Relevance
february 9 2010 at 2:28 p.m.
category:
Awash in the web are inklings and details about the status of post production freelancers in Los Angeles. Recently Rhythm & Hues presented a recruitment seminar at the Art Institute of Dallas, the full entry is
linked here. It is a very interesting article on the recruiting method that
Rhythm & Hues - Los Angeles has in place. In addition, R&H has other locations around the world; They have the office in Los Angeles (USA), Mumbai and Hyberdad (India), and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). One of the more important sections I have cut out and placed below.
The Animation/VFX industry is 2/3 Freelance. R&H will try to roll you over to another project but it not guaranteed. Most contracts are for 6 months. The recruiting department at R&H stays in contact with other company departments to let them know when projects are over and there may be a flood of people in the market for a job. (There is actually a very small pool of the same people doing the work.) Often they offer offsite recruiting events for each studio. VFX industry is largely composed of project hours.
The animation and VFX industry is two-thirds freelance! Our data should be more relevant than ever for our travelling and contractor users. On Huffington Post Lee Stranahan writes
an open letter to Cameron about gaining recognition in the industry as well the value of a vfx artist. Value is not completely monetary, it also takes into account how a company values their own artists, be in contract/freelance or staff. We here at VFX Wages want to give you at least a small bit of information, this in the form of compensation for your hourly talents. My previous post dealt with
foreign competition, and how to value your talent. We all have to start somewhere, and at least we have some information for artists when they move between facilities. There are many threads on CGTalk about compensation for artists and how they are treated, and while we don't have all the answers, we do have some. We have managed graphs of occupations which are becoming more accurate over time! Here's the
compositor section and as well, the
3D Generalist wage graph. You will have to be logged in to see the graphs. The important line is the clickable red line, which is the median hourly rate around the world for artists in that profession. The majority of the data is from the US and the EU, so if you want regional breakdowns, head on over to the
Wages section to narrow it down. We've also started adding job postings from companies around the world. Take a look at our latest job listings
here! Searchable by region, it gives an accurate portrayal of the available jobs in that region. There is also a complete list below the map.
With our humble beginnings a year ago, and with various pitfalls and downsides, 2010 promises to be a big year of changes and opportunity. I'd like to share some statistics with you about the status of the site. This is currently our 16th month of operations, five months which were private, with part time work done by myself and my partner. This is a very small part-time operation, which we hope to take into full scale operation soon.
We have, at this moment, close to 7200 registered users! We also have approximately 5800 professional users (those that are working in the industries we service), 1200 students, and around 260 companies (that are registered to post jobs). Out of these users, we have approximately 3100 wage points! More than 60% of you are contributing to our database, which in turn, helps you. In addition to these values, there are about 500 vfx, gaming, and animation companies in our database. This list is slowly growing.
We are in talks with several different investors to help bring the site and the company into greater prominence, and hopefully this, in turn, will help you as artists.
