Dr. Willis Ware 1920 - 2013

I was devastated yesterday to hear of the passing of one of the most interesting people I have ever met or worked with, Dr. Willis Ware formerly of the RAND Corporation.

Dr. Ware passed away at the far too young age of 93 years old.

Most people at RAND had no idea what he did, just that he was very senior.

I met Dr. Ware at the RAND Corporation when I was just 21 or so years old, and Willis was already some sort of Scientist Emeritus at RAND and while no one seemed to know exactly what he did he, suspiciously, had a three window office and a full-time secretary/assistant. With this information we knew he was powerful beyond measure. They said that he testified before Congress on the issues of privacy, and that of course was important but seemed to only add to the mystery.

Several clues revealed themselves as time went by.

Clue #1 He knew my interest in graphics and he wanted to show me a film he had with a user interface that he thought was interesting. It turned out to be none other than one of the famous films of Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad thesis work at MITRE when he was a graduate student at MIT. To this day I consider that user interface to be one of the top five or so I have ever seen.

Clue #2 We were chatting about nothing in particular and he told me the story of how he had worked to bring Dr. von Neumann to RAND after the war and when he was bored at the Institute at Princeton. von Neumann, whose computer architecture you are using while you read my blog, most likely, was going to come to RAND and UCLA and split his time between them. But unfortunately he died suddenly of brain cancer.

Clue #3 Somehow it came to my attention that Willis had received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Princeton in 1939. Look up 1939 in history, recall that the new Intelligence agencies (really the proto-agencies, the ones we know were formed after WWII from these proto-agencies) recruited heavily from the Ivy League and imagine what someone with a PhD in EE might do in the upcoming conflict.

Clue #4 Although Willis did not seem to work on any run of the mill projects at RAND, he did travel every six months and spent a week somewhere in Maryland. Fort Meade, Maryland, as it turned out. In fact, I saw above his secretaries desk an agenda and it said he attended the "SAB" at Ft. Meade, Maryland. Now, what is at Ft. Meade? Well, the National Security Agency is. And what might the SAB be ? Well, it is something called the "Scientific Advisory Board" which meets every six months.

The Scientific Advisory Board of the NSA is the body responsible at a very high level for advising the NSA on technologies of interest and issues that they should be addressing. In short, Willis had some sort of very serious position advising the NSA. A senior spook, at least in part.

Clue #5 Willis and I were discussing WWII and Enigma one day and I told him that I was guessing that there were still secrets from WWII that had not been revealed. And he said to me that he knew for a fact that there were secrets and events from WWII that had not been released and that, in his opinion, they should be.

Clue #6 At random intervals, maybe once or twice a year, Willis would travel on a short trip to Washington, DC. No one knew what he did there, but it was suggested to me, by someone who knew Willis well, that he was used by various elements of the Intelligence Community when it was necessary to liason with another part. In other words, he was some sort of prestigious messenger when some sort of issue or discussion needed to take place. Now, I may have that wrong, or incomplete, and of course it is vague, but I think it still has valid information.

Clue #7 In 1967, DARPA commissioned a report on "Security Controls in Computer Systems".  The report was reissued in 1979.   Written by Dr. Ware, you may find this report on the Cryptome site at http://cryptome.org/sccs.htm

And so, who was Dr. Willis Ware ?

I think he was a pioneer of computing and information technology, and a recognized authority on the impact on policy, particularly the policy of privacy, at very high levels of government. I think he was in some sense a spook during WW II and that he maintained his relationship with the primary user of computers in intelligence, the NSA, and was on their advisory board. He maintained an office at RAND and did his own work because it was a useful platform that kept him in touch with Washington, yet outside the beltway madness that so many succumb to. RAND gave him a certain long term cachet, and RAND management of course loved him because their very raison d'etre is to influence policy in Washington, and clearly Willis did just that.

