So far so good. We're in Monterey. Trying to figure out how we're going to make it through Big Sur. May have to get 'creative' (ie. cheat a little), in order to get through in time and not have to need leg replacements when we reach Southern California.
Bike
I figured out what the cats do when we're away at work.
Absolutely
nothing
Cats | San Francisco
I said to myself that I wouldn't write any more ILM-centric posts for a while, but the news out that place is just coming thick and fast these days.
It was announced earlier this week that ILM would be selling the model shop, the part of the company that did not move to the Presidio as for some odd reason, the city of San Francisco doesn't like people blowing things up in a Federal Park. It's being sold to a model shop veteran and re-christened Kerner Optical, in keeping with the history of the place. It's a welcome sign that the past isn't being forgotten as they try to thrive in the current movie production climate.
For many, their first reaction was one of dismay. After all, it's the model shop and stage units that were the core of the original ILM, where so many amazing moments in modern film history were crafted, and that many of us kids fell in love with. How could ILM continue to be 'and Magic' without the model shop? I understand this sentiment, although it's a romantic one not a realistic one. Firstly, it's not that ILM will no longer build and shoot models - they'll just be paying the new Kerner Optical company to do it. And despite ILM having continued to use models in all of their recent projects, it's no longer at the core of what they do, it's just one aspect of a much larger palette.
From what I've heard from the model shop guys, they seem very excited about the change. After most of the company moved to the Presidio, people sort of forgot about the guys left behind, and relations were strained a little. More than any other aspect I can think of, they were the most affected by the ups and downs of ILM's workload. This new company can work for whoever they want to, including ILM and its competitors, so it opens the door to a more consistent workload and, fingers crossed, a more prosperous future. Would I still like to think that ILM has a model shop? Certainly, but I'd rather that the people whose livelihoods depend on that work actually have work.
For myself, one thing I loved about the old Kerner location was the presence of the stages and model shop. When staring at a screen too long gave me eye strain, or struggling with some ephemeral yet crippling software bug had me wanting to bury an axe into my computer, I would wander outside past the slab - were they blowing anything up today? - and over to the stages. Here, under the lights and acres of bluescreen, was the thing that over in CG we spend all our time trying to mimic. Real objects, painted, crafted and illuminated, those light rays passing through the lens of a camera, subtly distorted in the process by whatever imperfections it found, small aberrations at the edge of the lens, finally through an aperture of varying size, all then being recorded onto film or more recently CCD, picking up a little grainyness in the process. It's only with those little imperfections that a recorded image takes on any of the qualities that the brain recognises as 'reality', and seeing it manifested physically there in front of me was often the only encouragement I needed to go back to my desk, freshly inspired.
Industrial Light and Magic | ILM | Kerner Optical | San Francisco
read parts I and II
I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
There's a moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones is quizzed about a plan to recover the Ark from the Nazis, and he responds "I dunno. I'm making this up as I go".
It's a funny, humanising moment, an admission that he doesn't have all the answers, delivered as a throwaway line with a dryness that Harrison Ford circa 1982 excelled at (hear that, Harrison Ford 2006?). He knows what he wants, yet he can only see a step or two ahead, and is relying on intuition to help him make the next choice.
Rhythm and Hues opened the door for me to the visual effects (vfx) industry, and when there was the opportunity to work on Star Wars Episode II: Attack of The Clones at Industrial Light and Magic, I couldn't pass it up. And that, as they say, was that.
One of the big industry stories of 2005 was the action by Electronic Arts employees to sue the company for unpaid overtime and other damages. It started following the storm of comment when the spouse of an employee started an anonymous blog under the name 'EA Spouse' in which she detailed the punishing effect her husband's job, and the expectations they placed on him to be there at all hours, every day of the week, was having on his health and their relationship. Not only that, but he and the other game developers were expected to do this without being paid overtime. It was an important signifier that people in the very youth-dominated games programming industry were fed up with the status quo, and that their frustrations were profound enough to provoke an important change. You can read a more in depth article about it here.
The vfx and game industries have a number of similarities. Both are populated by predominantly young people with a passion for their work that goes beyond the typical 9-to-5 commitment, with overlapping skill-sets and technologies. Both are perceived to be jobs that are fun and glamorous by people on the outside, the belief being that one is being paid to play, indulging in childhood hobbies and reaping generous financial rewards in the process.
