Growing demand for visuals effects in film and TV and the lure of the drama tax break are putting the UK’s VFX talent pool under increasing strain.
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/the-search-for-vfx-talent/5083401.article
It
would be a stretch to suggest there is a skills crisis in UK visual
effects, but there is a growing shortage of quality personnel.
As
more producers of feature films and episodic TV place their
post-production in the UK to maximise tax credits, taking inspiration
from HBO’s Game Of Thrones, the VFX community finds itself at times
struggling to keep pace with demand.
“VFX
is still a growing industry and the talent pool is often insufficient
in skills across the board,” says Amy Smith, head of recruitment,
VFX, at Framestore and chair of Skillset’s VFX Skills Council.
“Recruitment difficulty in some departments is more pronounced when
there are several large projects in town.”
This
view is echoed by Will Cohen, chief executive and executive producer
of Milk VFX: “Skills gaps are spiky, often depending on the content
of a show. If we have a big animation job, it can be hard to find
quality character animators and riggers.”
The
visual effects industry is only about 20 years old and while London
has proved itself a strong base for feature film post, VFX for TV is
a fledging part of the market. It draws on many of the same
attributes, yet several distinct ones too.
“With
feature film, your relationship with the project is as a vendor but
in TV, the role is more collaborative,” explains Cohen. “People
can make the adjustment from film to TV, but they have to be prepared
to liaise directly with clients, to work on all parts of the process,
and at an accelerated rate.”
Opinion
is divided on whether film VFX talent can translate to the world of
high-end TV. Their skills are not in question, but the need to work
on several different shot components or one-on-one with a client
demands particular personality traits.
“People
with natural management and production skills are a very rare thing
in this industry,” says Louise Hussey, VFX producer at Dneg TV.
“Training
has historically been very focused on the artist, but as the industry
has got larger, the responsibility placed on individuals to
understand team dynamics, deliver to high expectations and meet tight
deadlines has got greater.”
So-called
‘softer’ creative skills are harder to master, it seems, than
pressing the right button in a software package.
“The
feature film process is very regimented; the VFX department would
receive a list of shots for artists to work on independently and
submit for review,” says Molinare managing director Julie
Parmenter.
“That
timeline doesn’t work for drama. If something is picked up in the
edit, we need a quick fix, and that requires a different mindset.
It
means interpreting what the other person is saying, reading body
language and then delivering a result. It’s easier to find people
with the right service skills and upskill them than to train VFX
people in a client-attended session.”
Molinare’s
solution is to enrol its online editors in a programme to learn the
advanced VFX functions of Nuke and Flame. “The line between online
editing and VFX has narrowed,” says Parmenter. “Online editors
are being asked to do more and more work.”
Meanwhile,
Avid’s market withdrawal of online editing system DS is forcing
facilities to deploy kit that was once the preserve of VFX
departments, such as Flame, online.
The
dearth of senior production talent is also acute in film and
commercials, in part due to lack of experience.
“It
takes time for someone to move through the ranks and build client
trust,” says Smith. “When you need someone on the ground straight
away, they are in short supply.”
Lack
of experience, rather than specific training, also explains the
perennial shortage of compositors.
“Virtually
all work done in VFX passes through compositing, which can be a
bottleneck,” says Philip Attfield, partnership manager, VFX, at
Creative Skillset. “Over time, a good compositor can build up a
collection of personal shortcuts to solve a problem and be innovative
with particular software.”
The
importance of feeding the talent pipeline to capture more inward
investment has not been lost on industry or government.
Creative
Skillset’s two-year Skills Investment Fund, which expires at the
end of March, injected much-needed cash and direction into facility
training schemes.
But
some £3m of the £16m government pot (matched by industry) is being
left on the table.
According
to Attfield, some facilities didn’t maximise their fund allocation
because training was cut short by work demands.
Smith
says it is a case of needing to spend the money within fixed terms
that do not account for the peaks and troughs of VFX projects.
Either
way, Skillset is lobbying the government to carry over the remaining
cash into a third year. “If we want a healthy, sustainable
industry, training regimes need to be embedded to ensure it
automatically continues in down-time,” says Attfield.
Facilities
seem willing to buy into a change in corporate culture. Lip Sync runs
lunchtime training sessions for junior staff at which more
experienced artists talk about a shot on which they are working. “Our
training won’t switch off at the end of March,” confirms Hussey.
“Thanks
to investment from Skillset, we’ve developed a modular online
training system that will remain; it will only need updating.”
Last
September, Dneg TV parent Double Negative, plus Framestore, MPC, Sony
and Ubisoft, formed the
Next
Generation Skills Academy to deliver new nationally recognised
qualifi cations, higher-level apprenticeships and continuing
professional development. It secured £2.7m from the government, plus
£3.6m from industry, over three years.
Another
important concern is that the industry, as Jellyfi sh Pictures’
founder Phil Dobree says, is “too skewed towards 25 to 35 year-old
white men”.
Smith
agrees. “The way to promote innovation and creativity is through
diversity of approach and thought process.”
Hope
for change is invested in campaign groups such as Animated Women UK,
which works to bring down these barriers but also notes the
continuing existence of a gender pay gap.
Improving
the situation requires long-term education to shift the perception of
VFX from one of relationships with computers in darkened rooms to one
in which all students appreciate the full range of careers on offer.
ANIMATION:
STRETCHED RESOURCES
After
decades in which television animation was dominated by financially
incentivised production in Canada, Ireland or France, talent is
returning to the UK.
The
tax relief for animation, introduced in April 2013, attracted £52m
of production spend in its first year, but has also stretched human
resources. The biggest concerns are a lack of people with training in
industry-standard software or experience in key production roles.
“As
more episodic animation gets done here, we are going to need more
people with traditional skills,” says Jellyfish founder Phil
Dobree.
Jellyfish
is producing 52 x 11-minute series Floogals for NBC Universal kids’
channel Sprout and Dobree was surprised at the difficulty in
recruiting for it.
“There
is a lot of talent trained in photo-realistic animation, but less in
the traditional principals of 2D cartoon or ‘stretch and squash’
style of characterisation, movement and timing,” he says.
Lupus
Films is in production with Welsh animation studio Cloth Cat on Toot
The Tiny Tugboat for Channel 5, and is also crewing up for a
hand-drawn feature. A shortage of 2D paint artists has led managing
director Ruth Fielding to scout in Europe.
Lupus
is hoping to establish a course at Bournemouth University allowing
students to get handson with projects and learn more of the skills
that will make them employable.
“Across
the UK, high-level storyboarding, production coordinators and
production managers are required,” she says.
“At
an executive level, there’s a lack of legal and finance knowledge.
We have the keys to a chest of animation tax credit, but we don’t
necessarily have the skills, for example, to arrange a loan against
the credit.”
