It has been a rough rode for the entertainment industry in 2023, including the VFX industry. Stargate’s Visual Effects Supervisor, Mark Savela, joins Dial the Gate (along with Stargate VFX SupervisorJohn Gajdecki and Hollywood marketing veteran Jenny Stiven) to explore the impact of the Hollywood strikes on his profession and bring light to the dangers that are still to come.

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Articles Presented
VFX Workers Union Reps ► https://iatse.net/vfx-workers-union-representatives-spotlight-industry-issues-in-meeting-with-congressional-labor-caucus/
Jamie Lee Curtis ► https://collider.com/haunted-mansion-ai-acting-jamie-lee-curtis-comments/
AI-Free Stamp ► https://www.screendaily.com/news/justine-bateman-spearheads-stamp-of-approval-for-ai-free-film-and-tv-projects/5184921.article
Barbie 1910s ► https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/27/its-exactly-as-theyd-have-done-it-in-the-1910s-how-barbenheimer-is-leading-the-anti-cgi-backlash

Contact Mark
@marksavela – X / Twitter
Mark Savela – LinkedIn

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
0:58 – Opening Credits
1:40 – Welcome and Episode Outline
3:08 – Welcome, Mark!
5:32 – The VFX Industry Doesn’t Have a Union
9:50 – What can be done to unionize the team?
10:58 – Welcoming Jenny
11:25 – Mark’s Disclaimer
13:35 – Mark’s Perspective on the Industry
15:51 – Burn It Down by Maureen Ryan
17:12 – Jenny’s Questions for Mark
23:08 – Why Didn’t the Unions Approach the VFX People?
26:40 – A Proposed Structure Moving Forward
28:59 – Representation for VFX People
34:30 – Comments from Jamie Lee Curtis
38:30 – Uninformed Opinions of VFX
40:46 – Welcome to John Gajdecki
42:05 – “Assisted Intelligence”
47:01 – Pledging AI-Free Filming
48:57 – We are Very Automated
54:52 – Not Seen as Artists
59:40 – Artificial Background Actors
1:02:00 – Fighting To Be Heard
1:07:05 – A Frustrating Process of Visual Effects
1:10:11 – Fluid Morphing
1:18:35 – People are Keeping Their Heads Down
1:21:38 – Bringing the Conversation to the Table
1:26:51 – VFX Is Woven Through Departments
1:33:07 – Fair Pay
1:36:41 – Thank You, Jenny!
1:37:22 – People-Vetting
1:41:00 – Things Are About to Change
1:43:52 – Not That Many People are Watching
1:46:56 – “I Think I’m Extinct”
1:52:59 – Final Thoughts
1:54:22 – Thank You, Mark and John!
1:55:38 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1::56:41 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Hello everyone, my name is David Read for Dial the Gate, Episode 230 of The Stargate Oral History Project. Mark Savela, visual effects supervisor for Stargate, is joining us in this episode. He released a profound op-ed this past August and I wanna share it here with you first. I don’t expect you to read it right now. If I can get this thing to be properly… Hang on a second here. There. I don’t expect you all to read it now, but I would like, after you have watched this episode, to come back and pause these freeze frames and go through and read this because it is from his heart about what’s going on in this industry. I highly recommend that you read it because it’ll provide you with even more context for what we are going to discuss. Our partner, Jenny Stiven, through Clio Consulting, who is a veteran in the Hollywood industry in marketing, will be joining us momentarily. Jenny is always very insightful. We may have a special guest a little bit later as well. In the meantime, I am privileged to welcome Mark Savela, visual effects supervisor for Stargate, to the show. It’s always a pleasure to have you, sir. How you doing?

Mark Savela:
I’m doing well, thank you, David. It’s always fun being here. I love our talks; I love our conversations. Today’s gonna be a little different, I think.

David Read:
Can you tell us what life has been like for you and your colleagues this year?

Mark Savela:
It’s been a strange, strange year with the strike. A lot of people started to be affected around January of last year because people were prepping for the strikes even then. How supervisors work? Usually get on a job very early in pre-production. I know a lot of people who haven’t worked for 8, 9, 10 months and it’s getting pretty dire out there. There’s a lot of companies that are going under. There’s a lot of people who have left the industry. There’s a lot of stories of people completely having so much anxiety from what’s going on. No sleep, worrying about their families, everything else. The biggest thing for us is there’s been no voice; there’s been nobody to actually tell our stories. That’s why I thank you for giving us this platform today to one of the best fandom groups ever. I thank all the people out there for listening to me, and usually, like I said to you before, it’s very conversational what we do. I think we’re gonna do it a little differently ’cause I’ve done notes all day, which I’ve never done for an interview. I’ve printed out stuff and I’m trying to do as much research as I can to be as accurate as I can be.

David Read:
Absolutely. I wanna state off the bat, the visual effects industry doesn’t have a union. Is that correct?

Mark Savela:
No. There are people that are unionizing different facets. There are people that are in unions, but it’s one of the things that’s so hard to organize because of the way artists, supervisors, everything works. Where artists work for companies, vendors, who do work for the studios, or they work for the studios directly, or they’re independent. Supervisors, it’s the same thing. We’re freelance, some work for vendors, some work directly for the studios. We’ve been batting solutions around and it’s so complicated how it works and you have to have everybody on the same page. This’ll be a recurring theme in my talk; there’s so much misinformation out there about what is happening. In the trades it says, “Marvel VFX artists have unionized,” and you later learn that it’s a group of on-set people, it’s not all the artists. Everybody outside of our industry who reads the trades goes, “Oh, all of Marvel visual effects is unionized now.” That’s not the case. It’s a small group of people; it’s about 50 or so who were on set. A lot of on-set people and a lot of data wranglers and such, they’re the ones who have unionized. It’s really not funny in a way, but as far as I know, the unions don’t want supervisors. It’ll be the only division in a movie, say a Marvel movie comes back, where the head of the department is gonna be non-union and everybody underneath them will be union, which will be really bizarre because that doesn’t happen anywhere else in any department in the film industry. Unions are important because they actually keep things where non-union people like myself, if you’re on set, you don’t get a meal penalty, you don’t get overtime. You don’t get something which is called a turnaround, which is the amount of time from when you wrap to when you work the next day. I’ve been on numerous shows where I’ve worked till 5:00, 6:00 in the morning and then they have a production meeting or a visual effects meeting at 9:00 in the morning. You’re expected to be there because you have no turnaround. Where if other heads of departments were on set, they would absolutely push that meeting because they’d be paying overtime. It’s a little different for us. I really hope the artists get together and join some union, get some representation. That has been so lacking during the strike, where again, there’s been no voice. We don’t have an A-lister per se, like a Clooney. We don’t get our lunches bought for us by Drew Carey. We don’t have funds in a union that help out, so we’ve been left totally unprotected through this whole thing. I think that’s why it has been so hard on everyone.

