--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Chris Lee: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, we're talking about the state of visual effects in movies. Chris Lee is a senior reporter at Vulture.
--:-- [Sound effects: A brief clip of a Spider-Man movie plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The new animated Spider-Man movie does a lot of things you don't see other comic book movies doing. It opens with a superhero playing in a punk band, and imagines what Manhattan would look like if it were mashed up with Mumbai. It acknowledges the existence and importance of Jamaican beef patties. But most important of all, it looks really good.
--:-- [Sound effects: A brief clip of a Spider-Man movie plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I looked at my uncle and... Let me guess, he died? Like, the movie looks astonishingly good. I looked at my uncle and he said, "This is the best Spider-Man movie I've ever seen." And I said, "Really?" And he said, "Yeah, it's really good." And I said, "Okay, great, that's the ooze." And he said, "Hey, everybody, it worked. Ooze worked."
--:-- [Sound effects: A brief clip of a Spider-Man movie plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Coming up on Today Explained, why so many big special effects-laden blockbusters don't look very good anymore.
--:-- [Sound effects: A brief clip of a Spider-Man movie plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from the FIFA World Cup of all things. The FIFA World Cup 26 is coming to North America next summer. It is the ultimate celebration of sports and culture.
--:-- [Sound effects: A brief clip of a FIFA World Cup plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can get closer to the beautiful game with a hospitality package. Closer to the action. The best seats. The best suites. Closer to match day and that world-class food and that world-class entertainment. Closer to the experience of a lifetime. Book a hospitality package at fifaworldcup.com slash hospitality.
--:-- [Sound effects: A brief clip of a Spider-Man movie plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today explained Sean Ramos for him, but today we're bringing you something a little different. I recently had the privilege of guest hosting another show in the Vox Media Podcast Network, Intuit, with Sam Sanders.
--:-- [Sound effects: A brief clip of Sam Sanders plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You might remember Sam from Public Radio if you're a listener. It's been a minute. Now he's hosting Intuit, the pop culture podcast from Vulture and New York Magazine.
--:-- [Sound effects: A brief clip of a Spider-Man movie plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So while guest hosting, I want to talk to someone from Vulture who could help me understand something that often leaves me scratching my head. Why big budget movies these days so frequently look kind of trashy.
--:-- [Sound effects: A brief clip of a Spider-Man movie plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm talking about the big third act superhero battles, the under the sea extravaganzas, the bomb rolling through Rome. You know what I'm talking about. This is what we dug into when I guess hosted Intuit, and we're bringing you that conversation on Today Explained.
--:-- [Sound effects: A brief clip of a Spider-Man movie plays]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The VFX industry is in turmoil right now, and with 90% of all movies reliant on using some sort of VFX in them, there's a real shortage of qualified workers.
--:-- Chris Lee: That's right. And it's not just a matter of not having enough qualified workers. It's also a matter of how those workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One segment that I know came up for a lot of criticism that I personally think is incredibly preposterous and poorly rendered CGI was in the most recent Doctor Strange movie, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just that one movie. There are a lot of Marvel movies that have had similar problems with their visual effects.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When Doctor Strange faces off against this octopus monster in the city streets of Manhattan. It just looks so cartoony and awful and just ridiculous.
--:-- Chris Lee: And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated. They're often underpaid and overworked, and they're not given the respect and resources that they need to do their jobs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think that there's been a lot of stuff like that in recent Marvel movies. Like, in, you know, The Eternals, there's a Superman-esque character who flies around shooting lasers out of his eyes that, you know, people thought was rather poorly done.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just Marvel. It's a problem with the industry as a whole.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the first Black Panther was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and is heralded as among the best Marvel movies to ever come out.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But if you look at the end, the climactic battle sequence, people say it makes no sense.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, the characters have been doing super things throughout the movie, and at the end of the movie, the physics with which they operate go out the window.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, suddenly they're jumping, you know, the height of a skyscraper, apropos nothing.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, there's nothing to establish that they can do this.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what I'm told by VFX professionals is that, you know, basically the studio ran out of time and money and just thrust the work upon VFX workers who are out of their depth and they came up with the best thing that they could.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the result is decidedly lackluster and kind of takes you out of the movie at worst.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Help me understand how that could happen.
--:-- Chris Lee: Well, okay, I'm so glad that you asked about that because this is a crucial part of the problem with the current VFX malaise.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ryan Coogler is a director who earned his stripes as a filmmaker at the Sundance Film Festival.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He directed a small independent film called Fruitvale Station, which was made on a shoestring.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We played freeze tag today. Really? Did you win?
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, I did.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They couldn't catch me. Think you're fast, huh?
