Gizmodo “Abuse of VFX Artists Is Ruining the Movies”

Linda Codega at Gizmodo wrote an amazing article on the state of the VFX Industry, and it is a must read. This really hits home for me as I am a non-union editor, who recently got screwed in California with AB5 making my 1099 work basically illegal, and losing all the tax benefits of a Schedule C. And it is what I wanted to do coming out of USC, I wanted to go intern at ILM, but it was unpaid and you had to move to Marin county so only rich kids had the opportunity. Basically VFX Artists have been unable to unionize, and because of how the industry is panning out, if a VFX house was to unionize they would not be able to underbid non-union effects houses, and so would close. And with Marvel ruling VFX, and with a methodology that may be good for them but screws the artists and companies that do the work. They don't plan beforehand or lock things down to the end, which means redoing completed shots, without more money to do so. It just like the film LIFE OF PI which won Rythym & Hues, which won them the oscar, but broke them, when Ang Lee made a change to the Tiger late in the film, forcing them to make changes to all their already completed shots. And that fact that as contract players, and jobs transitory it is impossible to really take a union vote, which takes time. Honestly since companions can't afford to go union because they would then not be able to underbid non-union houses, the only thing that would help would be to make laws protect artists. Of course Republicans and even most Democrats would never agree to the necessary changes. That would be to force companies to pay overtime after 40 hours, mandate 5 or at most 6 day weeks (with time and a half for the 6th day and double for overtime on the 6th day). And for this to work, there would have to be taxes on companies taking work overseas, or to cheaper states. Also they would need to get rid of the tax breaks for working in remote locations, as these tax breaks, make work cheaper in those states and undercut the ability to get paid your rate wherever you are. The fact that not only are the artists having to work 7 day 70+ hour work weeks (I have done that, and you can only do it so long before you mentally break down) and the companies making single digital profits at best, this is only going to get worse until all the effects houses go out of business, as they just won't be able to make a profit. Sure this will mean moving overseas for VFX work, which is already happening (the article talks about artists having to move to Canada for work), but it will make work harder being all overseas remote, and we will lose the talent that is…

Pro Video Coalitions Ian Anderson has a great article on ProRes

Iain Anderson at Pro Video Coalition has a must read article on Why ProRes? Luckily ProRes has become pretty standard across my editing. Most cameras can record to it, and it works great, with so little processing power. Personally I don't even like bringing any MP4's in, and convert even them to ProRes Proxy. Of course now with a Blackmagicdesign 6k Pro I have been shooting BlackMagic RAW and it in 6K certainly seems to take more processing power than ProRes, but it is also more compressed. I would like to see how the M1 processors can handle H.264, which might mean less recompressing. I just see standardizing on a format to make Premiere work more like AVID, which has always been the most stable editing system.

Storyboarder for Mac, Windows and Linux is awesome, but needs an iPad version and soon

I ran across this free app Storyboarder, which is an impressive storyboarding app that can import a script and you can do the artwork of storyboards with onion skinning and various pens, and it will export to Premiere, Final Cut, AVID, PDF or animated GIF. And it includes a shot generator with 3d figures. Honestly my only complaint is that it needs an iPad app (which they say they are working on, but are a very small team, so who knows). Using it on the Mac would be better if my WACOM tablets hadn't been EOLed.

MacRumors takes a guess on the Apple Silicon Mac Pro

Harlety Charlton at MacRumors has an article, "Apple Silicon Mac Pro Configurations: Everything We Know." Of course we don't really know anything, other then it is coming, so it is literally all speculation. We think it will be based on the M2, and it might be 5nm or even 3nm, and we don't know ports and it is rumored to have 40 cores, or double the M1 Ultra. I wish this machine was a known quantity as it really should be my next machine if it isn't too expensive.

Adobe Updated Premiere Pro to Version 22.6 August 2022 Release, nothing major that will affect my workflow

Adobe has updated Premiere Pro to Version 22.6 the August 2022 release. This has Finer Mask Controls for Titles. Something I have honestly never used, as I do anything complicated in After Effects. Context Menu for text and shape layers. Anything to make essential graphics easier is a good thing,. Export Titles as Text Files, for proofreading. Adjustable fades for Audio Ducking. They have GPU accelerated Unsharp Mask and Posterize Time On first launch of a new installation or driver update Premiere needs to initialize the GPU and you will get a progress bar. Nothing mindblowing, but anything to improve essential graphics is a good thing.

9to5Mac on Gurman talking M1 Mac Pro, Mac Mini Redesign, and iMac Pro

José Andorno at 9to5Mac has this article on an interview Bloomberg's Mark Gurman gave. It is really interesting that it says there was a M1 MacPro ready but they decided to wait for the M2, which means they won't make the 2 year promise on the move to Apple Silicon. Honestly it is likely because the M1 could only do dual, and the performance would not have been hugely more than the Mac Studio if there was not a quad option. So likely the M2 can do Quad.