Crunch is something most people want in their cereal, but not in their video games. While game developers have taken up the spotlight when it comes to working excruciating hours, VFX artists are starting to speak out against the grandest offender in the film industry, Marvel Studios.
Like their video game counterparts, the number of pixel-perfect details that go towards making Marvel Studios movies requires top-notch talent that is often high in demand, though the the desire to work on a superhero blockbuster also means VFX studios often undercut each other with the goal of landing some of that coveted MCU work. However, once they land the job the reality is not as rosy for the people who work on these Marvel Studios movies, because the same competitiveness can also lead to understaffed teams.
Unlike previous anonymous statements on this matter, The Guardian collected testimony from Dhruv Govil, a former CGI specialist who worked on films such as Guardians of the Galaxy and Spider-Man: Homecoming, who recently tweeted about his experiences. Govil calls Marvel Studios “a horrible client,” claiming he saw several of his colleagues suffer breakdowns due to being overworked. He also noted that the studio’s unique market position allows it to establish a toxic relationship with special effects firms.
Another Emmy award-winning CFX artist, Joe Pavlo, finds those words hardly unsurprising, saying there’s little to do when Disney asks for last-minute changes on top of effects that already take insane amounts of hours to be completed. He compared the experience to tearing “down the set and rebuilding a completely different set 35 times.” Pavlo says there’s a big disconnect between the people who end up working on individual scenes and the people who give out instructions since it’s usually handled on a producer and effect supervisor level.
Given how much Marvel Studios relies on special effects to transport viewers to the fantastic superhero world that is the MCU, it’s obvious how such a reputation has been built over the years when the Infinity Saga and now the Multiverse Saga have so much content to provide. On the opposite end, movies like Top Gun: Maverick and The Northman represent what movie-making used to be like, but now fewer filmmakers rely on practical effects versus the digital variety, with the high demand for the latter even forcing Black Adam to be delayed.
For many artists, much like game developers, working on Marvel Studios movies would be a dream come true, yet sometimes those dreams turn out differently than one could imagine. In any case, before nitpicking She-Hulk's CGI just remember how many hours went into making that massive green lady.
Source: The Guardian