That’s really bad advice, especially when you’re first starting out. I began my career over 30 years ago as an intern. I was 14 when I worked as a production assistant for a company in San Francisco called VideoWest. I learned a huge amount in a short time about real-world production and I haven’t looked back since.

Especially in a transitional economy like we have today in the entertainment industry, just having a resume and reel is not enough. Tens of thousands of kids are about to graduate from various film and animation programs and guess what – they all have resumes and demo reels. And for an employer, that’s not really enough information to determine how you’re actually going to fit in and work at a company.

There’s new evidence that internships work in all fields, not just visual effects or filmmaking…

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Employers recruited more than half their interns for full-time positions last year, the highest rate of intern-to-staff hiring in a decade, according to survey results released Thursday.

The survey showed that companies turn 58% of their interns into full-time employees.

"That’s the highest conversion rate we’ve seen since we started tracking this on an annual basis in 2001," said Marilyn Mackes, executive director for the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

The findings from the annual survey are a strong sign that interning could be a direct path to full-time work for students.

I’m in favor of visual effects artists being both compensated fairly and having fair working conditions but the people I know who work in the industry paid their dues and then often included doing internships or other free work early in their career. Furthermore, I know a lot of people who will still "work for free" to help a friend get a film made or other collaborative ventures. Nothing wrong with that, either.

The broad-brush idea that you should never work for free is just bad advice. Feel free to ignore it and build your career.

I flashed on something outside the entertainment industry: the WalmartEffect. For a supplier, getting a contract to sell to Walmart can be both the best thing to happen to a company and the worst. I think the relationship between the studios and the visual effects companies is moving in the same direction.

Suppose you manufacture widgets in Los Angeles, and Walmart decides to carry your widgets.Walmart buys in enormous quantities, so getting your widgets into Walmart is a boon.

But Walmart insists you cut your prices year after year. At some point, you can’t cut any more and keep your L.A. plant open. So you decide to move your manufacturing overseas. Do a Web search on “Walmart” and “hollowed out” — you’ll find plenty of articles describing this effect.

Hollywood isn’t a single buyer with monopsony power, like Walmart, but the studios are constantly pressing vfx companies to cut prices and schedules while demanding ever more complex effects, in larger quantities. And we’re seeing the same result: California’s vfx industry is contracting, and work is shifting abroad to regions with major tax incentives or to lower-cost regions such as India and Southeast Asia.

Jeff Okun, a vfx supervisor and chair of the Visual Effects Society, said, “The bottom line is that all studios are correct: It’s a business, and they’re obligated to get things for the lowest price they can get. That turns things back on the visual effects industry. We sold ourselves too cheap, and we didn’t put any emphasis on the artist; it was all on the technology. So the perception is ‘You’re a dime a dozen. If you won’t do it at my price, I’ll find someone who will.’?”

Okun calls it “a failure of capitalism” but doesn’t see a way out of it. Nor do I.

First off, I’m really grateful for David and Jeff keeping this conversation going. We need more conversation — and quite a bit more action.

Second, I love politics but I don’t want to get heavy into that topic right now – but let’s at least provide some balance. Let’s just talk about the successes of capitalism for a minute…

• That terabyte drive you can buy for $80?
• That DSLR you can shoot a movie with that costs $1500?
• That green screen with two softbox lights that costs $200?
• That suite of filmmaking and effects software you can rent for $90 a month?
• That quad-core computer you can buy for $600?
• The scriptwriting software you can get free? That free video hosting service that lets people around the world see your work? That free service that lets you talk to people around the world? That free game development engine?
• That book – edited by Jeff Okun – laying out industry standard practices for doing VFX?

That’s all capitalism, too,

We all see things through out own prism and it’s easy to forget the bigger picture, even when it’s right at our fingertips. Be honest – when you hear about the next generation RED camera or amazing DSLR, are you considering the stress it puts on Kodak and Panavision or do your thoughts wander to making your own movie?

I’m old enough to remember when the cost of entry to doing visual effects are $10,000 or so…and THAT was a huge drop in price from $100,000 or so and THAT was a huge drop from it costing millions and millions…ya know, way back in the 1980s.

I don’t think Cohen is totally off in the Walmart analogy but it’s a glass-half-empty view. Let me suggest one that I think is equally true but looking at this from a ‘glass half full’

Let’s call it ‘the Democracy Effect’.

This is what happens when ANY endeavor becomes open to more people. It’s especially noticeable for creative ones. It happened to music; big giant expensive recording studios gave way to killer, affordable home recording. It happened to photography; costly darkroom equipment and byzantine manual cameras gave way to Photoshop and hi resolution digital cameras on your phone. It happed to espresso machines and pottery supplies and book publishing and computer programming and golf and a ton of other things.

And guess what? You probably LIKE those changes, right? I mean unless you owned a recording studio or film developing facility those changes were nothing but good for you.

