What's next for Commercial Flame Artists?

[marknyc]

With technology making our equipment smaller faster cheaper, what's the future for commercial Flame Artist making a good living. Don't tell me it's talent/experience driven, I know this to be not true anymore. Agencies are looking more and more for the cheaper faster package. Plus most commercials in the US are crap, not talent necessary. Don't get me wrong there are some great spots out there that require talent, I've worked on some of them myself. Unfortunately they do not dominate the commercial air time. When I started out in this industry commercial VFX suites where billing $1200 - $1500 hr because these suites took millions to put together. Artists billing at these rates would make a couple hundred thousand a year salary. Now it seems you could put this same room together for a couple of hundred thousand which now no longer justifies a say $1350 hourly rate try a rate more like $900 - $750. This then makes the Flame Artists salaries go down year to year. Agencies budgets haven't gone down, VFX company owners are building rooms for less money. It seems that we the Flame Artists are the ones paying.

[Aruna]

Out of curiousity, why would your salary go down year after year? If the suite price goes down, how does that reflect on a Discreet artists salary? If, say, you're making 150k a year, how does dropping a Flame suite rate from 1350 to 900 really affect the artist behind the box? I'm under the assumption that the artist is paid for talent and contacts (and charisma with clients), and not based on what the going rate is for a flame suite. After all, if a suite was 500k a couple years ago, that same flame will still have the same capabilities, and your investment should be close to paid off. Of course, if your rate is commission based, I can see how making less in the commercial realm might affect you.

If you mean newcomers to the industry, I can see the artists not making as much, starting out. They 'missed the boat' so to speak. Some senior people in even feature film effects studios are only there because they've been grandfathered in. They were there at the right time to move up in the same company, and they're getting paid big bucks because of it.

To answer your question about where to go or what to do, there are several options. You could jump over to a feature film house and learn another familiar skill set. You could jump over to a CG house (Pixar, Blue Sky) and work on their animated features. Or you could freelance and increase your rates, as well as keeping your network contacts that prefer to work with you. You could also step up into a supervisor role somewhere in the post pipeline, whether it be vfx or cg supervisor.

Personally, I can see freelancing as the way to go if you're comfortable with your work ethic and skills, and have a number of commercial contacts that prefer to work with you. Putting together a very nice suite with just you and a producer, and work on your choice of projects might be more of what you're looking for.

Anyway, just some thoughts to get you thinking.

[marknyc]

Thanks aruna for your input, however my question isn't based off of your past or what you know to be true today about yourself, but more or less for Flame ops as a whole in the future say 5-10 yrs. I don't mean a Flame operators salary is going down year after year within the same company. More that Flame operators looking for work today are finding salaries less then 5 yrs. ago. Let's say they find a job today and stay with that company for 3-4 yrs. then look again in 3-4 yrs. time.

P.S. How big a jump over is it from a commercial Flame operator to a feature film one? What's necessary? Do I need to be in L.A.?

[Aruna]

You are correct, Mark.. I don't see flame ops getting their salaries of yore, unfortunately. It was one of the reasons why I moved over to film work. I did have the advantage of knowing FFI for a while before I jumped into Shake, and luckily my rates have climbed steadily. At the same time, I'm definitely doing more, and different, things, and have experience on FFI, and if necessary, jump over to that. I think it will definitely be tougher for FFI ops to stick with just FFI, since there don't seem to be as much demand for a commercial artist these days (solely working on commercials, I should say).. At Tippett we were doing commercials on shake! We never really met the client.

I'm interested in hearing from other discreet ops around to read their views on the matter. I wonder if the flame guys down under or in Asia are experiencing the same lack of monetary compensation that you're describing on the east coast.

edit:just read your edit.
There are several houses near NYC that do film.. Blue Sky, Brickyard and R!OT are the ones I recall off the top of my head. It's not a huge jump from spots to films, the only differences that might be are higher bit depth and resolution. You do have longer time to do shots as well. I found that I was a very quick film compositor, coming from a Discreet background! That's always advantageous. You don't need to be in LA to work on film, but most of the choice work is usually here.

