As an employee in the visual effects industry, I take interest in topics related to the business. Recently, a fellow named Lee Stranahan posted “An Open Letter to James Cameron” on his website. You can read the letter here. In order for the rest of this post to make sense, you should go read it now.
Have you read it? Great. Just about everything he says in the letter is true. Visual effects are the reason why people go to the movies these days, and yet we get the short end of the stick. I’m glad to see Lee speaking out about this issue.
However, since when is it James Cameron’s responsibility to speak up? If anything, it’s in his best interests for things to remain as they are. I do think that Cameron is sympathetic to the visual effects artists’ situation. In the credits for Avatar, visual effects artists were listed before traditional artists and other film staff, and the significance of that was not lost on me.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Cameron does speak up on behalf of VFX artists at the Oscars. It would be great for visual effects artists and a generous act on Cameron’s part. For a brief time, it would bring the issue center stage. It would be a news story, and people would talk about how wrong the situation is. And then that would be that, and the news cycle would move on.
The bottom line is, if VFX artists want things to change, we will have to do it ourselves. The movie industry isn’t going to suddenly say, “oh hey, you know what? You’re right. We’ve been treating you like shit. Here’s some health insurance, and some profit sharing, and a retirement program. And we’ll see what we can do about some job security.” If we want those things, we’ll have to take the responsibility on ourselves to get them.