Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse l June 2 2023 | Animators deserve better

[cookie]

The impression I get from the article is that Lord & Miller operate under much of the same thinking Marvel's been doing up until very recently, i.e. their erratic way of making films has still produced them hit after hit, so why ever change their process, consequences be damned?

 

Wonder if there's more to their firing from Solo than what's been initially assumed.

Edited June 23, 2023 by cookie

[CoolioD1]

5 minutes ago, ZeroHour said:

I remember there was a lot of discussion of how this movie could look so good for half the price of something like Elemental. I guess we know the answer now. Just shameful. 

Yeah, I brought it up and it was specifically mentioning how this movie was publicising how it had the largest crew on any animated production ever with half the budget, I guess that'll happen if you've got a quick turnaround. And i'm assuming disney aren't exactly paying animators their weight in gold either so folks must've got actual peanuts for this.

[ZattMurdock]

Just now, cookie said:

The impression I get from the article is that Lord & Miller operate under much of the same thinking Marvel's been doing up until very recently, i.e. their erratic way of making films has still produced them hit after hit, so why ever change their process, consequences be damned?

 

Wonder if there's more to their firing from Solo than what's been initially assumed.

What the anonymous animators are accusing Lord and Miller is exactly what they’ve been accused of on Solo. Lots of improv, changes on the fly, difficulty with blocking (iirc?). If it was that bad filming, you gotta imagine that VFX didn’t have an easy time either.

[ThomasNicole]

5 minutes ago, ZeroHour said:

I remember there was a lot of discussion of how this movie could look so good for half the price of something like Elemental. I guess we know the answer now. Just shameful. 

Yeah, it was with me. 
 

People was questioning me for defending Pixar spending 200M in a movie and saying Spidey is made for the half of the price and looks just as good (and have better designs).

 

Now they know why lol 

 

Pixar is not only the studio, but all the process is made in their “home” by their professionals, apparently they’re well paid since we hardly see these types of accusations there 

 

Movies like Spidey and Mario is made by half of the budget because the production is outsourced and the work is precarious 

[WittyUsername]

I guess no superhero franchise can be free of controversy these days. 

[ZattMurdock]

 

[robertman2]

6 minutes ago, ZattMurdock said:

 

they're pulling a blizzard and trying to cover it up lmao

[IronJimbo & Sheldon's Son]

1 hour ago, kayumanggi said:

 

yikes 😬😬😬

 

Looks like they took the TV anime approach of getting shit done as fast as possible regardless of the conditions

[Boxx93]

Unfortunately, this is normal standard in the animation industry all over the globe, especially in the japanese anime industry where people literally die or get sent to the hospital late night for setting unrealistic deadlines (this happens with mangaka as well). Animators really do deserve better treatment. Disney's kind of the anomaly for paying better, but if they start using AI for cost cutting measures like they're doing with Secret Invasion, that's over too.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Boxx93

[Nero]

4 minutes ago, Boxx93 said:

Unfortunately, this is normal standard in the animation industry all over the globe, especially in the japanese anime industry where people literally die or get sent to the hospital late night for setting unrealistic deadlines (this happens with mangaka as well). Animators really do deserve better treatment. Disney's kind of the anomaly for paying better, but if they start using AI for cost cutting measures like they're doing with Secret Invasion, that's over too.

That secret invasion intro was intentionally made bruh. 

[IronJimbo & Sheldon's Son]

1 minute ago, Boxx93 said:

Unfortunately, this is normal standard in the animation industry all over the globe, especially in the japanese anime industry where people literally die or get sent to the hospital late night for setting unrealistic deadlines (this happens with mangaka as well). Animators really do deserve better treatment.

It will be interesting to see how AI shakes up the industry over the next few years. Obviously I'm not calling for the entire work to be made using AI, but for example I imagine it would be helpful for things like background design where you generate an initial scene which can then be touched up later by human artists. Over the course of an entire production this could save thousands of man hours and millions of dollars. Right now it seems that to make a profit from an animated feature you need to cut costs, and the only way to do that is to outsource the animation abroad for cheap and treat your workers like slaves, which is terrible. Something has to change.

[Nero]

Just now, IronJimbo & Sheldon's Son said:

It will be interesting to see how AI shakes up the industry over the next few years. Obviously I'm not calling for the entire work to be made using AI, but for example I imagine it would be helpful for things like background design where you generate an initial scene which can then be touched up later by human artists. Over the course of an entire production this could save thousands of man hours and millions of dollars. Right now it seems that to make a profit from an animated feature you need to cut costs, and the only way to do that is to outsource the animation abroad for cheap and treat your workers like slaves, which is terrible. Something has to change.