[brunozwx]

Hello… my name and BRUNO FUKUMOTHI and I live in Rio De Janeiro (Brazil) I use Flame for almost 5 years and here in Brazil the industry is still dominated by the Discreet platforms therefore the highest wage still continues for the artists who operate platforms like Flame and Inferno.…
The Brazilian Industry is strong in commercials stuff and is very weak in feature films, therefore many companies still has fear to invest in solutions as the Apple Shake and the Digital Fusion…As the forecast for investments in feature films is very low here together with the fear of the companies in changing the standard of the Brazilian industry and mainly teach professionals to operate this new solutions I believe that the migration for cheaper platforms will not happen in short term for Brazil.
However as I dream working in USA or Europe with feature films I am learning Shake also, I believe that the industry for these solutions has grown very quickly in these last years mainly in USA and Europe, with more and more companies changing for cheaper solutions.
However I don’t I believe that Discreet solutions will be extinct because the best professionals of VFX have background from Discreet softwares…
I Believe that the capacity of a composer not depends of the software that is used … the more knowledge of softwares better. So, if you are a good composer (no matter the software that you uses) you will be well remunerated.

B.
(www.inflamefx.com)

[girlcompositor]

I think shake is pretty easy to learn, it's just like batch except you don't have to know all the buttons by heart.

In the long run though, I'm not sure if there will be many Flame workers. You're correct to say that companies want cheaper faster software, and they always want cheap labor too, which generally aren't the flame artists. It couldn't hurt to learn additional software, the concepts are all the same.

The other thing is, it's very hard for people now a days to learn flame, which I think is helping it die off. I mean you use to have assitants who you could teach, and there weren't a lot of other programs around. Now a days you can't really get an assitant flame job, and other packages can make great work without an expensive system like flame. Without people who know the software, the use of it is just going to keep dying down. Flame is also not user friendly and hard to learn, if you are going to have to teach someone a software you are going to teach them the software that's easier to learn so they will be able to get work done sooner.

This is all in my personal opinion. I still think you'll have flame guys out there, but just less jobs and more competition for them so of course you'll have to lower your rate. I mean really all our jobs are threatened anyway with all the outsourcing that goes on, so you just have to make money while you can and try to adapt to the changing market.

[Yossarian!]

I'm going to come from left field and suggest that there are more FFI suite and more FFI operators around today than ever. And whatsmore, that their position in the market is far from threatened - in fact I don't think there's any combination of desktop software that can come close to challenging the current FFI systems. Having said that the FCP/AE/Shake suites are chipping away at the lower end of the market share, and do seem to be holding FFI rates static where they were a decade ago. Which really puts the squeeze on post production companies nowadays (but then again, who isn't being squeezed?). But in a lot of agencies and production companies eyes when they book FFI time they're booking quality online time - they're booking a brand that speaks volumes to clients, as well as a highly capable operator who can not only get the work done efficiently and calmly, but juggle the egos and pressures of the clients. I think us desktop operators are newer to this game and less experienced in that sort of pressure cooker environment. Plus there's generally more loops to jump through as a result of the hodge-podge of software we use to match an FFI's capabilities.

[Vinteg]

People still want to learn flame because of it's history as a fast compositing program and the pay rate generally associated with it.

If people are willing to teach myself through forums, web tutorials and lots of practice time on a box in the middle of the night, I believe that becoming a flame artist is possible. If there is a will there is a way. Of course, this also means that either you know the people in charge well or work at a company long enough to prove that you are worth it.

However, I also believe that most of flame's features can be found in cheaper desktop solutions, however it's speed will help it continue to be in demand in a commercial environment. It's seem like many of the post houses on the westside (southern California) have at least one or two boxes around.

[jimbullard]

Time to revive a dead thread....

Here in Asia most places have a Flint that handles all their decent online work. There are a few Flames as well but the bosses over here are reluctant to pay the extra money to setup a Flame vs a Flint (which is a shame as you start to miss the modular keyer and 3D tracker).

