There has been another event in the
long saga of visual effects employment in this country. (1)
This time it involves Phil Tippett and
his Tippett Studios which has laid off about 40% of their staff,
roughly 50 people. In an article in the Hollywood Reporter, Jules
Roman, CEO and President, predicted that the work was going up north
to Canada and that they had to get a project by the end of the year or, the implication was, that was the end of Tippett Studios.
See the article here:
For those who do not know Phil, he is a
brilliant stop motion animator whose studio made the transition from
traditional arts to 3D / Computer Animation.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, when
the first Star Wars came out, the film distinguished itself by
showing rare enthusiasm in all its shots. A door would open with a
bang. A spaceship was clearly an Empire Ship of the Line such as EE
Doc Smith would conceive of it. A bad guy looked bad. A
throwaway shot that most people remember is when Chewbacca is playing
chess with R2D2 and a little chess piece destroys his opponent which
was a stop-motion shot by Tippett.
Phil went up to Marin County to help
set up the new ILM for Empire Strikes Back and then went off to run
his own production company. Starship Troopers was their first big
entry into computer animation and they did a spectacular job, imho.
Here is an interview with Phil from
about the time he went up to ILM.
At deGraf/Wahrman we worked with Phil
on Robocop II which was an odd film but a pleasure to work on.
The screenplay was much better than the film itself for some reason.
Anyway, the producer, Jon Davison, had
us collaborate with Phil's company on our 3D talking head of the bad
guy, a scanned version of actor Tom Noonan. The computer animation
was going to be played back a frame at a time on a laserdisk (thats
how long ago this was), on a stop motion character that they were
animating. This would be a modern version of the idea of projecting an image inside a miniature, as one might find with King Kong (1933).
It can difficult sometimes for facilities to work with each other because of the traditional competitiveness of the industry and because so many people in this industry are immature. But not in this case. Everyone was great to work with.
It can difficult sometimes for facilities to work with each other because of the traditional competitiveness of the industry and because so many people in this industry are immature. But not in this case. Everyone was great to work with.
For years now, Tippett Studios was one
of the few other VFX companies in N. California besides ILM.
It is the nature of companies like this
that they must grow and shrink to meet the production work that they
have in-house. And they have survived now, even prospered, for many
years, perhaps 20. Their excellence at character animation has
always been a strong way for them to distinguish themselves and to
get the work that was appropriate for their talents.
The point I am trying to make is this.
Although it is normal for production companies to grow and shrink
with the work, and even normal for production companies to go out of
business after a time (they all do, eventually), losing Tippett would
be a major loss of a company known for its excellent character
animation, and a place of employment for animators.
Not all computer animation companies
and vfx companies are the same. They have different styles,
different bodies of work, different cultures. Tippett is a
stop-motion animation culture in a computer graphics world. I would
hate to lose them, and the vfx community would suffer a loss if they
went away much bigger than the mere numbers of employed would
indicate.
So lets ask the question. What exactly
are the politicians in this state and the US Congress
thinking while Canadian and UK subsidies and globalization wipe out
the vfx community in this country?
My guess is that they don't care how
many unemployed there are or whether the industry goes away as long
as the Hollywood studios can save a buck.
Phil Tippett on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0864138/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
Phil Tippett on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0864138/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
King Kong (1933) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024216/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024216/
_____________________________________
1. Visual Effects now means computer
animation or computer graphics, but it did not used to mean that, of
course.
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