David Read:
Let’s go ahead and bring Jenny in. Jenny, can you hear me? She’s left. OK. I apologize, Mark. Let me go ahead and reach out to her. What can be done in order to unionize the team?

Mark Savela:
That is the biggest challenge, I think. Companies have to be involved because if you’re a unionized artist working for a production, it’d be different than a unionized artist working for a vendor that works for a production. It gets really complicated, but I think everybody has to be on the same page. If you go on any of the threads inside of the visual effects realm, there’s a lot of different conversations and a lot of different opinions. It’s gonna be tough, but I think people can do it. I’m hoping they can do it. There’s Jenny. Is that right?

Jenny Stiven:
Hi, Mark.

Mark Savela:
Jenny, how are you?

Jenny Stiven:
I’m doing good. How are you?

Mark Savela:
I’m great, thanks.

David Read:
Jenny, can you turn your camera sideways for me?

Jenny Stiven:
Sure.

David Read:
Thank you.

Mark Savela:
Woo-hoo. There we go, see.

David Read:
There we go.

Jenny Stiven:
Sorry. Not to scare everybody.

David Read:
No, you’re perfect.

Jenny Stiven:
I’m probably gonna put it on top of a book though. Hold on.

David Read:
OK. Go ahead, Mark.

Mark Savela:
Now that you’re here, Jenny, I know I come here only once in a while, but I would like to get a little bit of housekeeping out of the way, if you don’t mind. First is a disclaimer. I feel I have to say that anything I’m gonna talk about are my opinions, my opinions only. It’s based on my knowledge of people that I’ve spoken to. It’s based on stories that I’ve been involved with. I don’t want anybody to take it as complete truth because these are my opinions. I tend to generalize a lot and I notice that in my speech. When I say “nobody gives visual effects any respect,” it doesn’t mean everyone. I know a lot of producers, I know a lot of directors who are wonderful people who have great respect for the visual effects industry, studio executives. I only think that there’s enough people to start a dialogue about it. Again, thank you for this platform because I feel myself and a few supervisors out there who have been doing it as well have been screaming into the abyss for months now, getting crickets. That’s where we’ve been. There’s so much misinformation out there and so many people, even with the trades, are printing stuff that doesn’t make any sense. We’re trying to start a conversation about it, going, “Hey, we think this is wrong. Let’s talk about it.” People will give us crickets, won’t even get back to us about stuff. That is my disclaimer. I have a little PSA, if you don’t mind indulging me for one second. I was at a concert a couple of weeks ago and I was out with a friend of mine who I haven’t seen in five years. We were going out to a concert. We had a restaurant beforehand and he sat down. As soon as he got there, he goes, “Hey, man, how are you?” I was gonna go stock right away and I was gonna go, “Things are tough all over,” whatever. To know me, you look under the definition of Gen X and you see my picture, because I was closed, drinking, feeling-suppressing, latchkey kid, and I decided to go against stock. I went, “Yeah, man, things have been really shitty this year. There’s been health problems, there’s been family emergencies, there’s been this and that,” and I went off to list all these things. This is a guy who does Ironmans and used to do triathlons and stuff like that. He said, “That’s the same as me. I’ve been feeling like shit all this time.” The biggest thing I have to say is talk to people because you don’t have to shoulder everything alone. If there’s nobody out there for you, when you try to, like I told David, put all my socials down there, reach out to me, anybody, because you’re not alone. Even though you feel like you need to do it alone sometimes. When you open your mouth, people feel exactly the same way, and you go, “Oh my God. That’s crazy.”

Jenny Stiven:
And you’re amazed.

Mark Savela:
Yeah, totally. You think you’re storming through it by yourself. Speak to somebody; it makes all the difference in the world. That is PSA. I’ve always been threatening to write a book and one day I’ll come on here and plug one. Today, I’m gonna plug somebody else’s book. Everybody who’s in here, in the industry or not, should read this book.

Jenny Stiven:
It’s so good.

Mark Savela:
Burn It Down.

David Read:
I’ve been hearing all about it.

Jenny Stiven:
It’s so good. I keep dog-earing pages, “Oh, I’m gonna call my friend and talk about this one.” Everything in there, you keep going, “Amen. That.” Every single chapter.

Mark Savela:
Mo helped me out with a few issues when she was writing the book. She’s been somebody I tend to lean on sometimes with advice and stuff.

Jenny Stiven:
I didn’t know you knew her. That’s so cool.

Mark Savela:
She’s great. She’s amazing. Super courageous woman to write what she did and all throughout her career to actually unravel the scandals that she has as well. If you’re in the industry or not, read Burn It Down by Maureen Ryan. It’s amazing.

David Read:
Jenny, do you have any questions for John before he starts going into the subjects that he wants to cover?

Mark Savela:
Or I could be Mark, too.

David Read:
Mark. John’s coming in a little bit. Sorry. I’m talking with a John right now. I apologize, Mark.

Jenny Stiven:
Me?

David Read:
Yes.

Jenny Stiven:
Were you asking me?

David Read:
Yeah.

Jenny Stiven:
So, Mark, I saw that yesterday or Thursday, a Marvel VFX editor and two representatives from IATSE went and met with a Congressional Labor Caucus. I was intrigued by that. What was very intriguing was two things. There’s no Republicans on that committee, which means they wouldn’t get anything out of committee, unfortunately. It’s all Democrats. Secondly, considering what’s going on in the industry and United Auto Workers and Starbucks, what do you think the place of government can or should be? Those are two separate questions. What should it be and what can it be?

