Directors are Ruining Movies, Not Visual Effects People
I make my living as a CG artist and work on big-budget, big-studio special effects movies. I was going to work on Green Lantern, but ended up working on Thor instead…. Profit margins for visual effects houses are so razor thin that they WILL NOT say no to a client, just to get the work. In this sense, the work is actually often underbid and its true cost is eaten by the vfx house. There is a famous producer who once said “I’m not doing my job if I don’t shutter a vfx house on my film.”
What you end up with is a scenario where the vfx house says “YES!” to ANYTHING the director can dream up… and due to the way in which most vfx houses charge — flat rate as opposed to a-la-carte — they end up creating and recreating scenes at the directors whim at great expense to the company and to the artists working there.
— A world of infinite digital possibilities makes directors see stars.