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, I guess so.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then suddenly he's thrust into the top echelon of directors and given a movie with a nine-figure budget and an extensive computer-generated imagery quotient.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just Ryan Coogler. A lot of Marvel directors and a lot of people, you know, directing movies in the superhero space come from the same background.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They don't have experience with VFX.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is the problem.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, they'll get sort of rough drafts of what a sequence is going to look like, and they have trouble conceptualizing what it's going to be like when it's eventually on screen, as opposed to a director who has extensive experience working with VFX.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's not like Brian Coogler abdicated his responsibility as a director.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's just, you know, I'm told again and again that somebody like Chloe Zhao, who similarly came from directing a movie like Nomadland and, you know, got Marvel's The Eternals.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just Chloe Zhao. A lot of people who direct Marvel movies don't have experience with VFX.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Five years ago, Thanos erased half of the population of the universe.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the people of this planet brought everyone back with a snap of a finger
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These guys all don't have any background in VFX and yet they get these big VFX movies and then they expected to know what to do but they don't.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're mentioning a lot of Marvel movies, and I know the most recent Ant-Man movie got a lot of criticism, too, for just being this sort of garbage feast of VFX.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just Ant-Man. A lot of Marvel movies have had similar problems with their visual effects.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The faces looked bad. The Scott doubles looked awful.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it got me thinking how this was approved to be in the final cut of the movie.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. And it's not just the visual effects themselves. It's also the way that the VFX workers are treated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why is it that Marvel gets so much attention here? Is it because they're making the biggest movies or are they actually the worst offenders?
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great question. And the answer is, it's a combination of both.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, you know, Marvel is the most reliable blockbuster factory in the history of moviedom.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, their track record of success is unparalleled.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's truly astonishing, the number of billion-dollar movies that they put out.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they're floating on money.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They have a ton of money.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They could flood the zone with money and surround all of their VFX and CGI people to prop them up and make sure that these movies look as good as they possibly can.
--:-- Chris Lee: Yeah, that's a great example. But they're notoriously cheap.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And um you're calling companies that spend as you said nine figures on movies cheap yeah and i mean if you've ever sat through the the closing credits for one of these movies the interminable closing credits where there's like hundreds of credits of vfx workers yeah there'll be up to 12 vfx houses working on us you know to get to one of those post-credit sequences that i watch i don't know if you do it seems incomprehensible i know to think that marvel would be cheaping out but they underpay and overwork these employees on these films systematically.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: I worked a 28-hour shift. People would drink on the job, or they would use substances to be able to finish the work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so it just physically exhausted us, probably shaved off like 10 or 20 years of my life.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: This is bad news, man. My name is Maggie Kreismut, and I'm a visual effects artist based in Los Angeles.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The best way to describe my job is basically Photoshop for video.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: I have never worked for Marvel.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I do have many friends who work in the Marvel productions, And I've heard a lot of the worst stories and abuses that we hear about the industry has come from the Marvel productions.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: But it's not just exclusively a problem with Marvel. It's a problem with the industry as a whole.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are there good examples of this work relationship between directors and visual effects artists, or even just the work itself? I mean, Avatar 2 comes to mind.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: They spent forever making it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I didn't read any articles about how everyone making it was miserable the whole time.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: And obviously, the director is a competent guy, if not like a bit of a raging narcissist.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm so glad that you brought that up because, yeah, that is really a model of how things can work.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: And it works for a number of reasons. James Cameron is a perfectionist, albeit a narcissist and control freak.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But he would never consent to putting a movie into the marketplace that looked bad or had shoddy VFX.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: So the bulwark against doing that is to budget as much time and money as needed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, the box office returns speak for themselves.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: I mean, the way of water crushed it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, James Cameron, of course, Avatar 2 out in theaters now, about to cross $2 billion.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Hopefully, hopefully, a few weeks from now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hopefully, I'm saying it. I'm predicting it.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Okay, thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Generally speaking, everyone loved the VFX. I mean, I've heard some people deride it as, you know, it looked like a screensaver.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: But I think it was beautiful and fresh and really the cutting edge of technology.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The flip side of that is movies that have a release date staked in the calendar months, if not years in advance.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: So everyone's moving towards that release date and the deadlines can often be untenable, but they're immovable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if a movie isn't quite ready or if it's not quite ready for prime time, they just crack the whip on the VFX workers and make them rush it into production.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: So to answer your question, yeah, if more people had the juice and clout of James Cameron to take as much time as they needed and enable all the quality controls necessary, this wouldn't be a problem.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the way Hollywood works is that these release dates are staked out and everyone's got to move heaven and earth in order to meet those deadlines.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Do you think, broadly speaking, audiences really notice the difference between really good visual effects and sort of ham-fisted last-minute rush jobs?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: And, you know, I want to bring The Little Mermaid into this conversation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hey, have you not heard the scatlebots?