David Read:
Jenny, I’m losing you real bad, just so you know. The connection’s really bad.

Jenny Stiven:
Seriously?

David Read:
Yeah.

Jenny Stiven:
I don’t know what’s going on today. Here, let me move into the other room. Did you hear the last part of my question?

Mark Savela:
About what government should be something.

Jenny Stiven:
What do you think government can or should be doing when it comes to unionizing in the entertainment industry and the United Auto Workers, whatever we’re talking about?

Mark Savela:
I don’t know. Is it a government thing? I don’t know if they should stay out of it or not. I feel when the government, whether it be in America or Canada, gets involved in something, it goes out of the control of the people, of the artists working. We have a thing called the Visual Effects Society and I’ve seen lots of things lately where all the people on the board are agents. Somebody was writing this yesterday and I didn’t go in and research that because I wasn’t gonna talk about that. They said everybody is now the agents and everybody else on the board, and the artists are no longer on a board.

Jenny Stiven:
I read that too. I didn’t know that essentially the artists are no longer represented to a large degree.

Mark Savela:
The biggest thing for me, like I said, another recurring theme, is we don’t have a voice. The VES, I think, should’ve said something during this time and they’ve been really quiet. They haven’t said much. I found this out a couple of days ago as well, that there are over 4,500 members of the VES. I think the number is there’s only been 42 members ever that have been granted permission to use the VES after their names on a credit. It was said to me because 20 years ago the VES decided that the studios might get mad or something. You have to get permission to put VES after your name, like PGA or whatever. I found that completely amazingly unreal. It goes back to the origins of our industry, our forefathers were amazing people like Dykstra and Muren, everybody else. They were business people and nobody had the forward thinking to what it would become. The industry itself never got organized from the get-go. We never thought about residuals, we never thought about anything like that. It was like, “We’re happy that we’re invited to the party. We’re doing this.” Now it comes to this point where we have no representation. We are the backbone of the industry; we don’t have the respect or the voice that we deserve. It is a huge problem and it all started from the origins, because you can’t go now, “Hey, we want residuals.” You look at a show where you create and sometimes direct, let’s say a TV show or whatever, a certain amount, like a third of the content, if it’s all CG, if it’s space battles or whatever, and you don’t get residuals for that. You’re creating a third of the show. You can’t go back in time and say, “Hey, we’re gonna get residuals now.” It won’t happen; that ship has sailed. You can certainly blame our forefathers. I’m sorry, but you can.

Jenny Stiven:
There was no thinking about it, obviously. When you think about Dykstra, when you think about all of the ILM guys and you think of everybody that was working in small VFX firms as well, not the big guys, but the ones that are in those small firms and small agencies and small production companies that never saw the light of day. They got no light shine on them at all. This is my other question for you: It would never have occurred to them because, to your point, they’re thinking, “OK, this is what I’m doing. Isn’t this cool that the industry has developed, that I get to do this? Holy cow, I get to be part of this amazing film.” I’m part of IATSE, but I got kicked out of IATSE because when I became more digital and I was all digital content production, they basically told me, “This isn’t pertinent to what we do. It doesn’t work, so we’re gonna let your membership lapse.” So, in digital content and digital content production and digital marketing, we got nothing. I could try to be part of the Producers Guild, so I get screeners. Yay. I think that what my question for you guys would be, why didn’t the unions come to you guys? You think as a business, a union is always looking for more membership. Why didn’t they come to you guys and say, “Holy cow, there are 5,000 to 10,000 members that we could have like that.”

Mark Savela:
They did years ago. There was a quite historic event that happened where there was an in-house department, a visual effects department, that wasn’t being treated well, the artists. It was not the Stargate in-house department. They worked on set, on location on the lot, they were very vocal about how they were being treated. IA came in and they started recruiting their members.

Jenny Stiven:
I didn’t know that.

Mark Savela:
No, totally. IA has here, and I think it’s 891, to your point, which I don’t think is the right union to be in for visual effects, but they have the biggest number of members. They set up a kind of visual effects division within 891 and recruited people to join. It’s artists and on-set people and I still don’t think they wanted supervisors. We’re always left in the dark too.

Jenny Stiven:
Always. The Disney guys just voted the same thing as Marvel. To John’s point just now, the structure that was offered doesn’t fit what VFX artists and supervisors and post-production editors and all, it doesn’t fit. So, is there a proposed infrastructure that has been…?

Mark Savela:
I don’t know if anything has been proposed, but I hope that there is. I think it was right before you got on, when it was reported in the trades “Marvel visual effects artists are gonna go union.” That wasn’t entirely true because it wasn’t the actual artists, it was a lot of the data wranglers and on-set people who were looking to become union. They’re a lot easier to structure, I think, than the artists are because that goes more like a set working as opposed to the artists’ way of working, which I was telling David beforehand, I think, is artists work in so many different ways. They work freelance, they work as an employee of a vendor, as an employee of the studio, as a freelancer of the studio. There are so many complicated things to try and work out before it becomes global or universal. I hope it does because people need a voice and without it everybody’s gonna be abused and disrespected like we are right now.

Jenny Stiven:
The polarization and the separation between the haves and the have-nots becomes wider and wider and wider. There is no bridge, unfortunately. That brings up my last question for both you and John, is that I do a lot of research about it and I have friends in the VFX who are artists in the industry, some who are supervisors. Who would be leaders or voices that I should be following, that I should be paying attention to? I saw on your, or was it your Facebook or the article about the congressional meeting, there was a vfxunion.org link. Are there voices, people, leaders that we should be paying attention to that are pounding the drum?

Mark Savela:
It is one of the things that is not lacking as well, but an actual representative, I don’t know if there is one. There was one guy from Marvel. Geez, I forget his name. I’ll look it up and I’ll make sure it’s included somewhere, but he seemed to be really on the ball about what was going on and I think he might have been a data wrangler. He might have been something else. I’m not sure. He was an on-set supervisor. He really seemed like he was on the ball and he’s one of the guys who organized within Marvel itself.

