Behind the Green Screen: a look at visual effects working practices today
Visual effects have become an essential part of filmmaking today, but the artists responsible for creating those effects find themselves underappreciated and undercompensated.
Visual effects have been used in films since the inception of cinema, evolving from practical effects like the use of model miniatures and paintings on glass, to the fantastical computer-generated worlds we see in films and TV today.
‘Visual effects’ (or ‘VFX’) is the integration of computer-generated imagery into live action shots. VFX are used to create elements that would otherwise be impossible, expensive or difficult to film in real life, and can be seen in a wide range of movies.
Digital artists train for years to be able to work in the visual effects industry, and it takes teams of dozens of artists months (sometimes even years) to take Spider-Man to space, or tell the stories of an indigenous 3-metre tall blue alien race, or digitally build a dinosaur park from the ground up. Without their work, many of the films we watch would just be a sequence of shots of actors against a green screen.
Yet many artists working in VFX industry are plagued with problems like low pay, unpaid overtime and arduous periods of “crunch” (a belief that employees should put their work all else, including stress, fatigue and mental health), a lack of workers’ rights, unstable contracts and migratory lifestyles. Despite the international nature of the industry, there is no worldwide VFX union to protect the rights of these workers.