Also it's not like AI won't be helpful. There will always be new technology coming up. It's like before industrial revolution people were scared of technology. 

[Boxx93]

6 minutes ago, IronJimbo & Sheldon's Son said:

It will be interesting to see how AI shakes up the industry over the next few years. Obviously I'm not calling for the entire work to be made using AI, but for example I imagine it would be helpful for things like background design where you generate an initial scene which can then be touched up later by human artists. Over the course of an entire production this could save thousands of man hours and millions of dollars. Right now it seems that to make a profit from an animated feature you need to cut costs, and the only way to do that is to outsource the animation abroad for cheap and treat your workers like slaves, which is terrible. Something has to change.

I agree. Not to mention the time it takes to write an entire script will be reduced exponentially, witch in turn should accelerate production on movies and TV shows in general. But they still need the human touch, hence why I am hopeful but anxious about this whole AI development in the entertainment industry. Producers could learn the wrong lessons from this.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Boxx93

[ZattMurdock]

Just now, IronJimbo & Sheldon's Son said:

It will be interesting to see how AI shakes up the industry over the next few years. Obviously I'm not calling for the entire work to be made using AI, but for example I imagine it would be helpful for things like background design where you generate an initial scene which can then be touched up later by human artists. Over the course of an entire production this could save thousands of man hours and millions of dollars. Right now it seems that to make a profit from an animated feature you need to cut costs, and the only way to do that is to outsource the animation abroad for cheap and treat your workers like slaves, which is terrible. Something has to change.

Curiously, Across the Spider-Verse reportedly already has been using A.I. to facilitate animation. The issue here is that when we see how the sausage is made it’s off putting. The way I see it, what Sony needs to do here - although I doubt they will - is the following:

 

1) Indefinitely delay Beyond the Spider-Verse. Take your time with it. 
2) Despite the criticisms from the animators over Lord’s and Miller’s creation process, I think it’s obvious by now that it’s this insane process that lead us to Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse. I understand animators getting frustrated that whole sequences change, but in my opinion all of this could be circumvented with money. Pay your artists and animators what they are worth, stop treating animators like they are working on sweat shops. It’s clear that the bulk of people working on this did so working dreaming getting visas and breaking out in the industry, so as long as they are actually properly compensated, I’m okay with keeping the chaotic process.

 

Realistically, other than the inevitable delay I don’t see it happening, sadly.

[WittyUsername]

I don’t care if this gets moved to 2025 anymore. Just don’t treat the animators like crap. 

[cookie]

21 minutes ago, ZattMurdock said:

2) Despite the criticisms from the animators over Lord’s and Miller’s creation process, I think it’s obvious by now that it’s this insane process that lead us to Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse. I understand animators getting frustrated that whole sequences change, but in my opinion all of this could be circumvented with money. Pay your artists and animators what they are worth, stop treating animators like they are working on sweat shops. It’s clear that the bulk of people working on this did so working dreaming getting visas and breaking out in the industry, so as long as they are actually properly compensated, I’m okay with keeping the chaotic process.

 

Compensation isn't going to solve the whole issue. The production reeks of poor planning and lack of any real oversight, leading to a disproportionate amount of work having to be done at a dangerously late stage.

 

Quote

Because it’s such a cool project, people want to get their shots in. They want to finish them and make sure it’s in the movie and they can keep it for their reel. So people have been working like crazy. The hardest thing on the animators has not been working 11 hours a day, 70 hours a week. It’s been the wasted work and the frustration of putting in that many hours just to see it changed or thrown away. You work like nuts on a shot and then in a review, suddenly they’re like, “Oh, you didn’t get the latest edit? That’s not how it is anymore.” In every movie I’ve worked on, there have been revisions. You’re always working on a movie that is evolving. But definitely not on this level.

 

...

 

The biggest issue we’ve had is the writing. Phil had no idea what he wanted. Maybe he has difficulties making up his mind. I don’t know! Of course, it’s part of every movie where the director says, “What if we could do this or that?” And normally, it’s the producer’s role to push back. The problem is, Phil is the producer. He can’t push back against himself.

Quote

On my last project, I worked with a few artists who had done the first Spider-Verse, and one of them said to me, “As long as I work at Sony, I’m never working on a Phil Lord movie ever again.” All these artists at Sony who worked on the first one and Mitchells vs the Machines were like, “My God, I don’t know if I want to put myself through this again. Is it worth it?” I was warned. It was like they were amping themselves up to run a marathon.

 

...

