If Hollywood is the Top 40 pop music of the filmmaking world, independent filmmaking is its DIY punk rock counterpart. With a dramatic decline in mid-range feature budgets, indie producers are striving to do more with less. The $2-5M film has become more common, yet the quality expectation from directors and investors is often the same as its $10-20M predecessor.
This growing gap between budget and expectations in the indie market is fueling the divide between established VFX houses that rely on traditional studio pipelines, large teams and expensive software, and small, decentralized, boutique post production teams. The boutique teams are working remotely and drawing on freelance artists sporadically, with specialized skills from local and global talent pools. Many of their artists are self-taught. They learn their trade online rather than rising through a traditional studio environment because the opportunities for permalancing and full-time employment are shrinking. The resulting demand for flexibility in hiring can hit freelance artists personally. Costs of software subscriptions, maintenance and tools are pushed on to them as the managers of boutique operations seek to minimize labor and overhead costs by becoming increasingly software-agnostic.
New VFX software is providing some relief and opening the door for aspiring VFX artists with even modest hardware. Low-cost options, like Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve Studio (includes Fusion and is available for free or costs a one-time payment of $295), Blender (free) and Unreal Engine (free, up to a certain revenue) are gaining traction in traditional filmmaking, especially the indie sector, where profits are razor thin and self-teaching is common. The software capabilities and features are similar to pricier industry standards for a fraction of the cost. Blender offers a powerful 3D modeling tool with continuous open-source development by active users. Unreal Engine allows for both the realtime creation of full 3D scenes and an engine for affordable virtual production. DaVinci Resolve Studio offers a suite of tools that can provide the foundation for an all-in-one post production platform, from edit through conform, color, VFX in Fusion and DCP.
This rapid democratization of VFX software will lead to indie teams based on artists’ inherent VFX skill level, rather than proficiency in a particular software. This requires more fluid and project-dependent concepts of workflow and pipeline for the boutique operation, including improvisation and on-the-fly patching. Slim budgets, tight schedules and an ever-changing roster of available freelance artists will only exacerbate this need for flexibility in hiring and technology. But even as the budgets, organization of labor, and artist tools shift within a new industry paradigm, critical thinking and VFX fundamentals will remain central to creating compelling movies.
Alex Noble is VFX Supervisor/Owner of Wild Union Post (www.wildunionpost.com), a New York/New Jersey-based post house that specializes in VFX, including compositing, motion graphics and 3D animation.