We’re all
familiar with their work. Visual effects artists create and modify
the scenes and sequences of many of today’s movies through many thousands of
man-hours of computer time. But, what’s not widely known, are the
conditions of the work environment that is common to many in this
occupation. These conditions can be quite unhealthy compared to
typical office workers.
Richard Verrier reports in the LA Times: “Visual effects artists aim to create better work environments” from self-described electronic sweatshops [1]. Verrier reports that many VFX artists work long weeks for months under stressful demands and without benefits. A sweatshop can be defined as “a business that regularly violates both wage and safety or health laws. It is a chronic labor law violator and multiple labor law violator.” [2]
One might
guess that high quality movie productions have teams of visual effects artists
that are a well compensated and respected bunch, akin to Apple engineers and
Googlers. While this may be true for some, such as animators, many
effects artists in the industry fit an interesting type of work classification
better described as moderate to high paid sweatshop workers, working on movie
projects on a piece-work basis.
An artist in an employee blog for a large visual effects firm gives a description of the work environment [3]:
“...once we are on a project, there’s nothing we can do to reduce hours when employers demand we work 6 or 7 days a week, doing 12+ hr days with no end in sight. In cases of being overworked indefinitely, [...] companies get away with poor planning that causes 8 month to 2 year crunches to be the norm on projects. Most people wish there was a way to make it prohibitive to have such long crunch time for a company.”
Endangering worker health violates the law and the case can be made VFX work is hazardous according to psycho-social and other metrics. Some relevant here are: psychological distress related to high demands with low control over job security, high workload with unreasonable deadlines, causing little control over work schedules, ergonomics problems from frequent long days of sedentary work, to name a few which are implicated to contribute to CVD, hypertension, and obesity [4]. Related to mental and physical fatigue, and poor quality sleep, working multiple days and long hours also have a link to hypertension and obesity and unhealthy behaviors and diet, not to mention safety issues from accidents [4] , [5]. Experiencing some or all these factors combined for months at a time is eventually a major risk for developing a variety chronic health problems.
Some VFX artists are attempting to unionize, who hope to gain better working
conditions, more respect from employers, and a more stable and consistent work environment and
benefits for the very important work they do in such a large sector of the
entertainment industry [6]. Fortunately, the VFX has computer and social networking savvy to work toward this as evidenced by several awareness websites such as those listed below.
[1] latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-visual-effects-workers-20120420,0,563491.story April 20, 2012 (article print date)
[2] archive.gao.gov/d17t6/136973.pdf
[3] May 8, 2012: spiunion.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/endless-crunch/
[4] Unhealthy Work: Causes, Consequences, Cures
by Peter L. Schnall,
Marnie Dobson, and
Ellen Rosskam.
[5] Folkard S,
Lombardi DA. Am J Ind Med. 2006 Nov;49(11):953-63. Modeling the impact of the
components of long work hours on injuries and "accidents".
[6] sagactoronline.com/2012/04/visual-effects-artists-seeking-to.html
VFX Awareness
Websites:
occupyvfx.org,
visualeffectssociety.com, spiunion.wordpress.com
vfxsoldier.wordpress.com,
digitalgypsy.com