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: No, the gossip, the buzz, the who say what, who does that?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, the scatlebots.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Because, you know, that movie came out recently.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It did $118 million over Memorial Day weekend domestically.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: But I've heard a CGI described as clunky.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I've heard VFX described as soulless.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: People saying it's unfinished.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's hard to come out under the sea after Avatar The Way of Water.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: That's really, really hard.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But those movies still make, as you mentioned, like over $100 million in their opening weekend.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Is there an incentive for studios to rush out whatever they've got because maybe audiences will just show up anyway?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For the nostalgia to see the sequel, to see where the story's going, to see Paul Rudd, whatever it might be.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Yeah, for sure.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, you know, this Ant-Man that you were just referring to is the most successful installment of the franchise
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: So yes for all the reasons you just mentioned like there a built consumer base especially for the MCU where each movie is an interlocking part of a larger soap opera with a meta of characters and storylines that jump in between each other
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there almost a doing-your-homework quality to seeing Marvel movies at this point.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: It's like, you know, a big portion of moviegoers are just going to go just to stay current.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, I think that Hollywood proceeds with cheaping out on VFX at its own peril.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: The fans don't take kindly to being given low-quality product.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I still don't know how Marvel let these scenes slide into their movies.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: They hate that. Like, it's not good when you notice something is bad, especially me as somebody that does not look for it at all.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If only there were a magic wand someone could wave over Hollywood to fix this problem.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Actually, a lot of VFX workers say there is one, and it looks a lot like a union.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's coming up on this episode of Intuit on Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for today's show comes from Adio.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: What is Adio?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up, And within seconds, you will have your email and calendars synced.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: You'll see all your relationships in a fully-fledged platform, they say, all enriched with that actionable data.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they say you can build AI-powered automations and use its research agent to tackle some of your most complex processes so that you can focus on what matters, building your company.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile, Replicate, Modal, and so much more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can go to addio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wake up, wake up, wake up.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: What?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hey, have you not heard?
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Today Explained is back.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram, and today we're bringing you an episode of the Intuit podcast I recently guest hosted in which we tried to figure out why visual effects in so many big-budget movies look bad.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: I asked Vulture reporter Chris Lee to give me a day in the life of a visual effects artist.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't want to say it's doom and gloom across the board, because there are positive experiences to be had.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: But by and large, these workers are gig economy workers.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They might have a temporary position at a VFX house.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: The studios farm out the work to outside vendors.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They don't have dedicated teams of people inside the studio doing this work.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: So they find outside contractors.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And these houses employ these workers on gig-by-gig basis.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Sometimes they pay them by project.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sometimes they pay them by the month or by the week or by the day.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: I was working these long, insane hours without any kind of coverage for health.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so I remember when that project was over and, you know, the vendor that I was working for thanked us for a job well done.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Congratulations. You did it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We made the deadline.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Here's your check.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Good luck finding your next job and like, you know, take care.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: And they're also not unionized.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Unlike writers, directors, producers, etc.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Unlike the person handing a wrench to the key grip on the set of a movie, everyone else below the line in Hollywood is unionized except for VFX workers, which is astonishing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I have to say that most union workers, whenever I tell them that I'm not union, they are shocked because everyone assumes that we're in a union.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Because the post team is in the union, the camera department's, you know, in the union, writers' union, actors' union, everyone's union.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, given how important they are, they're a key part of the food chain, and they are not unionized, so they have no health benefits, they have no paid overtime, they have no retirement plans, unlike just about everybody else in the movie-making ecosystem.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: But ever since the pandemic, to go back to your question, it's work from home.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you'll have dozens of workers working remotely and zooming in.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: And basically, the studio farms out scenes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And these workers will get the specs and they'll look at the pages in the script.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: And then they'll have to sort of figure out how they can devise this visually and come up with something that will have to be approved by the director.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's up to the director to say, yes, I like this, or no, go back to the drawing board.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: The scourge of this process is what the VFX workers refer to as pixel fucking.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What does that mean?
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: The director doesn't know what they want.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All they know is what they don't want.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: And because of their unfamiliarity with VFX, they just keep sending the VFX people back to the drawing board over and over and over.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And nitpicking and saying, I want this, I want that, I want the other thing.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: But they don't know what they want.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The worst directors are the ones that didn't know how to direct.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: They couldn't make a decision.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or maybe there were too many cooks in the kitchen.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Hence the pixel fucking.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, you're making it sound like... A nightmare?
