There’s a quiet storm brewing in Hollywood.
While accepting the Oscar for best visual effects, VFX supervisor, Bill Westenhofer thanked the effects company, Rhythm and Hues, which contributed the character-animation work for “Life of Pi,” and began addressing the severe financial difficulties plaguing the company. Westenhofer barely started before the ominous chords of the theme from “Jaws” began playing him off stage.
The timing, and play-off music choice, could not have been worse.
Just a few blocks down the street from the Dolby Theater, where the Academy Awards were held, stood dozens of workers protesting the ceremony.
Despite their big win at the Oscars, Rhythm and Hues filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in early February. Two weeks ago, roughly 250 employees were laid off without pay due to the company being unable to compete with cheaper, outsourced labor. The company has provided Hollywood filmmakers with visual effects since 1987, and had more than 700 employees in Southern California.
The special-effects maker said nearly 600 of its artists, including 25 university alumni, worked on “Life of Pi” to create scenes with one of the movie’s central characters, the Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Westenhofer stated that the Bengal tiger was only 14 percent actual tiger, the rest created digitally.
Including 10 million hairs on the body of the animal.
The studio hoped to receive an emergency $17 million loan from 20th Century Fox and Universal so that their VFX artists could finish work on contracted projects that would last until the end of April. Legendary Pictures stepped in and paid the company around $20 million to finish the effects work on the upcoming fantasy film, “Seventh Son.”
With more and more jobs being outsourced from the United States, graduating with a degree in visual effects seems to be more daunting than exciting.
“It’s definitely a scary thing to see jobs in your focus area rapidly decreasing,” said David Jeka, a second-year visual effects major from Chicago. “It makes graduating that much more terrifying.”
A support for laid-off SCAD alumni has even been created. Alumni living in Los Angeles who have been recently released from work are encouraged to email Professor Gaynor to try and find new work in the area. With tough times hitting the visual effects world, encouragement from the university could potentially be an artist’s greatest ally.
The next few weeks could bring some big changes for Rhythm and Hues, and potentially other visual effects studios. In a court filing this week, the company said it needs to be sold by mid-March or it will run out of money, also asking for a judge to approve increasing the auction process time. Since the funding from Legendary Pictures is a finite amount, it is only a matter of time before all work is forced to cease.
The court filings also included that 80 different entities were contacted about a possible sale, and that 16 are interested enough to begin bidding. If an auction moves forward, Rhythm and Hues is set to begin the sale on March 18.
With the company facing a major turning point in their future, VFX majors and moviegoers can only hope that the magic of visual enhancement continues into the future.
