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Week 14 - Social Media (Why are we embracing studio culture?)


One cause which I really care about as an animator is the current state of the VFX industry. To understand the full story of how the industry, and the artist who work in it are being abused, watch the 2014 movie “Life after Pi”. Basically, every major movie uses VFX and digital art extensively, in every scene. Most live-action movies have at least one digital element in each shot, and this means lots of work for VFX artists. However, this large demand unfortunately means overworking respected VFX studios, or outsourcing work to countries where workers are similarly abused. The schedules that digital artists in the film industry keep are massively unhealthy, and the stress that these schedules put on them and their relationships are even more obscene. For anyone entering the industry, their choice is either to accept an unstable position under a director who won’t look at their work until post is wrapping up, and then give you changes to do with no additional pay and without shifting deadlines, or just give up your job to someone essentially doing the job to pay for dinner the next day. I think this problem may resolve itself as younger artists reach more senior positions and the VFX pipeline is taken more seriously by Directors and more major figures in production, but for now it’s a huge issue that many Ringling grads will have to face. As artists, we want to produce our best work regardless of what we actually owe those we work for. The ONLY thing we owe them is what they pay us for, and the minute you start working overtime you are letting yourself be exploited. This problem is caused because of the mindset that we as artists are lucky to be working in a field we have passion for, but we need to stand up, square our shoulders and know our worth. We are entering a troubled industry, but we shouldn’t be viewing the industry as some unchanging enigma. It’s not a bad thing to look towards a brighter future, a future where we aren’t killing ourselves to reach deadlines, where we aren’t abused by those we work for.

Honestly, I think this is a problem at Ringling too. Ringling prides itself on being a miniature of the industry, emulating the film studios, but it doesn’t take a step back to question the practices of those who we imitate. Look at how stressed out students are. Look at depression. Look at rates of self-harm. We shouldn’t model ourselves after an industry as broken as the studios are right now. We should be teaching the next generation of artists to know their worth and to draw a line in the sand. We shouldn’t be crushing our students beneath deadlines and piling work just to manufacture a sense of ‘crunch-time’. 

We should be encouraging students to progress, to become better. That comes naturally when a person enjoys their work, not grows to despise it. I think Ringling as a whole would really benefit from taking a closer look into how workers are treated at the studio culture that they model the school off of, step back, and readjust our school culture accordingly.

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