I also suspect that there is more public history here than I know and will no doubt discover over the next few weeks. Willis was probably involved in the Mathematics Division of the RAND Corporation back when RAND had two mathematics-related departments: abstract and applied.   Computer science, such as it became, came from the applied math department.   When I was with RAND, we had a small computer science department that was in some way derived from these much larger efforts of the past. Today, RAND has no computer science department although there are individual computer scientists and programmers lurking in the hallways. (1)

Finally, Willis is one of the reasons that I am so screwed up today. You see, back then, at RAND, I was treated as a real human being, with intelligence and something to contribute. Today I am treated like garbage by nearly everyone but especially in my own field and it was those expectations that got set at RAND that led inevitably to my downfall.

I will really miss you Willis, wherever you are.

[The NY Times has an obituary of Willis at 
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/technology/willis-ware-who-helped-build-blueprint-for-computer-design-dies-at-93.html?_r=0]

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1. Part of the reason that RAND had a computer science department(s), was because RAND believed it was of strategic importance to the US Government. As time went by, computer science spread to the more traditional venues of University and Industry and so RAND no longer needed to do that. There were other things that were more important and more in line with their specific missions in the context of Congressional limitations on the maximum size of the annual budgets of places like RAND.

Feminist Shaving Theory and Internet Porn

Warning: the following post is rated R and discusses sex on the Internet

Our research confirms that the sex drive is strong in mammals.   Even Steven J. Gould said so and he should know.   In its small way, the Internet has helped reveal this enduring truth by providing easy access to a vast amount of pornography of all types, as well as commentary on this porn deluge by outraged or not so outraged consumers.

Porn is one of the boom industries of our civilization.  It is international, multicultural, omnipresent and profitable beyond the wildest dreams of the most exploitative or idealistic of the pornographers. Very few industries can compete with it in scope and economic importance.

We recently came across a commentary on the phenomena of Internet pornography by two feminist authors on the New Statesman web site.   What particularly caught our attention was the free expression of commentary on the editorial by readers who felt the need to share their reaction and personal experiences with us.

That hussy!  Shaving again!  Has she no shame?

The authors, Rhiannon Cosslett and Holly Baxter of Vagenda Magazine, bring up a number of topics in their essay  "The Big Question that the Generation Raised on Porn Must Answer",   It begins with the provocative statement: 

        Porn often shows a submissive woman, stripped of all of her body hair, undergoing ritual
        humiliation in the name of sexuality, and twenty somethings must ask whether that has
        wider implications about how our peers view us socially, politically and professionally.

Apparently the whole issue of who shaves and who does not is an important feminist issue.   But we do wonder if the authors have looked at the broad range of porn that is out there, or perhaps have focused on one particular aspect of it.  But nevermind, the helpful Internet, with its social networking and online commentary, comes to their rescue.

One man wrote in response something along the lines of: he personally watches a lot of pornography on the internet and it generally involves big hunky men doing nasty things to other big hunky men and he absolutely guarantees that there are no women involved, shaved or otherwise.

Then a woman commented that she likes watching pornography of shaved women being used by big hunky men and so do a lot of her friends and is this editorial saying that they should stop watching it because that isn't bloody likely.

A second man wrote in to share with us that he felt that this editorial was absolutely correct and that men were being awful here and that if she wanted to step all over him with her boots in punishment or maybe spit on him, that would be ok with him because he certainly deserved it.  All men deserved to be beaten by women, he seemed to be saying.

But here is the coup de grace: many people felt that this last comment (on being abused by women) was "creepy" and made them uneasy. In other words, their sexual preference was ok, but his... well, not so much.

At Global Wahrman we want to go on record to say that we are happy to hear that people are enjoying themselves and want to encourage this type of behavior as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult and takes a shower afterwards.

For another more amusing slant on the issue of sex from what may be a feminist point of view, consider In Defense of Bad Sex by Laurie Penney

Impressions of NYC, November 2013 (revised)

[revised 11/26/2013]

This was my first trip back to NYC since about 2004 or so. For my benefit more than anything else, these are my notes about what has and has not changed in the city from my lowly point of view.