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: It sounds like a nightmare, but it also sounds so counterintuitive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This process you're describing is wildly inefficient, right?
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: No, I'm told time and again, this is a terrible way to work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That, you know, if they would hire directors who had a clearer idea of what they wanted going into it or if they propped them up with people who have extensive experience with this or you know studio executives who have a specific idea of what they wanted going into it
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Or if they prop them up with people who have extensive experience with this or studio executives who have a specific idea of what they want that would eliminate a lot of confusion, a lot of budget overruns, and a lot of 11th hour production chaos.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But in addition to all the other things I've described, Marvel is the primary offender in this arena because they release three tentpole blockbusters a year.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: And then on top of that, four TV shows, each one being about 12 hours of content.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they are kingmakers in this industry.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: It's an unsustainable business model, basically, is what I'm told over and over again.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: By not knowing what they want and by overworking these employees who are already so few in numbers, basically it's a race to the bottom.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: And the films decline in quality, the fans revolt, they earn less money, and the population of qualified workers is that much closer to complete burnout.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What keeps these VFX artists in the industry if their experiences are so miserable?
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: I mean, I'm hearing that there's an exodus from the industry, but the countervailing force is the unionization drive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So as a subset of IATSE, which is the big union for all the people who are so-called below-the-line workers, the non-famous people, the people doing the grunt behind-the-scenes work of filmmaking, are attempting to unionize and let these workers know their true value, let them know the strength that they have, you know, their crucial part in the moviemaking ecosystem.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: And when they finally get what they want, i.e. health benefits, paid overtime, retirement, you know, a livable wage, not being forced to work, you know, 80 hours a week for six months on end, then it's going to be a dream job.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, you know, if this gets unionized like the rest of the film industry, this is going to be a sweet gig.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: And, you know, this is creative work. People love it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We are craftspeople, you know, like while we might not do it the old fashioned way with our hands and building sets and puppets, you know, it still comes from our traditional kind of training.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: You know, it's art and science.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People are proud of what they do.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: De-aging Nick Fury in an Avengers movie is just inherently cooler than de-aging Robert De Niro in The Irishman.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You just get more cool points.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: So people love what they do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they work really hard.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Audiences love these movies. They're huge hits.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they want their name on it.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: I mean, I think that that's one of the main reasons why people tolerate so much nonsense in order to enact this work.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I guess I wonder, Chris, if there's a world in which we can solve all of these problems.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Because, you know, it's easy to look at Avatar The Way of Water and say, like, why can't everything look like this?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That being said, you know, James Cameron is one of the most experienced directors in the history of cinema, especially in the history of visual effects.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: He's famously hard to work with.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there's not a lot of people with his level of talent and experience.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: So even if you could make conditions better for visual effects artists, you don't have a dozen, two dozen, three dozen directors who can handle the work at that level.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is there really going to be a day where everything kind of works as it ideally could?
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Okay, so forgive me for going back to Marvel, which is my bugbear.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's my white whale as a reporter, and I've been on this beat.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: They have the money to pay for more time and more resources to make the VFX better.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They could pay for more people.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: They could make these lives not miserable in making these movies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Outside of that, they could hire competent producers to institute a quality control project by project.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Let's say surround them with a strike force that has the wherewithal to make sure that everyone has everything they need, enough time, enough personnel.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The money that these movies make, it's not like they're hurting for it.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: It's just on a balance sheet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They want to say, you know, this is how much money we spent and this is how much money we made.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Yay us.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you diverted a little profit and put it towards the VFX workers, you wouldn't have this crisis situation where everyone's becoming alcoholics and getting burnt out.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: And we get better movies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The fans get better movies.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Exactly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Chris Lee is a senior reporter at Vulture. Read him at Vulture.com.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: You also heard from a visual effects artist named Maggie Chrysemout.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She also volunteers on the advisory council of the entertainment union, IATSE.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Again, this was a rebroadcast or a repodcast of Intuit, Vulture and New York Magazine's pop culture podcast.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sam Sanders is the host.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: I was guest hosting while he went to pay his respects to the Queen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In England, he got tickets to see Beyonce.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: You can find Intuit wherever you listen to your podcasts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They drop episodes on Tuesdays and Fridays.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Check it out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Intuit's Travis Larchuk and Jordana Hochman made this episode with help from Today Explained's Siona Peterous, Laura Bullard, and Patrick Boyd.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: Vulture's Chris Lee reached out to Marvel Studios for comment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the team at Intuit did two mums the word over at Marvel.
--:-- Maggie Kreismut: For more information, visit www.fema.org.
--:-- [Theme music fades in]
