VFX – A New Frontier: The Impact of Innovative Technology on Visual Effects

Although Visual Effects (VFX) are an increasingly important element of the media content demanded by audiences, of media production (filmmaking and storytelling) and of the media industries, VFX remains a relatively under-research area within academic media or film studies. Innovations in technology are instrumental to the continuous developments in VFX technology, enabling the evolution of storytelling techniques and expanding the boundaries of VFX content and the VFX industries. In particular, a new wave of cutting-edge technologies have contributed to a period of extensive technical and organisational changes in the VFX industry. The implementation of these technologies is occurring during a period of growth in demand for VFX content, ever hight standards of quality (in particular the realism of VFX effects) and resulting demand for VFX workers. Supplying this demand for both greater quantity and quality of VFX content has increased the pressure for VFX production to be as efficient as possible. This has brought pressure on production budgets (to produce more and better content from the same or even diminishing resources) and production timeframes (“turnaround times”). One result of all these changes is that VFX workers now confront a multitude of new challenges.
This study investigates the new technology which is driving or enabling these changes and in particular focuses on the impact of implementing these technologies on VFX production (the VFX workflow). The study collects evidence to show how these new technologies, combined with the broader changes in the industry, are impacting VFX production and labour.
The thesis approaches this research task by use economic and sociological theories of technology, innovation, and production/labour to provide a conceptual framework to use in understanding how these changes are impacting the products produced by the industry and the work experience of VFX professionals.
The next step is to fill in the gaps in knowledge resulting from the relatively under-researched nature of VFX production withing academic media and film studies. The thesis provides a detailed account of the emergence and growth of “the VFX industry”, including historical and current product and process innovations. Rather than defining the object of study in relation to content genres or types of business, the study defines the industry in terms of workers using a common set of tools. This section of the thesis explores the economic and cultural causes of changes in the industry and maps out the qualitative changes in the creativity, job satisfaction and job security/precarity of VFX labour.
The collection of primary data through interviews with industry professionals provides the unique contribution of this study, setting out how VFX work is changing in different content genres, types of business and production roles, at different hierarchical levels.
This study contributes to the field by addressing the need for academic and empirical research in this neglected area of study. The thesis contributes original knowledge on the impact of current technological innovations by providing research based on primary data collected from interviews with the VFX workers impacted by the implementation of the technologies. Potential policy and practical applications of this research include assisting industry professionals in deconstructing the marketing “hype” around these cutting-edge technologies and outlining uncertainties and implications of these technologies, helping them in the complex decision making of evaluating and implementing current innovative technology.