Again – not to get into the political debate but if we’re going to be honest, capitalism produced those democratic changes, right? Hard drives and computer processors didn’t get cheaper because of government edicts. If we’re being fair, they DID get cheaper in part – but not totally – because of outsourced, mostly Chinese manufacturing. There were other factors, such as improved engineering, smarter retail strategies and increased demand due.

Is the world better off for this as a whole? I think so, absolutely. Don’t you?

What’s a visual effects facility or artist to do? Well — don’t complain because the business opportunities aren’t the same as they were in 1999. There are plenty of great, amazing opportunities RIGHT NOW.  Take advantage

This doesn’t mean that VFX artists don’t deserve the same basic employment rights that the rest of the entertainment industry has. They do. But meantime, welcome to 2011. It’s awesome.

Eric Barba: Kick the door open. Make a small movie with whatever tools you have available, tell a story, and then do it again. I tell young artists that one of the best director reels I’ve seen was a guy who shot everything in his bedroom on a hi8 camera, and he was the star. Practice your craft, and if you have talent, it will show.

Read the whole interview here

Following on the heels of open letters by Dave Rand and Joe Harkins, I thought I would write one more that I hope will bust some illusions and excuses in the hopes of creating some immediate, positive change.

It’s been over a year since I wrote the Open Letter to James Cameron that seems to have kicked off some of the discussion about working conditions in visual effects and the state of the visual effects industry as a whole. I wrote that letter for two reasons; because I realized someone needed to say it and I had the platform at the Huffington Post to make sure some people heard it.

Here’s what I believe needs to be said now – nobody is going to save you. The organizations that you may have been hoping would come along and do the work for you? That’s not going to happen. The quicker you realize that, the quicker you can actually get out there and solve the problem.

I believe both the VES and IATSE have a bunch of political intrigue and internal strife going on, none of which ultimately helps the artists, facilities or studios.

Wait, scratch that — I don’t just believe that. I know it for a fact and so does everyone who’s privy to what’s going on behind the scenes. I’m not to go into detail because frankly that just feeds into the backstage drama and as I said, it’s not helping.

None of this is to say that either the VES or IATSE are filled with bad people, by the way. The problem is that they are filled with people — plenty of smart, dedicated people who all have the same issues of ego and agenda that plague every single human being on the face of this earth. When you combine that with the restrictions and general institutional malaise that happens as soon as people start forming organized groups and making a living through organizations, what you have is institutions that are not possibly going to be effective for solving the problem at hand.

So for what it’s worth, my suggestion is that some smart people step up and take matters into their own hands. If the main issues for artists are working conditions and benefits, then an ad hoc committee could start to talk to facilities and get voluntary agreements on those issues. And not months from now – next week.

The digital revolution that has created the modern visual effects industry has also put a wealth of tools at your disposal for organizing and communicating. IATSE has shown no savvy at using these tools which is part of the reason that they’ve generated no empathetic response from the industry that they are trying to organize. But you can be smarter. You can start using blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MailChimp and the other wealth of cool tools available right now to start to get something done.

Stop waiting for IATSE, IBEW, the VES or anyone else. Don’t try to solve problems that you have no possible means to solve, such as entire states, provinces and countries having film incentive programs. There’s a qualitative difference between swinging for the fences and tilting at windmills.

Instead, create a written list of a few goals that are achievable and would make the lives of artist better and then start sending out e-mails and making phone calls to talk to the people who are in a position to do something about it.

In reality, some of this work has already been done. I’m not going to name any names of the risk of putting folks on the spot, but there are a number of smart people who been active and writing. If a few of you get together and just decide you going to do this, then get the word out I can promise you that you will see results – real, tangible results that will make your lives and the lives of other people who work in the visual effects industry better.

In closing, live long and prosper. May the force be with you, always. Yippee ki-yay, motherfuckers.

Lee Stranahan
Dallas, Texas
April 22, 2011

(Note to Red Giant — that audio on the clips is ANNOYING.)

Movie Looks – Horses from Red Giant Software on Vimeo.

Main Features

• Device Support: iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPod Touch (gen4). Not supported on the original iPhone, iPhone 3G or older iPod Touch devices due to memory limitations. Future support is planned for iPad.
• Video resolution: Develops 320×240 and 640×480 on iPhone 3GS, and up to 720p video on iPod Touch and iPhone 4.
• Resolution options: Choose Half or Full Resolution so you can decide whether to output with fast render speed or highest quality.
• Import restrictions: Does not yet support videos in portrait mode or movie clips longer than 120 seconds (2 minutes). We do plan future support.
• Render times: Looks are applied instantly but render times can be long. Choose Half Resolution or use a shorter clip to make the render speedier.
• Optimized colors: Color treatments are optimized specifically for iPhone 4 and 3GS video. We take care of typical problems like magenta cast and over-brightness, so you don’t have to.
• Smart pause: Supports iOS 4 ‘suspend & resume’ to interrupt the render so you can take a phone call and return to where you left off. Developing and upload do not take up memory by running in the background.
• Easy in-app purchases: Each 99¢ preset pack has 8 gorgeous, glamorous looks that you buy in-app and unlock with no extra download.

Learn more here!