Avatar’s groundbreaking VFX made the film the greatest of all time, but working conditions were reportedly tough behind the scenes.
In recent years, we’ve seen a spate of stories of VFX employees in Hollywood calling out studios and directors for expecting too much for too little when it comes to providing visual effects for some of the greatest movies of all time. While there have been many posts criticizing Disney and Marvel Studios for harsh working conditions, a visual artist worked on the original Avatar has revealed that working on James Cameron’s record breaker involved some grueling work conditions.
While Avatars recent return to theaters has proven that there is still a lot of public interest in the franchise ahead of the December release of Avatar: The way of the water, it seems that James Cameron’s quest for perfection came at the expense of those who were given the responsibility of bringing the director’s vision to life on screen. Of Avatar very much back in the public eye, VFX artist Nick Sinnott used his Twitter account to shout out the director and the now-defunct VFX company he worked for at the time to push employees too far. He wrote in a series of since-deleted tweets:
“A nice thing about working on the vfx for Avatar was the only major department that wasn’t unionized and that Cameron exploited that fact with endless unpaid revisions to win a ton of Oscars. I’m not under NDA here because the studio I worked for no longer exists. Guess why. The light and magic doc is amazing, but the piece they did in the last episode was that ILM formed a union in the 90s and then was systematically threatened with outsourcing until the union was disbanded.”
Avatar: The way of the water is now part of the Disney family
With the increased pressure on those involved in the production of some of the biggest and most researched movies and TV shows out there today, there are many people who have now started whistling about the conditions in which they previously had to work in order to meet the incredibly tight deadlines that studios impose on their output.
While it used to take years to make films, with practical sets and props as the norm, many films now rely heavily on CGI, and competition for major contracts in Hollywood is fierce, delivering perfect work, in record time, for minimal cost. lead to many hidden problems behind the scenes.
Recently, Marvel Studios received a number of reports of nearly unbearable working conditions in movies and TV shows, including returning work to be reviewed outside of regular working hours, requiring the recipient to work unpaid to get securities ready. Since many of these reports were related to movies released in recent years, it’s doubtful that the issues have completely disappeared and been resolved. With movies continuing to push new technology to its limits to create something never seen before on screen, the industry seems to have a long way to go.