XAVIER BOATNER
campus editor
xavier.boatner@my.tccd.edu
Despite helping breathe life into various forms of entertainment, creatives and their work continue to be treated like they don’t matter.
Creatives, such as showrunners and VFX artists, are visionaries. They’re important components in creating stunning locales, expressive characters and awe-inspiring imagery. They help bridge the gap between an audience and a different world and turn viewings into experiences.
With that being said, they’re usually the first to get thrown under the bus in the event that a company needs a tax write-off. It’s unfortunate and far too common.
Over the last few months, Warner Bros. has been collapsing and nearly everything Warner Bros. related was being wiped off the face of the Earth.
The higher-ups figured the most logical decision was to cancel nearly every upcoming project on the HBO Max platform and cancel anticipated films like “Batgirl” and “Scoob: Holiday Haunt.”
People may not be fussed about losing “Scooby-Doo Movie #567” or another superhero movie and that’s fair. However, it’s sad that so many people worked like mad putting those projects together just to have them never see the light of day.
They were used as a tax write-off and nothing more. It’s a slap in the face to fans and a bigger slap in the face to the creators who get laid off and left in the dust.
Even existing shows and films were erased from the platform for tax purposes. Popular HBO productions like “Close Enough” and “Final Space” are inaccessible across most platforms and many are running the risk of becoming lost media.
Marvel Studios has been in hot water regarding the treatment of its VFX artists. They’ve gone underappreciated across many of the MCU outings, and some employees have opened up about their poor experiences working with Marvel to media websites like CNET.
Some Marvel VFX artists have talked about stressful work environments and excessively long weeks where they worked anywhere from 60-80 hours.
Some have talked about how they cried at their desks and wanted to avoid working on similar projects.
Some have said they worked long, unpaid days for months on end to wrap up projects.
The same projects that make billions of dollars. The same projects the VFX artists get very little recognition for.
Creatives are in high demand across various industries, and yet they’re not given the respect they deserve. They get the short end of the stick in many situations. It’s terrible, insulting and worrying.
Big corporations shouldn’t be so content with writing off artistic minds and treating them with such a small amount of dignity.
Regardless of their skill set, people shouldn’t have to sleep in their offices and get chump change to keep the lights on. People shouldn’t have to worry about their hard work being snapped out of existence. And people shouldn’t have to suffer as much as they do for expressing themselves through their work.
