好萊塢的血汗工廠 Hollywood's VFX Sweatshops (1 of 3)

Olivia Wilde and Garrett Hedlund in the upcoming Tron: Legacy  Douglas Curran / Disney

好萊塢的血汗工廠  ── VFX，繁華中的衰敗 (1 of 3)
Hollywood's VFX Shops: Trouble in Boom Times
By Rebeccca Keegan / Hollywood Monday, May. 31, 2010 


如果你想知道是誰讓好萊塢逐漸茁壯的，你得等到電影最後謝幕字卡(movie credit)出現。在謝幕字卡的最最最尾端，在演員及水電工名字後面，甚至在炸玉米餅的小販名字後面，才會出現特效藝術家的名字。他們就是讓超人飛上天空、讓城市掉入汪洋大海中的那一群人，他們讓像「阿凡達 」(Avatar)、哈利波特系列電影等這些依賴特效的電影能夠成真，他們──正是好萊塢中最龐大的印鈔機！
If you want to see the names driving Hollywood's growth, you have to stay for the movie's credits. The very end of the credits. After the actors and electricians — sometimes even after the people who serve the tacos on set — come the visual-effects artists. These are the people who make superheroes fly and cities fall into the ocean, and the effects-reliant films they work on, like Avatar and the Harry Potter franchise, are Hollywood's biggest moneymakers.

在謝幕字卡的位置正說明了這些特效藝術家在好萊塢渺小的地位。諷刺的是，就像他們獻出的頂尖創意、席捲電影票房強大吸金能力。這些特效公司正面臨著多災多難的一年。由於激烈的全球競爭，好萊塢的罷工事件仍宿醉未醒，以及跟其他工作室缺乏溝通，許多特效公司得關門大吉，或是邊減少支出邊載浮載沉地支撐著...。
Their place in the credits says something about visual effects (VFX) artists' place in the Hollywood pecking order. Ironically, just as they are peaking in creativity and propelling box-office hits, VFX companies are facing a crisis years in the making. Thanks to fierce global competition, the hangover from Hollywood labor unrest and a lack of negotiating power with studios, many VFX firms are closing up shop or outsourcing to stay afloat.

「基本上，特效是門爛生意。」詹姆斯‧柯麥隆在新書「預見未來的人：《鐵達尼號》《阿凡達》金獎導演 詹姆斯．柯麥隆的電影與人生」專訪中這樣說道。   「因為你賺不到什麼錢，最好的時候一年只有分到全部營利的5%。對！我們製作的雷聲大，但得到的利潤卻像雨點一樣小。」
詹姆斯卡麥隆在1998年協助創立了「Digital Domain」這家特效公司，這家特效公司也挾著鐵達尼號這部開創性電影的威勢，奪得奧斯卡金像大獎。卡麥隆後來在公司的人事鬥爭中辭去總監位子。自此之後，Digital Domain合併，並一舉成為好萊塢電影圈中特效公司的第一把交椅，與舊金山的喬治盧卡斯的「Industrial Light &Magic (ILM)」、紐西蘭威靈頓的彼得傑克森 (魔戒系列電影的導演) 所創立的「Weta Digital」，還有在洛杉磯的Rhythm & Hues工作室 (曾製作金鋼狼、鼠來寶) 、Sony Pictures Imageworks  (著名的作品為「蜘蛛人系列」、「愛麗絲魔幻仙境」等) 這四家視覺特效公司齊名。

註：世界五大特效公司繁多，結合TIME照片文字，整理如下表：
整理/製作：格主Hurley
 

Company	Founder	Films	Gross	Location
Digital Domain	James Cameron	Titanic, 2012,Transformers, The Day after Tomorrow	Transformers 2$836 m	Los Angeles
Industrial Light &Magic（ILM）	Gorge Lucas	Star Wars, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,Twister,Jurassic Park	HP 6’s $934 m	San Francisco
Weta Digital	Peter Jackson	Avatar, The Lord of the Rings trilgy,King Kong	Avatar 2.7 b	New Zealand
Rhythm &hues				Los Angeles
Sony Picture Imageworks		Alice’s Wonderland,Spiderman		Los Angeles

Fundamentally, visual effects is a crappy business," James Cameron told me when I interviewed him for my book, The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron. "You don't make much of a margin. A good year for us was 5%. Sure, we were doing huge volume but at a low margin." In 1998, after the VFX company he helped start, Digital Domain, won an Academy Award for its groundbreaking work on Titanic, Cameron resigned amid dispute about its direction. Since then, Digital Domain has emerged as one of Hollywood's leading VFX shops, alongside George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) in San Francisco; Peter Jackson's Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand; and Rhythm & Hues and Sony Pictures Imageworks, both in Los Angeles.

Page1  Page2  Page3

The original site of TIME magazine