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Article
by Jody Duncan
Things
are hopping at the Visual Effects Society, the organization that
was founded in 1997 to promote the field of visual effects and
its practitioners.
The
1000-plus-member VES is now under the guidance of executive director
Eric Roth, who was hired by the Society's 30-member board in April
2004. Roth's first order of business was to embark on a strategic
planning process for taking the organization to its next level.
"We put together an ad hoc strategic planning committee that
is looking at what it means to be a society," said Roth,
"at how to make sure we give our members networking and educational
opportunities. We're looking at how to clarify titles and credits
for the people working in our industry. We're looking at health
care issues. We're looking at everything relating to the future
of the industry. Overall, we're taking a fresh look at what the
mission of the Visual Effects Society is, and whether or not we
need to refine or redefine that mission. By the late fall, we
hope to give the board a 2-year plan for the future of the VES,
with 5-year goals."
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Among
the most important issues being considered is growth, which
is vital to the organization's continued health. "We
are growing pretty quickly," said Roth, "which
is very exciting. But we are also considering how quickly
we want to grow, and where that growth should come from.
Three-quarters of our members are in California; but we
also have members on the East Coast, in Europe, New Zealand,
Asia and Australia. We're discussing how to encourage more
international members, and our ability to handle a global
membership -- do we need to open branch offices, for example?
Our strategic planning process is looking at that."
The
continuing education of its members is another of the VES'
high-ranking priorities. Recently, the VES and the Producers'
Guild collaborated on an event titled 'Producing Magic On
Time and On Budget.' "This was an opportunity for our
members to learn how a budget is crafted," said Roth,
"how and when it is amended, and how it works through
the timeline of production. That is just one example of
an educational program. We want to have a lot of events
like that -- events that are not just wine and cheese, socializing
events. We want to have events that enable our members to
network with other folks in the industry, and also learn
about how things get done. Other events might be on technical
standards, on how to be a better professional, on new and
better technologies or ideas."
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One
of the more exciting educational possibilities, still in the early
planning stages, is a mentoring program that would provide industry
novices with invaluable on-the-job training and experience. "We're
talking to the studios about these mentoring programs," said
Roth. "We haven't gone much beyond saying, 'Wow, that's a
great idea,' but we're looking into it. We're also talking about
working with high schools to see if we can get some kind of accreditation
with various programs. These are all embryonic ideas -- but everyone
believes that the issue of education is prominent."
VES
vice-chairman Jeff Okun is one of the people behind the effort
to establish the mentoring program -- a program he sees as beneficial
not only to potential visual effects artists, but to studios and
producers. "A lot of the studio executives are asking us
to help them sort through the number of people out there that
are claiming to have certain abilities," Okun explained.
"They are finding it difficult, in some cases, to verify
that those people can do what they say they can do. A mentoring
program could create a situation where someone has a 'VES' after
their name, indicating that they have been mentored, and that
the VES stands behind this person and his or her claims."
Okun
is also chairman of the VES awards committee. The third annual
Visual Effects Society Awards Dinner will be held on February
16, 2005, at the Hollywood Palladium. The initial call for entries
was September 1, kicking off the awards selection process. "Anything
that premiered this calendar year is eligible," Okun explained.
"And anyone can submit their work. Studios make submissions,
and individual artists make submissions. There is a fee for submitting,
but if you are a VES member, your card acts as a voucher for your
first entry. After all the submissions are in, we sort through
them and make sure that the people submitting the work are the
people who actually did the work. Then, we set up a weekend
during which a panel of experts in each area of effects reviews
the entries and ranks them to determine the top three in each
category. Those top three become the nominations."
"We've
got 23 different categories of awards," added Roth, "with
everything from features to TV to gaming to animation. We've posted
the list of award categories, as well as the rules and regulations
for the awards process, on our website. We want to make sure that
anyone who is interested in being a part of that is included."
Nominations and clips will be posted on the website, as well,
where members can vote on the final winner in each category.
An
overhaul of that website -- both its design and its content --
is also on the VES agenda. "Ultimately," said Roth,
"we want to have an updated website that has an embedded
interactive database that our members can utilize more efficiently.
Changes in our website are a very high priority, and those will
be coming in the next few months."
Membership
in the Visual Effects Society requires at least five years professional
experience in the visual effects field, and sponsorship by two
members. To learn more about the VES, go to visualeffectssociety.com.
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Star
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George
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Hayden Christensen as Anakin's ghost in Episode 6. The
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King
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click here to
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of filmmaker Peter Jackson's latest opus. The site features
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Click
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Incident
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SciFi
Channel: Variety reports The Sci Fi Channel
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Sky
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fantasy, which opens September 17. To read more about
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Resident
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Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne, scheduled for release
January 21, 2005.
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