Hollywood's VFX Shops: Trouble in Boom Times

Rebecca Keegan has written an interesting article on Time.com describing some of the difficulties facing the Visual effects industry:

"If you want to see the names driving Hollywood's growth, you have to stay for the movie's credits. The very end of the credits. After the actors and electricians — sometimes even after the people who serve the tacos on set — come the visual-effects artists. These are the people who make superheroes fly and cities fall into the ocean, and the effects-reliant films they work on, like Avatar and the Harry Potter franchise, are Hollywood's biggest moneymakers.

Their place in the credits says something about visual effects (VFX) artists' place in the Hollywood pecking order. Ironically, just as they are peaking in creativity and propelling box-office hits, VFX companies are facing a crisis years in the making. Thanks to fierce global competition, the hangover from Hollywood labor unrest and a lack of negotiating power with studios, many VFX firms are closing up shop or outsourcing to stay afloat.

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Visual effects has now become the most bankable "star" in Hollywood, with FX movies reliably making more money for studios than famous actors. Even so, American artists are being paid less while many jobs are outsourced outside of Los Angeles and San Francisco: ILM has a branch in Singapore; Rhythm & Hues and Sony Pictures Imageworks have both opened their own extensions in India (the latter has also opened a facility in New Mexico where they've transferred a hundred or so jobs, taking advantage of that state's tax incentives); and smaller houses have opened facilities in Canada, Mexico, and the Philippines. Where do we go from here? Will we follow the paths of manufacturing, the auto industry, and corporate call centers? For now at least, the artists in cities like L.A. and London can produce more convincing effects than their south Asian counterparts, but with training and experience the latter will catch up within a few years.

Hopefully by then I will have made my money and retired -- perhaps to Mexico, India, or the Philippines, where I can make a small income training my replacements.