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Entertainment Monday, February 25th 2013 at 4:15 pm

As Life of Pi Wins Best Visual Effects Oscar, The Effects Community Rallies in Protest

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At last night’s Oscars ceremony, Life of Pi took home “Best Visual Effects” and rightfully so, Rhythm & Hues, the company that did the visual effects on the film, did beautiful work that really created the world of the movie. The same can be said of Snow White & The Huntsman, another CGI-laden film Rhythm & Hues did the effects for. Together, those films grossed over a billion dollars. Meanwhile, Rhythm & Hues had to file for bankruptcy and close up shop, so the visual effects community came out to protest what they see as an imbalance at the Oscars last night. The ceremony itself only made things worse.

When Rhythm & Hues’ Bill Westenhofer was accepting the award for the company’s work on Life of Pi the orchestra swelled with the theme from Jaws, and eventually Westenhofer’s mic was cut. That happens sometimes when a winner’s acceptance speech runs too long, but as Variety’s David S. Cohen pointed out on Twitter:

There are other factors involved in how long a winner gets to speak, certainly,  like whether the show is running on time or the name recognition of the winner, but considering the two awards were given out back to back in what many would consider to be minor categories, it seems pretty cut and dry that the mic was cut to avoid shining a light on the controversy. After the ceremony, however, Westenhofer was able to get his message out to journalist Bill Desowitz, telling him:

At a time when visual effects movies are dominating the box office, [the] visual effects companies are struggling. And I wanted to point out that we aren’t technicians. Visual effects is not just a commodity that’s being done by people pushing buttons. We’re artists, and if we don’t find a way to fix the business model, we start to loses the artistry. If anything, Life of Pi shows that we’re artists and not just technicians.

The visual effects community feels undervalued in an industry that is becoming more and more centered around the work they do. What’s the last movie you saw that had zero digital effects incorporated into it? And remember, not every movie is Life of Pi, with obvious CGI. Visual effects are becoming more and more pervasive in film, and if the people who create them suddenly stopped building these visual worlds, we’d all just be spending hours watching people in front of green screens.

That sounds awful.

(via Cartoon Brew, image via fsiddi)

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  • Vayne

    I DL’ed Life of Pi, just to see what is the hype about, an imaginary tiger and a boy, It was so good, I slept halfway to the movie,

    BTW I payed for it hypocrites.

  • Anonymous

    I love the preliminary “hypocrite” strike, as if anybody cares whether or not you paid for it.

  • Awesome face

    If you cant understand the undercurrents of spirituality and faith so blatantly obvious in that movie, then I think “the expendables” is more your speed, big guy.

  • Paul

    rhythm and hues did not do all the VFX for life of Pi it was also done by MPC from Vancouver Canada

  • marysueme

    I’d like to see more articles covering this topic and the proposed walk out on Pi Day. Also, how can the general public support VFX artists?

  • Trevor

    I might be a bit thick, but I’m not understanding the gripe here. What is the Life of Pi production being accused of — not sharing the profits? I’m assuming that Rhythm & Hues didn’t work for free. Why didn’t they charge more for their work?

  • Jill

    There is a limit Hollywood producers tend to pay companies to do visual effects. The visual effect studios tend to be on the pressure of getting the picture done–since they would lose thousands of dollars if they fail–and the producers of visual effect studios tend to keep its employees happy by providing the expected pay no matter how short the budget is. In short: they sign onto bad deals with Hollywood producers.

  • http://twitter.com/sacredgeometry sacredgeometry

    spirituality and faith are for those that are too lazy to accept and understand reality. So yes, naive, primitive, boring.

  • Trevor

    Hey Jill, thanks for the response. It sounds like there’s a culture of signing on to bad deals with Hollywood producers. Why are these effects houses taking these deals? Is competition really that fierce — even among the elite companies? Perhaps the situation with Rhythm & Hues is a wake-up call to the effects community that the business model they’ve been going along with is unsustainable.

  • bluefalconn

    You have nailed the point there, Trevor. So why would these fx houses sign onto bad deals? You have given the answer as well.

    The competition is so fierce!

    It all comes down to how much providing the fx costs to how much they are able to pay for the talent to what quality of fx they can deliver. The reason why elite studios charge more and cost more to run is because they also invest in RnD. Without RnD, you would not have been able to see such high quality you see today.
    Yes, other lesser known studios can get you the work done for much less costs. But they don’t/can’t innovate, while these big studios rely on innovation.

    And there’s the tax subsidy other states within the country and other countries offer. Hence these studios have a branch in different countries as well. It’s not just the tax breaks. There’s a reason why you can never tell what’s real and what’s fake in movies today. It’s the years of hard-work and innovation from these studios who not only love what they do, but also want to give you, the audience, the best experience.

    Granted, not all of us found the movie was interesting, but you cannot deny the fact that you would have not even watched had you been shown a puppet in place of the tiger, a pool in place of an endless ocean, etc.. This applies for “every” other Hollywood movie, which you may think, takes place in a real location. Nope. Everything happens in front of a green/blue screen.

    Take your favorite movie. It could not have happened without a the artists who transform green screen into something much more visually aesthetic and appeasing.

  • bluefalc0nn

    R&H did not do all the VFX for Life of Pi. MPC from Vancouver Canada didn’t do the rest either. There are at least 5-6 vfx studios that work on stuff that you would not even notice in a movie when it’s there, but when it’s not there it’s obvious.
    But R&H did what the industry thought deserved an Academy Award. Just sayin..

  • johnny waterfall

    Do not hate the players hate the game…do not forget about the thousands of art department jobs that have been lost to CGI & visual FX, pre and post production i.e Special FX, set construction, makeup, set decoration, even craft services…

  • jezfx

    Actually R&H did the majority of the work including the Tiger, MPC did the 2nd most amount of work including the Storm sequences. They were the studios with the most work and both were awarded the Oscar. Just sayin…