1. It was shocking to me how quickly my knowledge about how to get around had deteriorated. You forget which streets are one way, you forget which is the uptown/downtown entrance to the subways. You stop at crosswalks instead of blasting right through with an eye on the incoming traffic. I reached for my little fold out map maybe 200 times in 8 days. When I lived there, I never needed a map. You spend a LOT more money on taxi's because at some point you just say, "fuck it, get me there", where a local would just walk or take the subway. I got lost maybe a dozen times and I never used to get lost in Manhattan.

There is obviously some backstory here

2. There continues to be a disturbing trend towards branded nationwide chains in Manhattan.

3. The taxis have done away with the celebrity greetings, which were there to try and make tourists feel better about using taxicabs. I miss hearing Rodney Dangerfield remind me to take my bags as I left. There is in its place a nice GPS map of Manhattan showing you where you are if you knew how to get at it on the touch panel display. Oh Brave New World !

4. Pizza has gone from being $1.50 for a slice of plain to $2.50.

My barber in Little Italy

5. People in NY, or at least my friends in NY, are constantly visiting people, galleries, parties, and/or other social events. Constantly. I know one person in LA who lives that way, but no one else. There are no social events worth speaking of down where I live.

6. The perceived expense of visiting NY is real. NY is much less expensive to live in than to visit assuming you have a reasonable place to live. The money is spent on hotels (or whereever it is you stay), transportation and to some extent on food depending on whether you eat out all the time. Is this worse than other cities? Not really, I think. Maybe hotel rooms are more expensive overall. But taxis are less expensive in NY than in LA, although of course you tend to use them more in NY.

7. Taking a taxi from LAX to Culver City is nearly $40.00 today.

8. More of NY is going upscale, and some of the older neighborhoods are changing. Broome street, where I was staying, is midway in the process of becoming a trendy, soho-like place.

Tom Brigham in front of House of Vegetarian

9. The new "world trade center" is just ok. Its a nice enough building except for the stupid tower on top to try and make it seem taller than it is. It is not the WTC in either scale or impressiveness, but I don't think anyone will really care in a few years. Lets see how they do with the monument. I am not holding my breathe.

10. Little Italy is much reduced. Apparently this happened long ago, when I was still living there, as a way of reducing the influence of certain Sicilian families, they tell me.

11. Chinatown is still there and as weird as ever.

12. But most of all what impressed me is that NYC is drop dead beautiful. The architecture, the lighting, the weather and the people all makes for a dramatic and fascinating place to live.

13.  As always when in NY one should buy a Metrocard, which is a little card which keeps subway and other transit fares, like a phone card.    You can put any amount of money on the card, but when one buys a certain amount you get a decent discount so you should do that.   What the Metrocard does for you is to make any of the mass transit systems in NY easier to use.  No fumbling for money, no exact change, no waiting in line for a ticket.  You just swipe your card through the turnstile and it lets you through and tells you your balance.

On this trip I was staying in a part of town I rarely spent much time in (Broome street near Christie, near Chinatown) and I did not know how it really fit into the subways.   I needed to go to B&H Photo at 34th street and as I was pondering whether I felt like walking 30+ blocks, a 3rd Avenue bus went by.   So I took out my Metrocard and I was on the uptown bus, which stops at 34th street.   Ok, admittedly, I got a little lucky here.  But the idea behind a well-designed and run transit system is that tourists and residents should get lucky now and then.

14.  I always have conversations with my cab drivers.   I dont know why, maybe it puts me at ease, but they are almost always interesting people to talk to, usually recent immigrants (where recent can be as much as 10 years or so).  Usually pretty fluent in English.

15. I found that after a while, I enjoyed staying at Arlene's Home for Wayward Children, where I had a couch and shared the bathroom with six other people.  Everyone was well behaved and easy to get along with, even Arlene when you calmed her down.   I could live there for a while and be perfectly happy.  If only I could afford it.   Not a giant fan of that part of town (Broome and Christie) but there are people who swear by it.  I am more of an upper west side kind of guy, I suppose.

16. Its nice to see a technology community thriving in NYC.  I hope it persists and continues to thrive, it gives me some hope that I would be able to find suitable employment there one day.