Two vfx-related articles caught my eye recently. One is here, from the Wall Street Journal, about a couple of young hot shot visual effects artists who work like crazy but reap the rewards of big profits and Hollywood living - the cars, the beach houses, etc. The other, in the industry magazine Variety, is about the way in which workers are becoming burnt out as they are pressured to turn out more work in less time, companies having become victims of their own success, completing new projects in less time than ever before. The former is the story people at parties want to hear about - working your dream job in a glamorous, high risk world, reaping huge rewards when movies do well. The latter article is much closer to the truth - shorter schedules, small margins, companies always on the verge of collapse, desperate to find work, competing with small upstarts willing to drastically under-bid to win projects (often collapsing in the process), increasingly fiscally sensitive studios and fickle directors with little understanding of the process and whose requests fall on the shoulders of ever-more tired vfx workers working longer hours to get the work done. These issues are true also outside of this field (academics, doctors, nurses, software engineers, investment bankers, etc.) where professionals are being squeezed to do more work in less time, all in the name of competitiveness and keeping the economy strong.
In early 2005 we re-negotiated the union contract which provides the basic minimums and worker protections. One of the union requests was to guarantee a 'minimum work week' of 45 hours, which I always found amusing as workers in other countries are trying to secure maximum caps on overtime, not the other way around. At least in vfx the notion of paying people overtime for their hours worked over 40 hours is one that is widely accepted, which I am very happy about, but that doesn't stop me questioning the wisdom of a culture that considers it OK to work people 60+ hours a week, six and sometimes seven days a week for months at a time, 'as long as you're paid overtime'.
A casual review of articles and studies of work hours and productivity consistently say that more hours worked over long periods of time do not result in a more productive workforce. This message is drummed home in article (via The Guardian), after article (Santa Clara University center for Ethics), after article (LA Times), after article (Slowleadership.com), after article (The Times), after article, after article (Wall Street Journal).
I'm don't blame any person or company for this state of affairs. No company would choose this, it negatively affects worker morale and hits the bottom line when they have to pay out lots of overtime. ILM itself is but one player in a larger picture of the industry. Relatively speaking, we are getting away easy, if stories from other facilities are to be believed. Movie studios, labour unions, visual effects facilities, the willingness of young people to put work first, a culture that tacitly supports such office-worship regardless of the cost to other aspects of one's life - all these factors contribute to the current situation. Looking at the people above us - the supervisors, the veteran vfx artists, etc, they work as hard as the lowliest artist. This is good for team building, but not necessarily great incentive when considering one's long term prospects. A vfx career is an ultra marathon run in sprints.
When I finished work on Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith, I went through something resembling a crisis. My dream achieved, I travelled to Spain to be with my family. I was hoping that I would find an answer during this time, but the only thing I concluded is that I love jamon and spending time with my family. It was only after returning to work that I realised that I did love my job. It's hard to argue with a career that is in an interesting environment, attracts passionate, intelligent and creative people, where millions of people see your work and derive some enjoyment from it, and affords you a decent lifestyle. I know that most people's career choices are dictated by necessities, not esoteric wants. I've been told that anyone would be willing to take our jobs in a heartbeat. The grass will always be greener, but the fact that a job is coveted by others is not in itself a reason that the person in that job should accept any conditions that come with it. We are making images on the screen for entertainment, and should be careful of taking it too seriously.
Troubled by the conclusions I was reaching, I posed these questions to my friends, and the range of responses was illuminating: This is my calling. So I don't mind putting in the extra hours and I don't even mind not getting paid for it (but don't tell anyone).. It feels like now that shows are being scheduled and budgeted to do OT [overtime] for the last few months and I don't like that at all. Will I do it? Yes. Is there a sense of camraderie when all of us are in here doing it together? Yes, there is a bit of that at first. But after a month of doing 6 day weeks, there is not a lot of that. Just grumpy people, making a lot of mistakes, getting sick and poor family at home that can be in even worse shape
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..do I therefore tow the company line and come in 7 days a week to earn lots of money and be a 'team' player, thus providing for my family? Or do I stay at home and spend time with the ones I love, sacrificing my earning potential by not towing the corporate line, yet giving them a 'husband' or 'Son' or 'Father'? At the end of the day its somewhere between the two. Personally, I am not willing to sacrifice everything for a crap movie. Maybe I'm not willing to sacrifice all that for a good movie either? I've not been placed in that position yet! .. if we were curing Cancer or feeding starving children then sure... but we're not. We're putting hairy legs on Tommy's twin or dunking spoiled tourists in imaginary water.
