From the linked article…
In a day and age when literally everyone connected to a film production gets a credit, from craft services to on-set teachers of child actors to random “production babies” who didn’t even work on a film, it is utterly incomprehensible that vfx artists, whose work makes possible the final images that appear onscreen, are routinely omitted from screen credits.
I can attest to this, having worked in the field. Most of the work in TV and cinema goes uncredited, with team leaders or just the post houses at most being recognized with an end credit placement (by contract, of course). I understand totally that it is always a team effort and hardly any of the viewing public sits through the entire end credits roll. I totally get it. But when it happens that you are included, that small token of recognition does remind you why you’re doing 12-hour days erasing power lines, making day look like night, adding/removing people and/or signage from shots they weren’t supposed to be in and pushing greenscreened people in front of moving cars.
Is that really up to Nolan? I don’t know anything about the industry but is a director in charge of making sure everyone is credited?
He’s also a producer in all his films. He definitely has the clout and oversight to ensure its done. But he’s also a luddite and so it’s not natural for his brain to consider things like that. Remember, this is a guy that doesn’t even have a mobile phone.
I mean, there are also production offices, editors, post-production supervisors, and Universal’s contract with DNEG involved.
If he missed it, then so did dozens of other people. Though the fact that DNEG just laid off like 8% off their workforce in London makes me think that it was a deliberate decision from the studios rather than “Nolan forgetting to do it”
As a director and writer, he wants his name to to be seen, to tell people it’s his film. As a producer, he makes sure the actors appear in the correct order. After that, it’s someone else’s problem.
Surely as an actor and director, those people that were integral to achieving his vision getting the recognition they deserve should, ordinarily, be his problem?
Yes. Typing their names into the credits roll however, isn’t.
I’m sure most studios have an unpaid intern for that.
Which is why we’re in this mess.
He’s not really a “Luddite” : https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/
Okay, let him explain it in his own words FFS 😭 https://www.joblo.com/christopher-nolan-refuses-to-own-a-smartphone-for-one-key-reason/
He is not wrong… :)
a luddite?
that’d quite pathethic coming from someone working at the top of one of the most technology-dependent industry existing today…Maybe I’m using the wrong terminology. But he’s on record as saying he doesn’t like modern technology and will always use analog whenever possible.
And from the article you posted elsewhere, the “Luddite” term comes from his children because he doesn’t use a smartphone. Which he basically says if he had one it would negatively affect his creative productivity. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
There’s also nothing inherently wrong with practical effects and film stock. On top of that, the practical effects he uses in camera are rarely untouched by digital vfx
There’s still no defense for leaving work uncredited
He’s also producer.
Probably not, but the movie is pretty much defined by him. It’s not just Oppenheimer, it’s “Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer”.
As someone who had his name left out of film credits before (actually, it listed the guy’s name who didn’t get the role I got instead of mine), I know how this stings. Sadly film & television is full of neglectful morons, they fuck up, ultimately all you can do is move on.
it listed the guy’s name who didn’t get the role I got instead of mine
That’s particularly rough. I’d be livid. Did the mistake stay in the credits for subsequent publications of the project?
Surely the producers could update the credits when the error is discovered?
Assuming the film is listed on IMDb, were you not credited anywhere?
I was very young then and much easier to push around. This was well before IMDB existed.
At some point, when it comes to the way VFX people are treated in the industry, it goes beyond simple neglect imo. These people are constantly being fucked over.
I sincerely doubt it was neglect, but a calculated decision either to support his “no CG” bullshit or to hide the fact they used outsourced CG farms with terrible working conditions.
This is a really interesting issue within the industry. I work within the film and television industry, both in Australia and the UK, and have never been credited for the roles that I do that, some would argue, should be credited for.
But when you break down something like a mega-Hollywood-super-feature-blockbuster-film like Oppenheimer, the amount of ancillary and auxiliary bodies working on a movie like this, would amount to a credit role that would be very hard to keep track of.
For example, do you credit the data wranglers who might be assisting the DIT, or the courier service who delivers dailies to the post house? Or the team of edit assistants who make proxies for OCM? Do you credit every person who was on craft catering for the entire production run?
On one hand, I can see why it is “consolidated” to team leads, or heads of departments, but personally I think that ANYONE who worked on the film SHOULD be credited, as their time is equally as important as everyone else’s.
I have learnt to accept that my name won’t be appearing in any credit role, despite the hours I put in to make sure it happens, and I am okay with that, but totally understand and support anyone who feels like they should get the recognition… as I said at the start… interesting issue.
This is why we have unions who negotiate the contracts that outline who gets a credit and who doesn’t. Keeping track of everyone who worked on VFX in a movie is a trivial exercise. Those comparisons to menial tasks done by interns aren’t at all appropriate.
How would unions for VFX artists even work when lot of stuff is outsourced and those studios are in cutthroat bidding competition?