Jenny Stiven:
Got it. Great.

Mark Savela:
Apart from that, there are a lot of supervisors like myself and different people and I don’t wanna bring their names up now, but there’s a lot of people with many opinions but don’t have an official voice. They’re amazing. There’s such knowledge and everything else and I feel bad that I’m the one speaking to all of this because there’s a lot…

Jenny Stiven:
Don’t feel bad, Mark. This is amazing. The Stargate fandom, Dial the Gate’s fandom, recognizes who you are, recognizes your name. Being the person who gets that message out to this extremely active fandom, who can then elevate and hopefully leverage voices, hot damn, I think it’s awesome that you’re doing this. I think it’s fantastic.

Mark Savela:
I so appreciate the platform because, as with the op-ed as well, I took that out to certain places and people got it. People were like, “Wow, this is amazing. This is so great.” My publication, it wouldn’t be the thing that they would do, I know that. They would send me to other people and I’d send it to other editors at certain places and they’d go, “Wow, this is great. I’m gonna do an article, maybe something later.” I would give them names of other supervisors: “Go interview these people as well.” They would say, “Something else has come up.” I don’t know, SAG isn’t letting people wear Halloween costumes or whatever, so they’ll push it for whatever the story is. I felt bad. I’d be hounding these people, going, “Come on, you have to let this group of people…” I’ve seen stories about almost every other department in the film industry except for one of the largest, which is visual effects. I felt bad for hounding people. It’s something I’m really passionate about, is giving people a voice.

Jenny Stiven:
It’s your purpose right now. Mark, this is not new, right?

Mark Savela:
No.

Jenny Stiven:
I was at Fox when the Blue Sky Animation insanity and tragedy was happening and I was working with Digital Domain when that was really bad. It’s not like this is new. To have somebody like yourself being able to elevate, and John, to elevate the message, to get it out there, because this is a window of opportunity where people are paying attention to unionization, to workers’ rights. Sometimes you worry about the white noise. Can it be heard? I genuinely believe this is a window of opportunity where it isn’t VFX artists, writers, supervisors hooking their wagon on something at the last minute. It’s an opportunity to do what you’ve done, which is give history. Show why this is important. That this is not a new thing.

Mark Savela:
We’re trying to give it some media attention or some attention at all. Somebody said to me months ago, “You don’t have a seat at the table with WGA and SAG.” I was like, “We don’t want a seat at the table.” The biggest thing about it is they are the ones who have dragged us into some of the fight. It segues into our next topic. I have a new segment for Dial the Gate called Hot Topic.

David Read:
Do you mind if I bring in John Gajdecki to add his voice while you discuss this?

Mark Savela:
Sure.

David Read:
Is that all right?

Mark Savela:
Yeah, totally.

David Read:
OK. Let me go ahead and bring John in so he can provide some thoughts as well. John, I’m gonna ask you to start your video. Can you hear me, John?

John Gajdecki:
I can hear you. Can you hear me?

David Read:
Yes, sir.

John Gajdecki:
When you killed my video, it permanently trashed it. Do you want to log in again?

David Read:
Yes, go ahead. I’m sorry, Mark. Can you go ahead and start?

Mark Savela:
OK. So, this Hot Topic, which we’ll come up with a graphic for so they can flash it on the screen. It brings us to currently and during the strike, there’s a huge visual-effects backlash and villainization for some reason all of a sudden. People who said, “There’s no or very little visual effects or CG in Barbie, or none in Oppenheimer.” It all started with Top Gun 2, which is insane. I don’t understand it. People have grouped together AI with VFX and CG for some reason. Anything that comes from the computer is now AI and visual effects are evil. I don’t understand that, I don’t get it. Nobody seems to get it and nobody wants to be informed by it. So, brings us to our first piece of paper. An Oscar-winning actress once said in June on movieweb.com, “The visual effects level is all technology. Once you know how to do that, it’s science. The performing part is not science, which is why AI will never work, because emotions are real and they come from human beings. They don’t come from machines. So, to watch beautiful actors do that kind of work under those circumstances is something very impressive to me.” I don’t understand any of that. That was Jamie Lee Curtis. Which is a hugely uninformed statement. You’re mixing up visual effects with AI. You’re calling visual effects people not artists because it’s all technology at that part. I don’t know what the point of saying that is when there’s a strike going on, when everybody’s talking about unity. Why put a part of the industry out there and bash and disrespect them? There’s a reason why 97% of people in our industry have artist after their name. They’re visual effects artists and everybody’s calling us non-artists and non-filmmakers. You’re going, “I don’t understand that at all.” People have reached out to her and her people, and I know people that have, and said, “Let’s have a conversation about what was said.” We get crickets. David, you’re on mute.

David Read:
Me?

Mark Savela:
Yeah.

David Read:
Uh-oh.

Mark Savela:
You just got off. Nope, you’re good now.

David Read:
I heard.

Jenny Stiven:
You’re good now.

David Read:
You can hear me?

Mark Savela:
Good now.

David Read:
OK, that was weird. Sorry, guys.

Mark Savela:
On to the next one. That’s a lot to unpack, what she had to say, and it got a lot of people mad, rightfully so. A lot of artists were like, “What the hell is that?”

Jenny Stiven:
I am gobsmacked at the number of actors and actresses whose opinions of VFX, let alone practical effects, stunt work, production assistance, it stops at what they do.

Mark Savela:
Totally.

Jenny Stiven:
There’s those four above-the-line people that they know, I’m not saying that this is all actors and actresses, to your disclaimer at the beginning. There are many who are very aware of VFX and pay attention. No offense to Jamie Lee Curtis, but I do think there is a generational gap there. A lot of younger actors and actresses that I work with are very keenly aware.