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In some regards being union further compels employees to work for their employer. The principle being that you are on a project that has a deadline. You are putting on a 'show'. Refusing to work is tantamount to walking out on the production.
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You are working under a union contract and the rules are different. The hours you work are a part of the job, you must be paid for the hours worked per the contract. Unfortunatly the thinking is that if you don't like the hours, get a different job. The standard week for many film production people is 60 to 70 hours a week. Usually a normal production week is 6 12 hour days. That is interspersed with unemployment when there is no production.
Last week I carried 'The Art of Visual Effects' book around, a little worn and yellowed at the corners, asking friends to sign it. I sought out those people who were featured in the book, people who have been with the company twenty or thirty years. They were unfailing gracious and indulged me with a signature or a story about the past, and I reflected on that child who dreamed of meeting these people one day a long time ago. Some people would lean in and whisper, conspiratorially, I envy you.
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I don't want to turn my back on this career. I want to find the fabled land of middle ground that I've heared spoken of in whispers into pints of beer and in the back of dailies. ILM is trying to address this problem, but I don't think I should be waiting for them to do all the work to figure it out. I need to take responsibility for my career. I'm not trying to start a revolution, I'm making a personal choice for my own long term health and happiness. Obviously each person's limits and compromises that they're willing (or forced) to make are different.
Perhaps a solution lies in the control of ones ideas and time. I'm happy to work seven days a week on my own crappy movie. I've always admired the spirit of a certain Mr Lucas who, over thirty years ago, was willing to take the risk and invest in his ideas, hoping that they would be embraced by others. Do I know exactly what I'm doing? Well, no, I'm making this up as I go.
Industrial Light and Magic | ILM | Star Wars | Indiana Jones | Movies | Art of Special Effects | Visual Effects| San Francisco|Rhythm and Hues | Overtime |
read part I here
That's no moon. It's a space station.
After an hour of almost unbearable setup in Jurassic Park, in which the presence of dinosaurs was hinted at and teased with oh-you-just-missed-it moments, I knew I was seeing something completely new when the camera finally panned over to a lumbering brachiosaurus. Here was an organic creature, jiggly and utterly convincing, sharing screen space with actors, evoking awe. It was astonishing, all the more so because it was completely synthetic, a bunch of 1s and 0s from people spending hours and hours sweating behind computers trying to tease an image onto the screen. Not so different from the hours and hours I'd spent behind my Commodore.
It was clearly several orders of magnitude harder than the 8-bit sprites I had made on my C64, so much so I couldn't wrap my head around how it was even possible to make something like a real creature using computer graphics, but I suddenly saw that my geeky programming pursuits may have a place in the new world of special effects.
My interest in visual effects renewed, I had something new to look for in the cinema, where I was spending more of my time when I should have been studying. I loved the Physics that I'd studied, but somehow the romance had left the space industry, replaced by post-cold war budget cuts and downsized projects. Buck Rogers wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. The imagery and stories surrounding space and science were as interesting to me as the science itself. I liked the idea of space more than the reality of the industry. So I studied computer science, focusing as much of my energy on computer graphics. I made some pretty fractals, thought I knew what's what.
When it came time to find a job, my father was more than supportive, although he couldn't understand how this obsession of mine could translate into a viable career. Fortunately for me just as I emerged from University in the late nineties the special effects industry exploded, as CG was becoming a mainstay of films. I didn't really know this, but I had an intuition that there was a job out there for me in visual effects. I sent my CV far and wide. When I was offered software engineering jobs in perfectly acceptable if bland corporate companies, I turned them down, much to my father's consternation. If you're tenacious about something that is only obvious to you, depending on how things conclude you can either end up being deluded or prescient. I really didn't want to be deluded.
