![]() Yes, this includes VFX artists who are integral to the process of bringing the films we love to life. What Marvel needs to realize is that art is at its best when people have room to create without being ground down. The work we see on screen will continue to suffer as a result. It will succeed at pushing talented people out and wearing down all those who stay with increasingly strenuous working conditions. If they want to continue to put out films with noticeably poor special effects, then the current status quo of the industry is the way to go. This is nothing against Waititii, he seems to be just having a laugh, but instead speaks to the prevailing problem studios writ large will have to address. A clip of that circulated online, further fueling conversations about how undervalued the work of VFX workers is when they can be turned into a punchline later. Instead, it was a conversation where the glaring issues were made apparent. This is something that the film’s director Taika Waititi oddly joked about in a video from the Vanity Fair "Notes on a Scene" series that was ostensibly about highlighting the craft of all who worked on it. It ends up taking you out of the film, breaking the immersion of the experience. It isn’t just Jane’s helmet either, there are many moments throughout the film that look rushed. This is what creates odd moments as we saw in Thor: Love and Thunder. It is tough going when there is not enough time to, say, create a helmet on a character’s head that will show up throughout an entire film. While miracles happen and workers can create some stunning creations under tough circumstances that blow us away when we see them, this isn’t always the case. When you require more of them but don’t plan to give more time to those creating them, you end up with whatever they could finish under the pressure and constraints of a looming deadline. More and more films are requiring special effects shots that used to be a rarity. In his insightful piece “Bad Special Effects Are A Choice,” Defector writer Drew Magary also points out that this is a problem that comes down to scale. So when criticism is levied at these films and how their effects are subpar, the fault typically lies at the feet of those at the top for how little time they left to the artists themselves. This means when we see Jane wearing a helmet that looks more like a Snapchat filter than a believable effect, it is because somewhere in production a worker was doing the best they could in a limited amount of time. RELATED: VFX Community Slams Marvel Studios Over Working Conditions There is also no guarantee that their job will be still around at the end as there have been closures following the release of award-winning films, leaving workers out in the cold. In addition to being brutal to the workers, it produces work that is noticeably rushed. Stories of workers pulling grueling 17-hour days that then bleed into the weekend have become commonplace. This is what is known as “ crunch,” a term that refers to when workers are given a crushing amount of work with minimal time to get everything done before a film is released in theaters. There is an industry-wide issue when it comes to overworking CGI artists on tighter and tighter deadlines. It raises the question of how, in a massive moneymaking franchise with some of the biggest budgets out there, can this seem to not only keep happening but be getting worse? Well, the answer is both specific to Marvel and to movies more broadly.
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