Mark Savela:
She must have watched the movie that she got her Oscar for, where I think they had seven visual effects artists, eight, and two directors. They did a lot of work and a lot of artistry went into that, which helped gain traction for that movie, I believe. To not even see that at the end of the day, what kind of passion they must have had to make this movie. Somebody actually messaged me when I posted the thing that Jamie Lee Curtis said and said, “She should know the literal thousands of man-hours that went into mocap tracking her head into that crystal ball in Haunted Mansion.” You shouldn’t be talking about it if you don’t have a clue. I’m bummed about what I’m saying.

David Read:
I have also invited John Gajdecki, visual effects supervisor, Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, to come in as well and provide a little bit more context. John, do you have any thoughts at this point?

John Gajdecki:
The one thing I was gonna say is I have not found that many actors. They don’t necessarily understand what we do, but there haven’t been that many people, in fairness to you guys, I don’t know what Jamie Lee Curtis said. I don’t know when she said it, but it sounds controversial.

Mark Savela:
It was mixing up visual effects and AI and pitting acting and the emotions against visual effects, which is stupid.

John Gajdecki:
The AI thing is gonna cause trouble that way. I was in a meeting the other day and the producers are like, “OK, we’ve gotta AI this. We’ve gotta AI this shot.” They’re hoping it’s gonna save them money and make it better and obviously deliver the show before we start.

Mark Savela:
Thank God you had Hewlett and Mika on yesterday. I was so happy about that, David. Every time Hewlett said “machine learning,” I actually got goosebumps because I hate the term AI. There’s no such thing as artificial intelligence. I know people within the industry, not our industry, but that industry, they actually prefer the term assisted intelligence, where you are the intelligence and it assists you, and it’s only ever as smart as the human telling it what to do. That’s the reality.

David Read:
It’s more appropriate too.

Mark Savela:
Where artificial intelligence, there’s always gonna be a human doing the prompts; telling it what to do. Everybody hears it and they go, “Oh my God, Terminator.”

Jenny Stiven:
It’s an umbrella term. It is such an umbrella term that has been adapted to apply to a multitude of aspects, just like VFX, frankly. It really is a parent description of so many jobs, so many different things that artists do in your industry.

Mark Savela:
Even visual effects, people get confused with CGI, CG, VFX, and then blend all those terms together and say, “Looks like CGI.” I’ve had directors say that to me and you go, “What does that even mean? What are you talking about?”

David Read:
Are you saying it looks fake? Are you saying that it doesn’t look photoreal? Is that what you’re saying?

Mark Savela:
Come up with a better description to tell me that it doesn’t look right, but “This looks CGI” is insane.

Jenny Stiven:
What I just thought of, John, to your point with your meeting that you had, and Mark, with the commentary that Jamie Lee Curtis had, so much of this is awareness and education. People don’t know.

John Gajdecki:
What’d you say, Mark? You got cut off. What’d you say?

Mark Savela:
Nobody wants to be educated. It was one thing that I was saying about Hewlett: if Hewlett was somehow involved in the talks with the strike, I think things would resolve much more quickly because he actually wants to learn about things. You can tell that and he’s very smart. Other people, they put their foot down and they say, “AI is bad and visual effects is bad ’cause it’s associated with AI.” You go, “Let’s have a conversation about that.” They won’t get back to you, ever. We’ve tried and tried and tried.

Jenny Stiven:
This is why this is good then, because if it’s not gonna work from the top down, then let’s do it from – and this is no offense to fandom since this is what I do – but from the bottom up. If they’re not gonna want to be educated, and Mark, to your point earlier, it’s crickets, or John, to your point, probably every meeting you’re having is like that, there’s a whole generation that does wanna learn. They are fascinated by it. They have been literally born into video games, born into movies that are, Mark, to your point, 50% VFX. That’s why this show is important, so that the people who are going to these movies, who are watching these series, who are playing the video games, they understand the work that goes into it.

John Gajdecki:
This is an industry and we work in it. Mark, you and I, we’ve been working together for 35 years now; we go way back. We used to be a little bit younger. Jenny, I’m sure you’re the same. We’ve all been at this for a really long time. There’s always gonna be some people who wanna know and I love those people; they’re my favorite. There’s always gonna be some people for which they’re pouring money into a funnel and we give them the results that they want. We work with both types and I’m really happy to work with both because that’s the gig.

Mark Savela:
It is true, but I find when you’re in the middle of the strike and you’re disrespecting a portion of the industry, it doesn’t make sense to me. Which brings me to my second article. Screen Daily reported that my second favorite Keaton, Justine Bateman, has just come out with a – it’s called the Credo 23 stamp – and it’s put onto some movies. The Credo 23 stamp: filmmakers must apply and pledge that AI was not used in the making of the film in any way. Minimal CGI and VFX were used, only to fix minor flaws or to create minor effects.

John Gajdecki:
Weird.

Mark Savela:
Myself and a lot of supervisors have reached out to Justine Bateman and go, “It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Let’s have a conversation about it. Why are you saying minimal visual effects? No AI at all? So, are you gonna go back to neg cutting? How do you pledge that?” I just worked on a movie that was the Michael J. Fox documentary and Justine Bateman was in archival footage. We had over 100 visual-effect shots in it. You’ve got a documentary movie and they wouldn’t get the stamp because there were 80 to 100 shots in it?

John Gajdecki:
I think you can take it further, Mark. AI is probably helping them drive their cars. Better stamp their car too.

Mark Savela:
Can’t have transport on set.

John Gajdecki:
Pull all the chips out.

David Read:
This is a reflection of the lack of thoughtfulness about how much our society is automated. There are simply tasks that we have handed over to machines for years now that handle things so that we don’t have to. There are autonomic systems at play.

John Gajdecki:
Like steam engines! We’ve been handing those tasks over to machines and in the process, of course, eliminating entire job categories. I think that’s the fear we’re living through now. We’re going through another really significant revolution, we’re just starting. What’s the saying? Be thankful to be living in interesting times. We’re right at the start of something really significant.

David Read:
Like a steam engine, you’re not gonna stop this thing. We can probably adjust the course, but whatever this is that we’re giving birth to is gonna come to pass. All of our worst fears and concerns are gonna be entertained in some fashion.