A dose of good timing, planet alignment, and old-fashioned luck landed me a job at Rhythm and Hues Studios in Los Angeles in late 1996. You can read about my first couple days in LA in this previously posted story, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
tomorrow, part III, and the conclusion of this little tale
Industrial Light and Magic | ILM | C64 | Star Wars | Movies | Art of Special Effects| San Francisco | Rhythm and Hues
Obi-Juan Kenobi... now there's a name I've not heard in a loong time
Like many children in the 1970's, I was a Star Wars fan. I had the action figures, the sticker book, the membership to Bantha Tracks, the works. And like other fans, I would also pop in the VHS, analyse every frame of the visual effects shots, try to find the seams between the elements, spot the garbage mattes, analyse the matte paintings, freeze frame through the stop motion... wait, what? Not everyone would do that? Really?
I couldn't fathom how you could separate out enjoying Star Wars from appreciating how they managed to create the images where for instance live-action actors and stop motion puppets would exist in the same shot together, projected on a painted matte painting. Being able to spot the seams gave me a huge thrill, like spotting the rabbit hiding in the magician's hat before I was supposed to. I started paying attention to the credits of my favourite films, and the name Industrial Light and Magic kept coming up. There it was, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Star Trek, etc. No accident that their original logo depicted a magician conjuring up light out of a floating bulb in his right hand.
When I realised that my interest in this very specific part of movie making went beyond just Star Wars, I thought there had to be some sort of books or resources available to people interested in such things. Back then, books about behind-the-scenes movie making were hard to come by, and harder to even find out about. Local libraries wouldn't carry these books, and getting access to the catalogue of books published in the UK wasn't as easy as just calling up amazon.co.uk (in case it isn't clear - the internet didn't exist back then). As it happened, I was friends with my school librarian (don't laugh), sort of like Buffy and Giles, except I wasn't a hot girl with superstrength, and the librarian didn't have a past career in coffee ads. Regardless of my shortcomings, my friendship allowed me access to the microfiche catalogue, which was a collection of transparent plastic sheets on which was printed in very small type all the relevant information about all the published books in the UK. You would place an individual sheet on a glass table, and a light from below would illuminate the plastic, displaying the magnified contents on the screen in front. Like Google, only nothing like it.
There, after much searching, switching out slides and scanning laboriously, in glowing green type... Industrial Light and Magic: The Art of Special Effects, by Thomas Smith. Not just a book about any old place, but about ILM, that place whose craftspeople and work was a growing source of interest and obsession. £50 (about $80). A fortune, certainly much more money that I had available or could imagine having to spend on one thing. I remember going home, dreaming of the book, what insights it might give me into the films I liked so much.
I must have talked about it non stop, because one day my father solemnly handed me something. Not the book, but a piece of paper with the print out of a phone number. An international phone number with an address. ILM, Van Nuys, California. He said it was not easy to obtain such priviledged information, implying it had come at some cost. There were lots of numbers, an international phone number, a rare and precious piece of information, and in my hands. I remember staring at the number, thinking that if I just called that number, someone from that place would pick up the phone, and actually talk to me. May as well have told me I could call someone on Mars. There wasn't anything I could have done with this information, but I appreciated it, as much a gesture of paternal recognition and validation for my interest. Nevermind that ILM had long moved from Van Nuys (where they made Star Wars) to their home for the next twenty-five-ish years, San Rafael in Northern California.
A few days later, the librarian ushered me into her office, and presented me with a battered, well read copy of ILM: The Art of Special Effects. She'd enquired at the local libraries until she'd found one, and personally picked it up. It was an astonishing gesture of generosity. My enthusiasm was only slightly dented when I opened it up to find that all of the matte painting reproductions, many of them on fold-out pages, had been torn out of the book, another zealous fan like myself no doubt. Needless to say, I read the book cover to cover, poring over every image of people building a star destroyer, or towering over a model that I couldn't have conceived of as being that small, every footnote or margin item. When I realised how many scenes of my favourite films had been fabricated with models, paintings, and optical trickery, my obsession only grew deeper. I remember listening, also with a certain obsessiveness, to Holst's The Planets, and Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity became forever enmeshed with my memories of reading the book, imagining what it must have been like to see ILM, to walk its corridors, to build the models, paint the paintings, animate the rigs, trying to come up with something ever more visually impressive. The part on optical printing lost me at the time, as did the final chapter, ironically enough, on computer graphics and animation and about that section of the company that would go on to become Pixar. Regardless, I became an 'expert', re-watching all the films in our VHS library and picking out fresh new images and shots that I surmised must have been visual effects shots. I'm sure I was completely unbearable.
