ACM SIGGRAPH 2020 Panels最新文献

ACM SIGGRAPH 2020 Panels Pub Date : 2020-08-17 DOI: 10.1145/3388761.3407250

Heath Hanlin, Shaina Holmes, Raqi Sayed, Sunny Teich

{"title":"Bringing VFX to the Table","authors":"Heath Hanlin, Shaina Holmes, Raqi Sayed, Sunny Teich","doi":"10.1145/3388761.3407250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3388761.3407250","url":null,"abstract":"This panel brings together academics and practitioners to discuss the structural problems facing visual effects within the film and television industry today. This discussion is organized around four sub-topics: 1) labor solutions and what unionization would mean, 2) perceptions of VFX artists and their contributions within the industry by filmmakers and artists themselves, as well as the audience, 3) issues of inclusivity along gender and racial lines, and their effects on work/life balances, and 4) VFX as equal creative partners rather than isolated, temporary, highly-skilled specialists. This panel is a continuation of work begun by the faculty and practitioner organizers, Heath Hanlin (Syracuse University, VPA) and Shaina Holmes (Syracuse University, Newhouse) on studying structural challenges and obstacles to entry for students hoping to enter the VFX industry, in particular women, and artists of color. An earlier iteration of this discussion was held at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. The hope is that the technical focus and high attendance by industry practitioners at Siggraph, adds practitioner perspectives and educator feedback to the sub-topics listed above. Simply put, today's film and television industry rely heavily on visual effects, both to advance the story or as a means to hide imperfections to keep the audience engaged without technical distractions. Traditional conceptions of VFX artistry as a production step that comes after primary cinematography is simply outdated. Unfortunately, the economic and work-flow structure of the industry accepts this new reality while at the same time attempting to compensate, credit, and organize VFX artists within the outdated framework. Often this aspect of the conversation is moored in debates surrounding the potentiality of AI to either positively impact the industry (no more underpaid routinized tasks for artists) or negatively (crafts persons and artists can be replaced by algorithms). Rather, a more fruitful discussion around this point should be centered on labor issues and globalization (sub-topic #1) of VFX within the industry to reflect the VFX Artist's increased importance in most contemporary productions. This new economic bargaining power cannot be established if we first don't engage with, educate, and change the discourse surrounding how other creatives in the industry view VFX artists (sub-topic #2) and their critical roles. This panel discusses the stereotype of today's VFX workers as “easily trainable, easily replaceable, ‘button-pushers’, who can be substituted with intuitive AI” and how we can shift the narrative artisans and craft persons working on the level of a writer, director, or editor, using their talents to equally construct the narrative vision of the piece. The film and television industry relies so heavily on VFX artists for their visions, that similar to the video game industry, long hours are required from those artists who toil away behind a monitor and keyboa","PeriodicalId":242507,"journal":{"name":"ACM SIGGRAPH 2020 Panels","volume":"86 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123535962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}