Mark Savela:
Going back to your conversation before, Jenny. The auto workers and people like auto workers are really upset by electric cars and somebody went in and go, “You’re probably not gonna see a lot of job loss,” because there’s the battery production, there’s sort of different aspects of it.

John Gajdecki:
We’re still making cars.

Mark Savela:
Different aspects of it. You’re not doing it this way, you’re branching off.

Jenny Stiven:
The United Auto Workers shifted their directive in the past two weeks to talk more about the obvious things that are true across the board, which is the minimum wages, the number of hours you work, the pension funds, the healthcare. It doesn’t matter what you’re making at that point; those are important no matter what. I think where the WGA and where SAG is running into the same problem as the WGA ran into, is that these are pretty basic asks. What VFX unions want are incredibly basic asks. These are things that when given the opportunity, not just AMPTP, ’cause I think that it’s so much broader than that. That they could have done this proactively and they chose not to. Now they’re gonna be faced with a much, much, much more expensive way to deal with this than if they had done this proactively in the first place. You’d think this lesson would be learned, John, to your point, with the Industrial Revolution, because we’ve been here before many, many, many times. I just don’t understand not learning the lesson.

Mark Savela:
There is a big difference right now with this strike than other strikes. You’re not dealing with the Brothers Warner. You’re not dealing with people who appreciate the product. You’re dealing with tech companies that call television content.

Jenny Stiven:
You’re right. That is the shift, that is the huge shift. John, I think you said something that David and I talk about a lot, that is, we haven’t really even entered the change that’s gonna happen. People think that this is it. I talk to people who think, “It’s happened. Post-COVID, it’s happened. The technology shift, the change, the tectonic plate shift,” and I’m thinking, oh my God, are you so not prepared.

John Gajdecki:
Young people are. My daughter is going to Emily Carr. She’s going to art school here in Vancouver.

Jenny Stiven:
Sweet.

John Gajdecki:
She tried Nova Scotia first, but she ended up here in Vancouver. I did my best not to push her, ’cause if I push her, then she wouldn’t go anyway.

Jenny Stiven:
No, definitely not.

John Gajdecki:
She loves it. She’s going to school and she’s loving it, but she’s afraid of AI. Her friends are afraid of AI. They’re wondering if they’re studying something that won’t matter. It’s a real concern and we talk about it. We sit down and watch a Tom Hanks movie and then we talk about it. It’s what Mark said earlier; there’s always a person at the helm, at least there is now. Although, I swear some news articles I read, they have that repetitive thing that AI does. No one’s writing that shit. Somebody’s slapping an invoice on it as it goes out the door. I think we’re gonna see both models. I was gonna say there will be a person at the top collecting the invoice, but quite frankly, will there be a world where there’s an AI entity at the top collecting the invoice?

David Read:
That’s the larger question.

John Gajdecki:
I bet you it’s gonna happen in some fashion.

Jenny Stiven:
Then the revolution will happen and then we’ll start over.

John Gajdecki:
What is it they said? Mars is the only planet right now entirely populated by robots?

Jenny Stiven:
I’ve not heard that. That’s awesome. I love that.

Mark Savela:
Going back to the personal issue about it all – to call visual effects artists and supervisors and everybody not seeing us as filmmakers, as colorists and not as artists. The amount of film knowledge you have to have to do what we do, the compositional knowledge, the blocking knowledge, the color theory knowledge, everything, pacing, everything about film – but you’re making a blanket statement that we’re not artists or we’re not filmmakers.

David Read:
That’s cold.

Mark Savela:
I think it’s absolutely crazy.

Jenny Stiven:
It is.

John Gajdecki:
I think it’s deliberate. It’s a negotiating strategy. What’s the saying? You don’t get what you deserve, you get what they negotiate. They’re setting the marker point now at a low bar. The union did the same thing. Remember when they tried to unionize VFX here in Vancouver? The structure that they set up really didn’t use the word artist anywhere. It was all technicians. The other mistake that they made is they assumed that when you’re on set…Mark, when I’m on set, we spend 12 hours, 13 hours, 14 hours, 16 hours, whatever fun thing is heading down the pipe for us. We walk around and we talk to people. We go to craft service. We do this. We’ll blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You pass the time. You work X number of hours. Artists sit at their boxes for eight hours straight and it fries your brain, but the union wanted them to work 12, ’cause we work 12 on set.

Mark Savela:
It was because of that parallel.

John Gajdecki:
They didn’t understand. They tried to understand. They used to talk to me all the time. They would call me every week and one day I said, “What’s in it for me?” Which I don’t normally say. They said, “Nothing really.” So I said, “Don’t call me anymore.” I’ll wrap this up. I wish the union had succeeded in some ways. One of the benefits for me as a provider of visual effects services is I could call the union and say, “Send me three roto artists, a matte painter like Claude and five guys who can use Nuke.” They would show up in the morning. They can’t do that. Trying to sell their idea to 20-year-olds who don’t want healthcare, they need to figure out a strategy for making this work. It would benefit the workers and it would benefit the productions and it would even benefit the tech companies.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s why this is this window of opportunity. If you’re gonna convince that generation that, ’cause I’m Gen X, so if you’re gonna convince Millennials and Gen Zs, Millennials in particular right now, if you’re gonna convince them, then you have to be able to say to them, “Here’s why it’s important to you and you’re seeing it across the board.” The beauty of this window of opportunity is you don’t necessarily have to repeat the points that have already been hammered home by WGA, SAG, UAW, Starbucks. These are very, going back to the basics, very basic points that have been all over every bit of media, every social, everything that they’re getting their news from. There are TikTok accounts dedicated to explaining this. VFX has an enormous following on TikTok and there are three influencers in particular who do a phenomenal job of explaining what the hell is going on. I think that connection has to happen between you guys, the leaders that are our age, and those leaders, those influencers, and needs to be that coalition. Just like you’re looking at migrant workers and farmers’ unions who are putting together their leaders who are going after the younger generation, because the younger generation either says, “What do I care about?” Fill in the blank, or, “I don’t get it. I don’t understand. What are you upset about?” That’s education. That’s awareness and right now the awareness is probably the most I’ve seen in my lifetime.

