The State of the VFX Industry - Quote From Phill Tippet's AMA

CapableWizard

Well worth a read, full AMA here

In the olden days, producers knew what visual effects were. Now they’ve gotten into this methodology where they’ll hire a middleman – a visual effects supervisor, and this person works for the producing studio. They’re middle managers. And when you go into a review with one of them, there’s this weird sort of competition that happens. It’s a game called ‘Find What’s Wrong With This Shot’. And there’s always going to be something wrong, because everything’s subjective. And you can micromanage it down to a pixel, and that happens all the time. We’re doing it digitally, so there’s no pressure to save on film costs or whatever, so it’s not unusual to go through 500 revisions of the same shot, moving pixels around and scrutinizing this or that. That’s not how you manage artists. You encourage artists, and then you’ll get – you know – art. If your idea of managing artists is just pointing out what’s wrong and making them fix it over and over again, you end up with artists who just stand around asking “OK lady, where do you want this sofa? You want it over there? No? Fine. You want it over there? I don’t give a fuck. I’ll put it wherever you want it.” It’s creative mismanagement, it’s part of the whole corporate modality. The fish stinks from the head on down. Back on Star Wars, Robocop, we never thought about what was wrong with a shot. We just thought about how to make it better.

Equanim

This happens all the time when management is too far removed from the actual product, and it's not limited to creative industries. Basically employees A (upper management) and C (lower management) are both working 55 hours a week, so they hire employee B (middle management). A and C are now able to work 40 hours each, but B is only needed for 30. B feels job insecurity. To compensate, B creates 10 more hours of labor.

Now A, B, and C are all working 40 hours, right? WRONG. The ten extra hours created by B not only filter down, but multiply to C, which also affects everyone working below C. Now C is working 60 hours a week. A, who now has virtually no connection with C is amazed at B's ability to improve the final product, even though C is the one doing the real leg work.

The business expands.

A is working 55 hours a week again. So A brings in D, who will manage B who still manages C. But D finds itself only working 15 hours a week. Guess what D does.

Really it all comes down to insecurity and people not having enough to do. Almost everyone I know (not just artists) has at some point seen a new manager come in who barks out orders just to feel useful, despite what it does to the people working below them.

In most businesses, the criteria set for a project is also the goal. In art, the criteria is a minimum while the goal is this intangible and very subjective idea of what the final product should be.