By Owen Reyes · Originally reported by Richard Horgan (2012) · Wayback archive →
In late July 2012, the anonymous entertainment-industry blogger VFX Soldier gave a long interview to electrician-and-organizer Bob Oedy at VFX Success. Eight months later, the broader VFX-industry crisis the interview was warning about exploded into public view.
Then
VFX Soldier’s two central arguments were: (1) VFX workers needed to unionize to protect wages and working conditions, and (2) international production subsidies — particularly aggressive ones from Canada, the U.K., New Zealand — were systematically destroying the U.S. VFX industry.
Now
The crisis VFX Soldier was warning about hit publicly in February 2013, when Rhythm and Hues — the VFX studio that had just won the Oscar for Life of Pi — filed for bankruptcy days before the awards ceremony. Multiple major VFX houses closed or restructured across the 2013-2016 window. The 2024-2025 AI-and-VFX integration question is the current version of the same structural conversation VFX Soldier was prosecuting in 2012.