Mark Savela:
At the same time, people are the most misinformed by the trades and other places. Which brings me to another point. Don’t know if anybody saw the article, but it went around our circles last week where Disney+ released a movie called Prom.

David Read:
What was the movie called?

Mark Savela:
The headline, I forget who had the headline, but the headline was Creepy AI-Generated Background Actors Freak Out People Watching Prom.

David Read:
This was crazy. This was bizarre.

Mark Savela:
But those weren’t AI-generated. They were stock models that somebody put in. They weren’t anything AI-generated about that but the trades said, “These are AI-generated background actors.” No background actors, I guarantee you, were scanned for that movie. No background actors had any likeness to what was used. I guarantee you that, because they are stock models in one of the software systems. It was a huge headline: AI-generated background actors and this is part of the fight that’s going on about the use of the actors’ images and whatnot and background actor. On every show I’ve done, we scan the main cast all the time because you’re gonna have to do a stunt, you’re gonna have to do a wide… something that’s impossible for the actors to do. So, are we gonna hit actors with cars now? For real? Is there no more stunts? What do we do?

John Gajdecki:
We used to do that. I’ve watched actors be carried off set in stretchers because the stunt went wrong. That doesn’t happen so much anymore because visual effects is there to provide the service.

Jenny Stiven:
The alternative, exactly.

Mark Savela:
That kind of light on this conversation, but again, nobody wants to hear from us, which doesn’t make any sense.

John Gajdecki:
No, it makes a lot of sense, because it allows them to frame the conversation, get the results that they want in their negotiations.

Mark Savela:
Totally.

Jenny Stiven:
Nobody ever wants to hear from the worker bee.

Mark Savela:
Absolutely not. Absolutely.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s what you guys are doing, that is the difference. Mark, I genuinely believe there is a difference, that you aren’t shouting into the void right now.

Mark Savela:
But at the same time, I always thought there were fact-checkers at trade magazines.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s a whole different thing. You know that. Unfortunately, that’s a Rubicon we crossed. I think that it’s up to us as fans, as readers, as film geeks, movie geeks, series geeks, sci-fi geeks, it’s up to us to be responsible and find the information. It’s up to us as experts in our field to make sure that we are as adamant as possible, as responsible as possible to get the word out. That’s what you guys are doing. David, you are doing this with Dial the Gate. Mark, you’re doing it with your op-eds. John, you’re doing it in the industry itself. You’re literally having these meetings doing this, trying to make sure that the right information is what they walk away with. My husband’s a teacher and David knows this. Every April, my husband is frustrated and tired and convinced that nobody in the class is learning anything and they’re all gonna hate him. It’s every April. I keep telling him what he told me and I remind him every April. He teaches high school history, “if one kid walks out of there having heard you and goes to college or goes into a trade and learned from you, then you’ve done your job.” John, if one exec, or even better, one PA walks out of that meeting and has learned from what you’ve said, then you’ve done an amazing job to get that message. Mark, if you get one person who read Facebook who didn’t know about what was going on and read your op-ed, hot shit, that means you’ve reached someone who didn’t know it. I genuinely believe this. OK, I’ll get off my soapbox now.

Mark Savela:
I think you’re right. There’s a lot of people who’ve called me, producers and whatnot, who have said to me that what you’re doing is really resonating with people within the industry, which I think is more important because I hope people will be more vocal about things and try harder. It’s been quite exhausting doing it and trying to hound certain people and whatnot and try and get a message out there. I want to go back to the Jamie Lee Curtis thing just for one second because you struck my memory about something. I went to friends of mine who are SAG members and showed them what Jamie Lee Curtis had said. I showed maybe 10 people and two people got back to me and they go, “That’s horrendous. That’s a terrible thing, what she’s saying. She’s really misinformed,” and whatnot. But crickets, didn’t even get back to me, who are friends of mine. I hounded them and I said, “Really? You don’t have an opinion about this?” One answer that I got back was, “Well, I didn’t say it, did I?”

David Read:
Wow.

Mark Savela:
“Really? Wow, you’re so afraid of having a voice against,” in her union at the time.

Jenny Stiven:
A powerful person.

Mark Savela:
Two will meet up again they’ll say, “Oh, you said what I said was bad or something.”

John Gajdecki:
Did you say, Mark, that 2 out of 10 got back to you?

Mark Savela:
Yeah.

John Gajdecki:
That’s the 80/20 rule, remember? 20% of the people do 80% of the work. You found the two that are gonna do it. The other people can be friends all day long, they’re not gonna help you.

David Read:
People are terrified because the taller blades of the grass are the first ones to get tacked by the lawnmower.

Mark Savela:
Which is why speaking out like this and trying to not expose, but bring people into the reality of what we’re going through may not be a popular way to go. To bring up the way visual effects works – John will love this because post is entirely like this – There’s a really popular analogy amongst vendors, owners of companies and artists, and the way they work with producers is, the analogy is you compare it to painting your house. You want your house painted. Your house painters go, “OK, it’ll take two weeks. Here’s the swatches. Look at the swatches.” All approved, everything else. Paint the house and then the people come back and go, “Well, now that it’s in the sun, I don’t really like that color.” “I want it blue, but now you have two days to do it and I’m not gonna pay you any more to do it.”

Jenny Stiven:
It’s perfect. That’s exactly what it is. It’s what you guys go through.

John Gajdecki:
I think that’s a really good metaphor. Can’t prove anything by metaphor, but it’s pretty close. But from the business owner point of view, and I’m not as blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, we know that’s gonna happen.

Mark Savela:
Totally.

John Gajdecki:
We mitigate it. If you don’t get right in front of that shit, it’s gonna knock you down. I’ve been knocked down several times.

David Read:
Why don’t visual effects people say, “No, I need more money now. That’s not what you asked for. I need more money.” Is the fear that they’re gonna go somewhere else?