Theres definitely no shortage of work for Flame Artists down here. I'm leaving my job at the end of the year and am being inundated with offers for a new position.

Back in Australia the Sydney commercial market is still geared towards Discreet products, including the Smoke machines (in fact Rob O'Neill was out here doing a demo recently and he was saying that Smokes are outselling the FFI machines these days). DS is popular in Melbourne for doing run-of-the-mill retail work but it's not so popular in Sydney.

Like Aruna said in an earlier post quite a few places are starting to do most of their compositing work on Shake machines and the ops never meet the clients. There might just be a day or two towards the end in Flame to tweak things with the Director/Agency.

As i said in an article is stuck on my blog recently I think that the FFI series is boned unless they can:
a) get a decent AT LEAST 16bit pipeline (32bit would be better)
b) start incorporating code to allow use of RAW data such as the RED raw codec
c) Either incorporate some new features that justify the cost or lower the cost to reflect the current market.

Flame Artists will be fine though. They are being paid for their compositing knowledge, their experience and their personality so theres always going to be good money and work (even if they have to move to a new platform).

If anybody is interested in reading a longer version of what I think the future of FFI is check out my blog.

[jackwest]

another thread revival...

I'm an aspiring mograph student with a background in the adobe/apple software.
I'm interested in learning the FFI suite the first chance I get as I have an interest in composting and understand it is the best platform available...when I found this thread.
I'm curious if the OP's original concerns are still valid. Perhaps its still too soon to ask if everyone's thoughts have changed as Apple's "Phenomenon" still isn't out.

Somehow I think the death of FFI can't be soon, when theres such a huge investment in the hardware. Either way, I'll dabble in shake/smoke for now.

[maynard]

Im sorry to respond just to the top post... but im being bothered by some of my team for files.... the quick and dirty answer is this:

MORE TV CHANNELS PER YEAR = MORE CONTENT NEEDED.

Its more of a story about VOLUME more then it is a story about cost of the high end systems.

the demand for HIGH PRESSURE CLIENT DRIVEN SESSIONS are always going to yield high cost for the artist. REGARDLESS of agency purchase prices.

Basically, your safe for the next several years. There is really nothing that can beat the client driven high end machines. Time is money... and in TV its no different.

The only close system to flame that is affordable is Fusion with Generation.

But dont discount the slightly more expensive scratch suites that are evolving into CYBORG 3.0 plus

-c

[Yossarian!]

I'm going to talk out my ass some and give it about five years for Autodesk's crown to be seriously challenged. Obviously hardware is no longer the issue. And things will heat up software-wise once Adobe and Apple start getting serious about their integration. But the real handbrake on proceedings seems to be the lack of senior desktop operators. And I think this will change.

For under $30k you could put together a package that plays back realtime 2k and runs FCP or Avid, AE and Nuke, Photoshop and Illustrator, DVD Studio Pro, plus the periphery packages like Mokey/Monet, PFTrack, etc. That gives the operator the tools to handle pretty much any challenge. But without the experienced operators its all academic.

I see a lot of young people who can milk these suites the way FFI ops did with linear online suites back in the day. Its what I prefer to run myself. So I give it five years for the desktop jockeys of today to reach a level of seniority where they can start bringing clients over to these sorts of suites without fear of the funny little Apple badge on the front. Unless Autodesk pulls of some sort of coup and comes up with an autorotoscope tool.

[Vinteg]

I think those who were grandfathered in will continue to have their high rate due to their client interaction skills and senior compositing experience. It'll be around for at least 5 more years for sure.

However if you're new to the game, don't expect to get anywhere near that flame rate. I know at least 2 houses with multiple flame artists who make about or less than a roto/paint artist. Why do they do it? The flame artist gets to comp on a flame, for the status, assuming that it will pay off in the long run. It will, but a very long run. Be prepared to work short contracts and swing/graveyard shift for a few years. You'll have to jump around if you wanna make more money faster.

Meanwhile the vfx studio will continue to charge their flame rates to the client. With more DVRs entering the family homes and shows going online with flash ads inbetween them, don't expect much in terms of that high flame rate.