Rodents of Unusual Size Found in Ancient Italy

When life imitates art, one must ask how the artists knew what they knew and when they knew it. Did they just make a lucky but inspired guess, or were they diligent enough to research the topic and talk to a specialist and then make a considered and informed extrapolation of what is known into the unknown? (1) Movies about the future and the distant past know in advance that they must make predictions where certain knowledge is missing, but even in these cases the filmmakers shrug off an obligation to make solidly grounded predictions and lapse into the cheap or predictable.

I would say that cheap and predictable is Hollywood's metier.

However it occurred, in the case we have here the filmmakers have unexpectedly triumphed when they probably just thought they were creating an inexpensive but exciting moment in a film that has a certain reputation for being unusually entertaining. I am referring here to the "rodents of unusual size" in the esteemed movie The Princess Bride (1987).

To refresh your memory, the kidnapped princess and the Dread Pirate Roberts, revealed to be her former servant and lover, Wesley, try to escape their pursuers in the Fire Swamp, known to be inhabited by horrible ROUS, which are "rodents of unusual size". Of course they are attacked by ROUSes (ROUSi?) in the swamp and a terrible battle ensues before they are able to defeat the ROUSes and escape the swamp. The ROUSes are not a shining moment in the history of visual effects, being somewhat cheesy and, well, ratty in appearance.

Although filmgoers of today demand the highest quality in visual effects, the best that technology can imagine for their quota of zombies, giant robots, and superheroines, it wasn't always so. Back in the day, long ago, movies were often about telling a story and made economic use of the resources available. The effects only had to be good enough to move the story forward. In some cases, one could even accuse the filmmakers of being tongue-in-cheek cheesy. The gopher in Caddyshack (1980) comes to mind.

So we might dismiss the ROUSes as being merely enlarged and fictional examples of an imaginary rodentia, until science made the following amazing discovery. Apparently, in ancient italy, rodents of unusual size, giant hedgehogs, roamed the countryside, eating and otherwise annoying the other flora and fauna of its time. Although this is probably just a lucky guess on the part of the filmmakers, I think you will agree that it is an amazing resemblance.

It may be a hedgehog but it certainly looks like a rodent to me

Since one of the theme's here at Global Wahrman is to analyze the process by which one can successfully predict the future, we plan to use this example in our case studies of successful, if inadvertent, predictions.

Read more about the Ancient Rodent

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/science-deinogalerix-masinii-new-giant-fossil-hedgehog-italy-01535.html

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1. In this case, I think we can rule out the use of Atlantean Crystal Wisdom. There is no evidence to suggest that any of the filmmakers were aware of and using the Esoteric Knowledge.

NY Tech Meetup and the Delusion of Optimism

When I was in New York, I had the opportunity to attend the November meeting of the oddly named "New York Tech Meetup" at NYU's Skirball Center. The November meeting is reserved for academic presentations, e.g. presentations of new technology (or old technology) by universities and schools, professors and students. We had 20 presentations and each lasting about 3 minutes long.

High School students frisbee throwing robot that failed to throw frisbees

We had one set of students who had used image understanding software to cheat at completing jigsaw puzzles. Another group of students (high schoolers) had built a robot that threw frisbees. We had a Harvard based group of people who showed their website that allowed programs to be written with a visible programming language from MIT that allowed you to snap pieces of programs together. And we had our own NYU Media Research Lab show the current status of a very inexpensive immersive reality system that used about $500 in parts.

Backstage at Skirball with Ken Perlin and Students getting the immersive reality demo to work

But the audience was the most impressive part.  Maybe 500 to 600 people, all enthusiastic, all well dressed, all maybe 25-45 years old.   All of them ready to do that big tech startup and get rich!

When it was all over, we had a reception hosted by, I think, Google.  On the 10th floor, a view of Manhattan, and filled with enthusiastic people "networking".

So you know me, Mr Reality here.  Mr Sourpuss here.  I go and find the organizers and complement them, but mention one little issue I had:  "It was all so upbeat" I said. "It was all so optimistic"

"Well, whats the matter with that?" they asked.