 

Something like 90 percent of the shots in the trailer are not in the movie. We re-engineered or reanimated, had different characters doing the same thing. It was purely a sequence of cool ideas they made us slap together while they “rested” the production. We were “idle”; that’s what they called it. And that was probably the biggest de-motivator for a lot of people: some of them had been flown over to Vancouver, gotten an apartment to work on this movie and then sat on their hands for maybe three months. The worst thing you can do to an artist is hire them and then tell them to do nothing. These people were like, How do you expect us to make this huge movie in less and less time? Each week that went by idle meant that later on it was going to be more insane. An avalanche of work is waiting.

Quote

Phil and Chris have a reputation. As producers, they used to come onto a project when it was 80 percent finished. Once they could ingest the movie properly and see what it is going to be like, they would come through with the guillotine and start enthusiastically editing. They’d come in and start to rewrite lines, throw out entire sequences, throw out animations all over the place, everywhere. And this is animation that people have been working on for a long time. Finished work, not some mock-up thing. I heard on Mitchells they did that. On Spider-Verse 1, they did that. Lego, same thing.

More needs to be done than just paying the animators more. The entire company culture is at fault here.

Edited June 23, 2023 by cookie

[ZattMurdock]

Just now, cookie said:

Compensation isn't going to solve the whole issue. The production reeks of poor planning and lack of any real oversight, leading to a disproportionate amount of work having to be done at a dangerously late stage.

 

This can't just be fixed with money. There needs to be much more oversight.

That puts this toe to toe with artistic vision. That I can’t agree with. They need to be majorly more compensated. They need better working conditions, they need to be able to do this without crunching and they need to be properly compensated fully knowing that the process of doing a film like this takes a lot of trial and error. 
 

And let me make this very clear: this isn’t a good look for Lord and Miller. It isn’t. I came out of this article disliking them a lot. But I don’t want their own creative process to change to the point they can’t do what they do it well. Yes it sucks for the animators, but that’s why they need to be properly compensated. I don’t agree with the idea that what needs to be done is just take out Lord and Miller off these projects or force them to change their process so it doesn’t involve trial and error. Hence why what I’m saying is that they need to be properly compensated for this.

[cookie]

13 minutes ago, ZattMurdock said:

That puts this toe to toe with artistic vision. That I can’t agree with. They need to be majorly more compensated. They need better working conditions, they need to be able to do this without crunching and they need to be properly compensated fully knowing that the process of doing a film like this takes a lot of trial and error. 
 

And let me make this very clear: this isn’t a good look for Lord and Miller. It isn’t. I came out of this article disliking them a lot. But I don’t want their own creative process to change to the point they can’t do what they do it well. Yes it sucks for the animators, but that’s why they need to be properly compensated. I don’t agree with the idea that what needs to be done is just take out Lord and Miller off these projects or force them to change their process so it doesn’t involve trial and error. Hence why what I’m saying is that they need to be properly compensated for this.

You can't say there shouldn't be crunch while at the same time defending the process that leads to crunch in the first place. It's obvious the people at the top need to be told when to stop (it's entirely possible Phil would've just kept making changes if deadlines weren't looming), and L&M need to learn to plan out their films better at an earlier stage — all of Hollywood needs to do this, frankly.

Edited June 23, 2023 by cookie

[ZattMurdock]

We are talking too idealistic here. The company culture is harder to change than pigeonholing this on Lord and Miller alone. So what if Lord and Miller are dropped out off Beyond Spider-Verse and let’s say the three seasoned directors of ATSV take over?

 

Let’s say that happens, Sony has less incentive to properly pay the animators but everything is a lot more of a better experience to animators because most of what they have been worked on ends up on the screen, helping their portfolios and what not. What if Beyond the Spider-Verse fumbles and it’s considered worse than the first two films? We’d still have a bad working environment because if the demands for less improvisation are taken care of with Lord and Miller out of the equation, but people working on this would have the satisfaction of seeing what they came up in the finished film. Is that really what we want? Because the way I see it, what @cookieis suggesting simply cannot be achieved without completely removing Lord and Miller out of the equation as active producers on this.

[BoxOfficeFangrl]

1 hour ago, Krissykins said:

Ouch! Not a very PR friendly response from Amy either. Wonder if this kind of press would hinder awards chances if it resurfaces nearer the time. 

Why waste time pretending that you care, LOL. Pascal's true colors and lack of professionalism were exposed in the Sony hack years ago. Guess she hasn't really changed...

 

 

1 hour ago, ZeroHour said:

I remember there was a lot of discussion of how this movie could look so good for half the price of something like Elemental. I guess we know the answer now. Just shameful. 

That Vulture article referred to a $150 million budget, which is 75 percent of $200 million. And all for Sony to treat the crew like crap, anyway!