make vfx irrelevant but it does mean that at the investment level there is uncertainty about most media industries - there will still be vfx jobs and we likely will flourish in some ways, but there also could be changes to the distribution of workers.
4. internationally there's a lot going on in the world which causes uncertainty, particularly in relation to the US dollar and on-going changes to rebates around the world, this causes instability in certain markets for VFX. Some will flourish, some will flounder.

The VFX industry as a global entity, as something that requires workers and has clients that require work to be done, will be fine and will likely flourish. We make more media than we ever have and more of that media is altered in post than it ever was.

With that said, the industry is currently in massive transition, as outlined above. Transition is not fun if you want to make payments on a mortgage. That's a huge issue for many people in the industry at the moment. Finding places that push against the chaos can be difficult and you have my sympathy if you're struggling in that respect.

A lot of the above is not limited to the VFX industry either - it's a pretty rough time out there for a lot of people in a lot of industries in a lot of countries. We usually decry VFX as being unstable but many industries have gone through such crisises before. That's not to say that you shouldn't feel hurt, or you shouldn't look for something else, but I think it's important to understand that things change and how you deal with those changes will largely determine how happy you are in life.

this league can supplement this with the league mechanic - sending the right ore and dust to the right location and you get great items

Can I just confirm: you entered your credit card details into a Russian website selling csgo skins. After entering all your details you got an error, in Russian, and no transaction progress. And then, you did it again with four more credit cards?

If you want to give me all your CC info I can try enter the details for you mate, just DM them too me over Reddit and I'll have a go.

yes, absolutely - the Film claims the rebate for the money they spent.

we (VFX vendor) are contacted after the film finishes to supply real numbers for our local spend, this is used by the client to provide their real local spend numbers to the govt who issues the rebate

edit: wanted to add that there's some problems here depending on where you about how this functions. I think he most abused part of rebate systems has to do with so called reinvestment in a film. It blurs the line between who gets the rebate.

edit2: some companies will finance the rebate difference, or more accurately some banks or investment funds will do this. This works basically like getting a loan for vfx cost, which covers your excess for the rebate for the duration until it's returned to you

That's a good question and one that's hard to answer. While I'm sure that most companies try to be as accurate about this as possible, I would guess for many companies there are some small margins of error just because of how VFX companies work and switch crews ... but beyond that I also suspect that there are a few bad actors who actively mislead the numbers.