You do realize that there is 25% unemployment in this country, right? That there are more people on food stamps today than have ever been, and it is not because of some stupid right wing craziness about lazy people. That 9 out of 10 startups fail, right? You know that, right?

They just looked at me in horror and turned away.

Sorry to spoil their party, I guess.

NY Tech Meetup:

http://nytm.org/
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This PS may be unnecessary, it may actually be in a comment.  So read the comments!  -- MW

P.S. Ok, the point has been made by one of our NY correspondents that this is a bit too negative.  In fact, even if 9 of 10 fail, the 1 surviving may end up hiring all the others. Also, we should not fail to encourage those who might improve themselves by their own initiative.   OK, sure, I agree with this, but let us not on the other hand have unbounded optimism either.  Many will fail, and failure can be painful and destructive.

Also, I feel rather strongly that if you want to succeed in America, it is helpful to have a lot of money. It is possible to succeed without a lot of money, but it is a lot harder.

NYC Trip Report November 2013

(draft, photos to follow)

There are about 100 things that occurred during this trip, and it is not clear to me what, if any of them will be of interest to you.

This post gets all the little things out of the way. The more interesting things will be separate posts of their own over the next week.

1. By being absent from NY for several years, my expertise in getting around decays. I estimate a 2X penalty in time and money for the amateur (e.g. tourist) getting around NY.

2. The World Trade Center replacement is adequate. It looks nice at night. It is in no way a replacement for the mass of the original building(s), nor is it interesting enough on its own merit to be a replacement. However, I think this is all irrelevant, in a few years, no one will care.

3. There is an amusing statue commemorating the special forces who went into Afghanistan immediately after 911. The siginficance of the American mounted on a horse will not be lost on those who know the history of the cavalry in this country.

4. The cost of a slice of plain pizza has gone up to $2.50.

5. The State of NY is pulling out the stops to encourage technology startups. More on this in later posts.

6. I found the documentation at the Metropolitan on their exhibits to be irritating. More on this in a later post.

7. The former ease with which I dealt with my ADHD medication in NYC is no longer. Yes, the DEA has struck even here.

8. B&H is much larger, much more computer oriented, and a great resource. I actually had people who knew somewhat about cameras help me with my temporary digital camera choice. It was a great experience.

9. United has really pissed me off with its reticketing policy. I have switched to American Airlines. Alert the media.

10. The weather in NY was amazingly warm.

Arrival in NY, NYU, Brigham, Speer and the Virgin Mary

Revised 11/11/2013

Dearest Marie

I have arrived safely in New York City, a city I have heard so much about but not really visited since earlier in the century.   These notes will record some of my impressions and now that I have given into Satan and bought a digital camera, some pictures as well eventually.

Your idea of buying a cheap notebook worked great, mostly.   Windows 8 can be tamed it turns out, Microsoft is its own worst enemy.  The keyboard can be used but the mousepad is so big on the palm rest that if you indeed use it as a rest you mess with the touchpad and your mouse goes to hell and gone.

I checked into NYU and Perlin arranged for me to have a badge!  I did not have the heart to tell him that I still had my old one from 2000.   They want me to return it when done, fat chance.  The 12th floor looks very very similar to the way I remembered it.    I feel bad bothering people when I need something.   Ken has an interesting vision and we will see where it all goes.  I know from experience that in academia, things are complicated and may not be what they seem.   Danger everywhere!

I did notice that Chris Bregler when he did motion capture did not use the basic ballerina / stripper approach of so many of his peers, but went straight for an Olympic diving champion.  I applaud his taste in exploiting women and plan to complement him on this the next time I see him

I found Tom Brigham, and he is doing better than I expected.  His subterranean basement appears at first to be a junk room, but when you go further in you see there is order in the madness.  He thinks this is camoflage, but I think its just bad marketing.  He has to convince people he is not a flake, and presenting his office/workshop as a pile of junk to the casual observer is the wrong approach.

Speer took me around on Saturday and we got in Chelsea, the MET and some music.  The man is a dynamo of energy, the prototypical uber-new-yorker.   If I had stayed with him on Sunday instead of doing who knows what I would have seen the apparaitions of the virgin mary as photographed by the fabulous Veronica Leueken.  The Church does not believe these are true visions of the Virgin, then what are they?