I had to give the book back eventually, although the librarian-to-librarian loan of the book gave me more time than I would have otherwise had to soak it up. In another moment of parental attentiveness, a few months later and quite to my surprise, a fresh, new copy of the book, all for me, was my birthday present. I folded out a matte painting, attached and complete, one of their most famous of the warehouse of endless boxes that closes the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, and was astonished to see how impressionistic and rough the actual painting was, yet how real and convincing it appeared on screen. I was sufficiently inspired to build an entire school art project around the art of matte painting, although it was clear that my skills fell far short of those of matte painters presented in the book. I layered clear sheets over the painting showing where the live-action elements might have been placed, to add life and scale to the scene.
If there was any disappointment, it was that reading the profiles of these men and women, I could never fill their ranks. They were California kids, tinkering with cameras and puppets in their garages, painting and drawing, true craftspeople with an independent, rebellious, hippie-like streak. Everything a geeky, English private-school attending, Commodore-64 programming child was not. Working in films was a ridiculous dream to begin with, so it wasn't hard to let it go. If I did harbour any thoughts, it was that maybe I could go to California, and perhaps meet someone from there, or drive past, or, gasp, perhaps visit?
For the better part of ten years, I let it go. I continued to watch films, sitting through the credits to see the names of my favourite ILMers crawl by, see if I could spot who had been promoted, who had switched departments, and see if I could discern any particular style markers distinguishing people's work from one film to the next. I finished school, went to University to study Physics like any good nerd, joined the Star Trek club (I told you, stop laughing), and kept sneaking to the cinema at every opportunity, happily entertaining the dream of a life as a NASA mission controller, or as Buck Rogers, whichever came first. With my pint-sized glasses I figured the former was more likely.
Then, in 1993, Jurassic Park happened.
part II tomorrow
Industrial Light and Magic | ILM |Star Wars | Movies | Art of Special Effects| San Francisco
(this is a reprint of my leaving email that I sent out to the company, slightly edited)
Tomorrow is my last day at ILM. Having fielded similar questions in recent days, I thought an FAQ was in order. I'll be hanging out at the Final Final tonight Thursday (wont be around for the traditional Friday night at the pub)..
Q: You're leaving, huh?
A: Yes
Q: Did you quit or were you pushed?
A: I quit
Q: What did Lynwen say when you told her?
A: Something untranslatable in Welsh
Q: Where are you going?
A: Nowhere for now
Q: So what are you doing?
A: Going to Toshi station to pick up some power converters
Q: Is that a Star Wars reference that I should be finding very funny?
A: Yes
Q: Loser! Ok, so what are you really doing?
A: Working on neglected personal projects, principally among them a show of my photographs from the last five or so years
Q: Will you be coming back?
A: Yes, hopefully. I think of this as cheerio, not goodbye.
Q: This is a great gig! Why did you quit?
A: I needed a break. In recent years I've not been able to do the things I love doing in my spare time.
Q: What are you doing about a visa, don't you need a job to stay in the USA?
A: I'm a US citizen. My mother's from Illinois. I'm a midwestern boy.
Q: Dude, then where is that name and weird accent from?
A: My father's Spanish, I grew up in England.
Q: Wow, I just thought you were Australian
A: This isn't a question. No I'm not.
Q: Is Donna quitting too?
A: No she's not
Q: So you're mooching off of Donna? That must be nice
A: She wouldn't let me even if I wanted to. Not without a hefty interest rate, anyway.
Q: Aren't you going to miss this place?
A: Yes I will
Q: What are you going to miss most?
A: Flecks
Q: Is it true that Star Trek V is your favourite film?
A: I do like it more than I should. "I need my pain!"
Q: Can I see any of your photos?
A: You can see a bunch of recent ones at my Flickr page
Q: Can I keep in touch with you?
A: Absolutely. Click here to email me.
Q: Can I come to your photo show? When is it going to happen?
A: Absolutely. I don't know exactly when it'll happen but
shooting for mid-September. Send me your contact info.
Also, I keep my blog up to date with whatever's going on.
Q: You have a blog? That's lame!
A: Yes I do. No it isn't.
Q: C'mon, how do you really feel about ILM?
A: I think it's a kick-ass place. I've met my idols, made great friends, and I got to work on Star Wars. I got to be in Star Wars! The six year-old kid inside me is very happy.
ILM | Movies | Photo | Star Wars | San Francisco