Studios could decide to outsource other talent too. Voice actors, for example. But they choose not to, because they know that if they do, the rest of the actors on set would walk off (and perhaps even on other sets owned by the studio, and perhaps even other unions besides SAG-AFTRA would join in solidarity), and at best they lose a day or two of work and at worst, they lose their movie completely.
Voiceover performance is covered by the Screen Actor’s Guild, and I don’t hear the same kind of issues again and again with it like I do VFX (even though the work could literally be done on the opposite side of the planet and sent in) I wonder why that is… What would be the main difference there… Hmm
Additionally, there are lots of places outside of Hollywood who are offering very attractive tax cuts, etc., for making movies in their state/province. Pretty easy (and may already be the case, I’m not an expert) for those state-backed contracts torequire union workers.
That’s how a lot of government contracting work is done because it is basically win/win/win: the state gets a ton of new revenue from taxes but also from thousands of new workers living and spending in their areas, the workers themselves get well-paying jobs with salaries and benefits they can live on (and hey, maybe even raise a family on), and the consumer gets a new water main, or bridge (or in this case, movie or TV show).
What’s your point?
but personally I think that ANYONE who worked on the film SHOULD be credited, as their time is equally as important as everyone else’s.
Well that’s just not true. If it was, they’d all be paid the same for their time. It’s nice to think in egalitarian terms, but it’s not true. Some people are more vital than others.
in that case crafty is probably more vital to a movie happening than the DP.
Ive spent months working on the VFX for a show only to not appear in the credits, yet the dude who brought lunches to the crew on set who gets paid significantly less than me gets a credit.
I get that if 100,000 people work on a film they don’t want to fit all of them in the credits. But also, why not? Sure there would need to be some sort of threshold, you can’t just Uber someone to work and get a movie credit. But someone who actually did work should get credited. If the credits last 10 more minutes, who cares? Physical discs have plenty of space now, granted, streaming is now king. But that only proves my point more.
The only argument I can think of is that movie theaters need time for one movie to end before the next one starts because of post-credits or something. But that’s so niche and can easily be worked around with mid-credits scenes, or faster scrolling credits on the theater version.
I worked as a stand-in for one of the main actors in Tulsa King for 8 months and didn’t get a credit. I was even in some of the scenes as the character when he couldn’t be there and wasn’t in focus. It kind of pissed me off to be honest. I even put in more hours than my actor rehearsing the scenes over and over.
Your frustration is completely justified.
Yeah, that I don’t agree with. You have far more right to a credit, but that’s part of the current lack of respect for VFX crews in the industry.
And as far as the credits lasting too long on films, well it gives the cleaners some music to work to. More seriously, it’s probably the likes of Marvel putting scenes at the end of credits that causes the problem. It stops the cleaners getting access.
Personally I think they should keep the credits to a certain level and above, but across-the-board. No lunch boy credit for sure.
I think the various unions are the only reason anybody gets a credit at all. George Lucas got fined for not putting enough credits at the start of Star Wars, iirc.
Kind of sucky that people get no credit, although sitting through the credits of Red Dead Redemption 2 will probably give an idea of why they don’t list everybody at every studio and contracted company that worked on it, since they were about half an hour long.
The fine Lucas got was from omitting the director’s credit from the start of the movie. It’s not like anybody was defending the guys doing the work behind the scenes.
This might be a needless nitpick, but had to bring it up, as it’s not the first time I’ve come across this.
Yeah, that’s the one. The director’s guild (not union, although I guess similar) imposed the fine, even though it was his own name he omitted.
Even James Earl Jones didn’t get a credit although that was at his own request apparently. He’d rattled through the lines in like 2 hours, pocketed his money and went home. Didn’t feel he’d deserved it, vs the poor guy who’d sweated in a suit for weeks and didn’t even get to be seen or heard.
He also claims there isn’t even one CGI shot in the entire film. I don’t believe that. There aren’t any backgrounds filled in at all? No touch ups? If he used matte paintings you would be able to tell with IMAX, there’s too much definition to pass off a painting.
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That was so disappointing…
While I will agree that maybe Sir Christopher is possibly stretching the truth regarding CGI (it’s entirely possible there isn’t one entire, totally computer-generated shot), but computer-aided, computer-enhanced, no. Especially in this day and age, everything is touched by Inferno/Flame/Smoke/Nuke/AE/Blender/Maya/blah blah blah.
When you say “matte painting” you mean traditional, non-digital, paint-on-glass? Forgive my ignorance, but why would that be any more or less noticible in IMAX?
Imax has a huge resolution. It’s like watching a 4k copy of an old movie and being able to see how fake the materials used were.
He meant there’s no full CGI/green screen shots. He’s not completely averse to CGI.
The Dark Knight has Batman flying over Hong Kong and that was a CGI shot. Inception had folding city. Interstellar had mathematically created CGI of black hole.
Otherwise CGI is used by him to enhance existing shots or to hide wirework. Such as zero gravity scenes in Inception.