These are her predictions as recorded in her ecstatic visions.  See link below.  Note that in 1977 under Revolutions she predicts the 3 W as a sign of the end times.   3W could mean 3 wars, or could it mean she predicted the WWW (world wide web) as a sign of the coming collapse of civilization?

http://www.roses.org/prophecy/seqevnt.htm

But now I must get out of Arlene's shelter for the poor here on Broome street and face the cold hard world and go to NYU and play with all the great stuff that Perlin has collected.

PS The MET was wonderful but the Rome exhibit was very underwhelming.

I miss you greatly and look forward to returning to our little Rancho in Siberia.


                                                     Your devoted Dimitri.

Late Breaking News: BOIDS tests from 1986 Found

Just as I walk out the door to NYC, I read some old email, and find that Tom McMahon has resurrected the long missing Boids tests from Stanley and Stella.

Boids are what we called the early behavioral animation tests by Craig Reynolds.  It was to showcase that technology that we did the film Stanley and Stella.   This is all shot off the screen of a very low res Symbolics window.

I thought these were lost forever.

When I get back from NY, I will add some more pictures.

The test video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96LIKfKcoxk#t=170

Leaving on A Jet Plane, Don't Know When I WIll Be Back Again

I am leaving for NY tomorrow and will be gone for about 10 days.  No doubt this will affect the blog as it may or may not be easy to make posts remotely.  The problem is not internet access of course, the problem is having the time to spend several hours to write something.

No doubt the trip will stimulate all sorts of topics for the blog, eventually.

As an aside, I find it very difficult to live my little comfortable prison here.  If it were up to me, I would probably just stay here and not move.  Not moving means not spending any money.  Less anxiety.   Putting a blanket over my head and leaving it at that.

And speaking of that, I plan to now go and put a blanket over my head.

See you in a week.

Comments on the VES "State of the Global VFX Industry" White Paper Part 1

(this is a draft and is in progress... send comments to michael.wahrman@gmail.com or leave a comment below).

The Visual Effects Society issued a report on the global visual effects industry right before SIGGRAPH 2013. I have been meaning to review this report for Global Wahrman for some time, but I have not because I did not understand it.

Its not that the report is unclear or badly written, it is in fact very well written in some ways. The problem for me was that I could not figure out what it was trying to accomplish or for whom it was intended. In particular, I could not figure out what its point of view was.

So now I have read it several times, and I think that I have the answer to my questions. It is studiously trying not to have a point of view, to be all things to all people, as it were. But to paraphrase Frederick the Great, he who defends everything defends nothing. And that is what I think we have here, a report that does mention many of the issues and many of the proposed solutions, and asks some of the right questions, but not all of course, but ultimately leaves us where we were before. Which is nowhere.

You are going to have to look up the report for yourself. Right now, Google Chrome is not letting me get the URL here for the report. Search for "VES global vfx industry report" and it should come right up.

As I understand it, this report was initiated because in light of recent events, particularly the demise of Rhythm and Hues in the aftermath of Life of Pi, the VES felt that it had to do something, anything, to respond to the dismal situations of so much unemployment, uncertainty and so forth. So they assembled a group of worthies in the industry (leaving out many who could equally be there) but certainly including a group of people who I would want involved in such a report. Nancy St. John, Mike Fink, John Nelson, Scott Squires, Bill Taylor, Peter Chiang, Ray Feeeney, Warren Franklyn, Sari Gennis and so forth. All of these people are worth listening to, that goes without saying. I felt that it was a little light on the VFX workers (e.g. digital artists) themselves, but whatever.  There was one token technologist that I noticed.

