LetMeRetort
Well, didn’t aspirations of “content creation” kill Cafefx( didn’t they partner for “The Spirit” and lost a bundle) and to a lesser extent DD (wasn’t the money bleeding Florida arm all about creating their own animated films?)
“Black Arts skills” in Digital imagery doesn’t mean you can tell compelling feature length stories. Without a strong story with compelling characters and skilled direction (not just skilled VFX direction) all a VFX house has is an impressive looking feature length VFX demo, not something most will pay $12-15 to see on a Friday night. You need a real, skilled screenwriter and director or you end up with beautiful looking crap like “Battleship” or “John Carter” or “speed racer” that tanks and costs tens of million$ in red ink.
“Black Arts skills” in Digital imagery doesn’t mean you can tell compelling feature length stories. Without a strong story with compelling characters and skilled direction (not just skilled VFX direction) all a VFX house has is an impressive looking feature length VFX demo, not something most will pay $12-15 to see on a Friday night. You need a real, skilled screenwriter and director or you end up with beautiful looking crap like “Battleship” or “John Carter” or “speed racer” that tanks and costs tens of million$ in red ink.
Here are some specific reasons why the companies you mention went out of biz, based on so much of what I’ve heard…
ESC – major, unethical financial risk taking
Imagemovers Digital – horrid systems integration
CaféFX – failed to modernize infrastructure / pipeline and grew out of proportion with revenue potential
The Orphanage – who knows, really… I’d like to
Asylum – drug problems, overpaid labor amidst great work (for the most part)
Illusion Arts – too specialized and they didn’t adapt with major tech changes in their specialty
CIS Hollywood – consequence of mergers and specialization in lower-end deals for secondary work
Digital Domain Florida – illicit financial scam that will hopefully result in some convictions
Riot! – ridiculously stupid executive management with no true experience in the field
Warner Digital – quality of work produced
Rhythm & Hues – the owner’s business ethics are impressive, but they might have prevented him from making some necessary and legitimate labor decisions that would significantly improve costs / productivity / efficiency. Also this company has been hurt a few times by relying too much upon internal tech developments
At a more general level…
Leasebacks are killing U.S. VFX Studios’ profit margins, increasing their overhead and draining their profits and management focus into expanded international operations. If you truly succeed in building an efficient and reliable pool of international vendors to work on the backs and profits of the vfx execs in the U.S. who desperately decide to meet you at the offer – then kudos to you I guess; an incredible plot is victorious. If not; welcome to a playing field of weakened (less reliable) and fewer U.S. vendors, the winding down of the international incentives you relied upon and having yourself tasked with the hell of managing direct relationships with your own inefficient, international vendors.
All the while, the literal foundation of filmmaking is rapidly undergoing a transition many of us aren’t yet aware of.
Google (Youtube) just created an impressive, advertising revenue driven network that is taking upstart media companies of 1-5 owners in their apartments to 200+ strong in less than a few years. Today they’re making shit content just to build the channels and audiences – tomorrow they’re among the worlds largest media companies and / cable networks / feature studios of the future. Built on the backbone of an incredibly cash rich company with expensive stock and a knack for delivering revenue to content creators.
The point is there’s a trend right now that, to the amazement of many begruntled artists, will create even more small to medium sized vfx shops that evolve into content owners. They’ll exist in a market where banks and media companies will have new, robust and direct relationships with digital content creators developing and pitching their own work. These collaborations will diversify popular programming that delivers right into our living rooms’ cheap yet effective home theaters with big screens and surround sound on something called The Internet – but at HD / 2K on upgraded bandwidth standards.
Some studios already know this and are scared shitless, which is why they’re rapidly trying to emulate the nascent YouTube media companies – yet are already being overtaken by them because making your online portal a repository of old content is the wrong long-term solution for the right distribution model.
Artisans formed guilds and unions to defend themselves against studios’ imbalanced financial practices. Fortunately it forced studios to play more fairly, yet evolved into a mess that, contrary to your beliefs, increases the costs of making deals and thus the perception of risks involved with making anything less than impressively funded tent-pole pics. And that exact monoculture is what fuels interest in even the dumbest content on Youtube. VFX is simply the last frontier that you can fuck with, and you did. If that industry unionizes, expect an even sadder picture in the U.S.
But you’re not the real true culprit here. The VFX artists and VFX execs are. We haven’t yet had the balls to do what big studios did many years ago, which was to say; hey, we have the gear and black art talent required to use it – let’s find impressive stories and capable directors to partner up with and make movies. Instead we said, hey we have the gear and the black art talent required to use it – let’s find outdated companies that have no idea how to do it themselves (as proven time and time again over the past 20 years) and offer up what we got for progressively diminishing returns.
But fortunately I believe new media trends will give us a second chance to exercise those cajones. So if you’re a studio exec with slick development experience, my suggestion is you find a vfx shop to develop properties with as co-owners.
Ryan Thompson