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special effect post-production is also going the same way as software. Animators are having to put in similar hours, on a contract basis, for relatively short PP times. Apparently, PP is now becoming "Burn Out City" for PP and FX artists.


I can definitely vouch for this. It's been this way in the movie biz for ever and is the main reason I never jumped ship from games to work in film. It's ALWAYS crunch on a movie. I've had many friends at ILM, Tippet, Sony, and PDI that got burnt out after a year. Not sure about why other companies haven't unionized, but I know that will be a cold day in hell when Lucas lets it happen to any of his business ventures. It's the main reason he's in Marin and not Hollywood. People don't stand up because of a number of reasons I guess... one being the pride in their work thing, two being the perceived ease of replacement of most of us (which isn't really true i'm discovering), three thinking that it's the norm in the industry and if they are fired or quit over it they'll just have to work in the same conditions elsewhere. Then there is the fact that when you are young and dumb, crunching actually is rewarding in some way. You put all this effort and heart into something and sometimes it actually pays off and you have something to be proud of. It's like staying up all night before some big project is due in college and pulling it out of your arse at 5am and getting an A. It feels good. But, once you've been in the industry for a while that looses it's charm real quick. I think a lot of the companies get the young dumb ones straight out of school (I was one) and just burn them out because they are willing to do it. Now that the industry as it stands is maturing in a way, the people who've been around the block are sick of it. Ramble ramble. I could talk about this for days.

edit: To finish up what I started to say... my plan for future employment is as follows: Try and get in at Pixar. If I can't, then it's major life change time. Why? Because I WOULD work slave hours at Pixar because it would be something I would be proud of in the end, and it's been my life's dream to work there.

edit2: Just talking to my buddy at EA. Turns out it was the wife of the guy in the cube next to him who made that now infamous post. Crazy. To quote him "that was some very accurate, consistent prose" and "thats literally how EVERY wife feels, this place crunches insane every day of every week"
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