Ok, yes, there are some things I could quibble with. Did I see a mention of ageism?  I dont think I did, but hey maybe I missed it. I felt that the issue of proprietary software needed expansion, the situation is an icky one and one is kind of screwed either way (damned if you write your own software, damned if you don't). I felt that the section of what describes "the business model is broken" could be greatly expanded and frankly it would be a very dark part of the report.  IMHO the so called business model never really ever worked.  Two of the biggest problems that I see in visual effects, the fierce competitiveness between facilities and between individuals that leads to things such as underbidding a project to put a facility out of business and the character assassination that is an everyday occurrence are not mentioned that I noticed.

But I think that the problem here with this report is actually structural with the VES.  In other words, the same problem that the report has the VES has.  Arguably.  The VES does not want to say "end subsidies" because there are lots of international people out there who like subsidies (of course) even though subsidies are the number one cause of the demise of a dozen worthwhile visual effects firms in this country.  Thats pretty darn politic of them, an outsider might say, or one might use the word spineless as well.  The VES does not want to complain about facilities making people move all over the planet then laying people off, because they are also trying to represent the interests of the facilities. Somehow the VES does not see recent events as a complete disaster (the laying off of not less than 1000 people in the west coast in the last year by my estimates). Somehow the demise of the Los Angeles visual effects community is not a cause for concern (which it may not be).  The VES does not want to take a position on the massive oversupply of artists (quote end quote) but until that is dealt with no one but the facility owners or studio executives are likely to have a secure job in this field, except that these two groups don't have secure jobs either.

Subsidies? What subsidies?

Before I get into some specific suggestions, I want to pose to you the following question: is visual effects a reasonable career for a young person (or any person) to get into? Is it likely that they will have a career that lets them do such things as have a family, have a life, build a retirement fund, all those boring things that become so important as you grow older and do not have a trust fund. Is it? Is it a reasonable career? I want to suggest to you that it is not, except for a privileged few and that is the fundamental dilemma here.   To be specific, I am saying that visual effects is not a reasonable career for a person to have and that people are being duplicitous and unethical by encouraging people to go into it.   I have written much more on this topic, you can find the posts on my blog if you care to look. 

So here are some specific suggestions, some of these may be redundant to the report, but it doesn't matter. I am sure I am going to be ignored anyway.

1. Finally put together a matrix of positions / skills in visual effects to try to bring some order out of chaos of who does what and what you need to be qualified for it.  

2. Issue a strong statement about a union, I think that visual effects should have one in order to represent the interests of the workers of the USA in visual effects. An organization that can ask why their elected representatives have sat on their hands and looked dumb while thousands of jobs left S. Cal without worrying about whether it annoys the studios. Of course it annoys the studios.  (By the way, why did our representatives sit on their hands while thousands were unemployed and have to leave the county?  It must have affected their tax base.  It couldn't be slavish obedience to the studios, now could it?)

3. Issue white papers whose purpose is to educate clients on fundamental principles. A fundamental principle might be to explain why changes late in the day might be easy, or it might be very hard and explain why.  I doubt it will do much good but 1 in 100 producers actually wants to do a good job and not just fuck people to make a dollar, and so that 1 person will benefit.

4. Help create a professional development path (paths) for people in the field. This is what they should be learning, doing, whatever if they want to progress in the field and be better professionals.  Instead of just saying every person for themselves, yahoo, go say you're an effects supervisor, no one will know the difference anyway.

5. Help create a way for out of work individuals to have access to the tools they need to stay current. Without the tools, they can not practice and their skills will get both rusty and out of date and then they are completely, as the French say, es fucque.

6. Take a strong position on subsidies.  Subsidies destroyed employment in Los Angeles where a huge number of your workers have/had lives.   Sure LA may be a sucking sewer of smog and corruption, but it is *our* sucking sewer and we should defend it.

7. Finally I think that one of the largest problems visual effects has is that everyone tries to be like everyone else.  As long as they do that they will be treated like the commodity that they are.   Only by creating their own vision as artists will they be unique and be able to command a better price, or so I argue.  We do see a little bit of that in this field, but I think we should see a lot more.

I will elaborate on all of these in future posts.

I want to thank the people who took the time to write the report. No, its not what I would ideally want, but it may be the best the VES can do, given the various interests they have to accommodate, and it certainly was a lot of work and I certainly appreciate it.