“forgot”. The guy really went above and beyond to sell his gimmick “no cgi”. I’ve even seen some of his fanatics defend this by saying “IMAX reels can only hold 3 hours of film which is why the CGI people had to be removed from credits”. As if they couldn’t have been credited early in the credits and as if the movie wasn’t less than 3 hours (don’t know where that person was but where I am, the movie is supposed to last 2h40 something minutes, aka less than 3 hours)
The official runtime is 180 minutes exactly, so actually is 3 hours.
In my job, I often ghost write extensive legal arguments for Supreme Court litigation, on behalf of Senior Counsel (we call the practice ‘devilling’).
I do weeks of research, strategy, writing, rewriting, and the senior will then submit and argue my papers as their own.
Most of the time, I don’t even get to attend. I’m not officially on record. And when I do a great job, judges might praise the senior for ‘their’ excellent work, and I’ll hear about it second-hand.
It can be hard to stomach because everyone likes affirmation and appreciation for their labour, but I’ve learned to take all my satisfaction from the work alone, and doing an excellent job.
At least in my case, I know this is how it goes so it’s never a surprise. But it’s lonely behind the scenes in a thankless role.
I empathise with the uncredited, but at the end of the day the reward is in the quality of your output.
If you are a permanent employee and get a good salary I can follow your argument, you are a cog in a machine and get reimbursed regularly. But if you are hired project by project and get paid some lump sum (and probably not a good one), then exposure in credits and on IMDb is really valuable.
Damn, does his hate for VFX even extend to the people working on it?
I wonder if it’s really hate for VFX people or that they just think so little of the cheap Indian labour they used to produce this to not even mention them in the credits.
Or maybe they just wanted to hide the fact that most of the VFX was produced in India (I assume from the names and DNEGs offices), not in the US?
It’s much simpler than that. CG gruntwork (rotoscoping etc) is outsourced to studios in other countries filled with exploited artists. I doubt even those studios would have list of people and who worked on what. Generally names of project manager/team leads are given in such cases.
They are given, it’s in the article and the studios website. For some reason, they just didn’t end up in the final credits.
I doubt DNEG told Universal and Nolan to take the names from their website.
Well, in their defense, we are a despicable lot. 🤣🤣🤣
And you have the other side of movie credits where they add the crew pets , new born kids and deceased during filming.
I geuss that for a movie like Oppenheimer the credit would last longer than the movie itself.
Actually, the film is just 15-20 minutes. Tops. Rest is credits
(Lie)
I like (lie) much better than /s ngl
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🤣🤣🤣
🙄 While I’d agree with you if I didn’t doubt you about credited pets and kids without actual roles, I’m pretty certain nobody has a problem with the memorial title cards.
I haven’t noticed pets being credited, but I for sure have seen babies that were born during the making of a movie get mentioned during the credits.
I barely watch any movie and yet i saw pets and new born being credited. It happens, their’s no doubt about it. As for the memorial, i didn’t say it was a bax thing. Neither of this is a bad thing. i was just pointing at something i observed that is in a striking contrast with 80% of the vfx team being uncredited in Oppenheimer.
At the very least add a QR code with links to a document containing all names involved. Wouldnt be hard and a database like that wouldn’t cost much to run.
Yeh…that’s all we need . More people pulling out their cellphones at the movies and shooting the screen. 🫤
I don’t like this idea at all. QR codes are just a different way of encoding a URL, so as soon as someone stops paying the hosting bill that extended credits document is gone. Credits are in the movie itself so they can’t be erased or forgotten. I highly doubt a web server for a movie, even an Oscar winner, is going to be online in 20-30 years from now.
QR codes are not encoded urls, they are a way of encoding data. They can contain 2953 bytes. What they contain is irrelevant.
A film could technically have several QR codes that had all the credits in text in them.
This is true, but the practical use of QR codes is almost always to encode a URL that points at something hosted traditionally, similar to how NFTs can contain unique data on their own but most of the time are actually pointing to a file hosted somewhere else. And that somewhere else
couldmightprobablywill eventually fail.
I wouldn’t think the recognition from the public would be main reason. I figured that the biggest reason you’d want the credit is for future employers to see your name attached to a film. I would imagine they would be the ones to either sit through credits or search a credits database to see who worked on which films or worked on films recently.
This is pretty normal. When I worked in vfx the studio I worked for took out pages in variety to give everyone a credit.
Most of the people who work on a film don’t get credit. There is above the line and below the line , they get credit. Most people aren’t even on the page.
I was able to get a credit once and my parents were proud.
People who think a Hollywood director sits down with a list of names and reviews all the credits should really get a reality check. Thousands of people work on a film like this, and sometimes not even directly with the director. In case of these VFX artist they were most probably a third party studio not at all affiliated with Nolan. How should he know who works for one of their service providers.
I gave up on movies the moment jar jar binks appeared on screen. I walked out and have never been back. However when I did watch movies, I always watched to the end of the credits as the musicians were always last. I am a musician.
So sick of hearing about this damn show/movies.
🤣 Pal, did you not see the name of this community?!? You are definitely in the wrong place!
Maybe try here instead. 🧘