John Gajdecki:
That’s one. I’m doing this right now. I have some budgets out and I’m waiting for the response. The budget I sent the other day: “Well, this is too high,” so I’ve got a new one and now you wait. Yes, they can go somewhere else, so then it’s, as you all know, as Mark knows, are we enough of a draw, are we good enough artists to warrant that in their eyes? In some producers you are and in some producers you aren’t. Like everything else in life, you get in with a group of people. When I was doing Stargate, Brad and Jonathan, and then Brad and Robert, we worked together on all these shows. You reach a point with every group where you go separate ways. Sometimes your schedules fall out of sync, whatever it is. Sometimes they’re on a project, you’re too expensive, or they’re on a project and you’re not expensive enough. We all move our own, and it’s, “Well, that was fun. See you next time maybe.” The funny thing is, and I’ll wrap up very, very quickly, you can go 20 years without seeing them and then you see them the next show and we all know these phenomena, you pick up right where you were.

Mark Savela:
The time void.

John Gajdecki:
Really. Where does it go? ‘Cause it doesn’t come back… as far as I can tell. I was in my 30s.

Mark Savela:
Performers or actors are very worried about their performance being altered.

John Gajdecki:
Yes.

Mark Savela:
Maybe I’ll open up a can of worms here. Maybe some actor will see this and go, “Goddamn it, we never thought of this,” is do they even know about how much we do in fluid morphs and speeds? Sometimes, in post-production, the producers don’t like how much of a pause they gave in between. That’ll have to be snipped down. There’s so much performance altering at this time that isn’t… It is visual effects, but it’s not really. You’re not altering their face.

John Gajdecki:
It’s sort of editorial. We’re the tool.

Mark Savela:
Exactly.

John Gajdecki:
We’re the tool of editorial there.

Mark Savela:
I haven’t heard one word about that, about the performers even being aware of that.

Jenny Stiven:
That was another question I had for both of you, is that the WGA’s contract put aside, the SAG contract talks about… So, a friend of mine was working on the negotiating committee and the AI portion was very confusing to me because what it didn’t do, and this is a question I have for you two, is that it is such an overarching, broad-brush description that it would include what you guys already do on a regular basis. So, how’s that gonna work? I’m hugely supportive of the strike, so this is not a criticism of SAG. I don’t know how that’s gonna work.

Mark Savela:
No, and that’s, again, it’s a problem of being misinformed and not being educated enough. Come and have a conversation sit down with us for two hours a day, everybody would be clear about what we do and what happens. We don’t want a seat at the table, but you’re bringing us into the conversation, so let’s educate everybody about it.

Jenny Stiven:
I think you guys should have a seat at the table.

David Read:
I do, too. I agree

Jenny Stiven:
I know you keep saying that but I gotta tell you, I work both sides. I do all digital content production, digital marketing, fandom development. I’ve worked for studios and I’ve worked for agencies and vendors. Everything that you describe is what we go through on a regular basis as digital marketing, digital content producers and agencies and vendors in this business who do all of these $50 million campaigns. It doesn’t matter what we do. We’ve always accepted that content created under marketing isn’t gonna be acknowledged as part and parcel of the content that’s created. Cool, but the people that should be at that table are the ones who are creating that final piece of art and the people who are creating that final piece of art don’t stop at the actors. Right now, the Directors Guild got it, IATSE’s gonna get theirs, Teamsters union settled. You’ve got WGA and you’ve got SAG who’s gonna settle. You’ve got two major areas who aren’t represented, VFX being the most, I think, crucial one. Let’s be honest, there is no movie without VFX. There is no series without VFX. For 99.9%, Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro have been infamous recently about many, many interviews and comments and articles that they’ve made about very non-film films and movies, et cetera. Christopher Nolan made a big deal about his practical effects in both 1917 and Oppenheimer and that’s amazing. Massive hats off to him. However, the arrogance in the silence about the fact or the purposeful not saying anything about the VFX that are woven automatically. It is not an extra. When I was growing up in this industry, VFX was extra. It was something that was special. If you had a movie that you worked with ILM or Digital Domain or whoever it was, Rhythm & Hues, that was super amazing. It was super extra. When I was working on Stargate and you guys had your own department and you had the floor and I would come see you guys, that was huge. That was a big deal in TV. That’s normal now. That, or should be, but that is normal, and the fact that people still treat VFX as an afterthought in conversations, and that you don’t have a place at the table is, I think it’s borderline unethical, quite frankly.

Mark Savela:
The omission of discussing it is intentional, too. The backlash out there, what we call the visual effects backlash, people don’t use much CGI. The Barbie movie, for instance. There’s an interesting thing out there where you see the editor’s workflow. It’s on YouTube. Down in, you see the visual effects editor’s track. It is completely full.

Jenny Stiven:
I know.

Mark Savela:
What? 207 artists worked on that movie and five companies and not every company had all their artists credited, so there’s much more than actually on the screen. You’re going, “And what did they have?” They had an article out there, I forget where it was, but they said they shot Barbie the same way they would’ve shot it as if they were in the 1910s. So, what does that mean?

Jenny Stiven:
It’s not true.

Mark Savela:
They’ve got the Barbie car with the green screen behind it and you’re going, “What are they trying to say here?”

David Read:
The Guardian: It’s exactly as they’d done it in the 1910s. Anti-CGI backlash. What the heck?

John Gajdecki:
It’s marketing and it’s their brand. There are a certain number of directors, creators, who that’s their brand. You don’t wanna pick on Christopher Nolan, he just seems to be the one that comes to mind ’cause his movies are so good. Visual effects isn’t just AI, as we’ve said. Visual effects isn’t just green screen. If you’re using volumes and big LED walls, we’re still creating that shit. It’s not like visual effects people aren’t up all fucking night, sorry… doing this so that you can shoot when you need to. We’re happy to do it. I’m up every night till 2:00 doing budgets these days and I’m happy to do it. But it’s their brand. That’s what they say, and unfortunately, right now, we live in a world where it seems to be OK to lie. We know where that’s coming from and I’m not gonna go there, although I’d love to in the future. So, it’s OK to lie. That’s your brand. I respect marketing. My wife does it. She’s extremely good at it. I loved your quote that, “Is content created during marketing part of the content?” That’s really clever. I’d never thought of that.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s my whole career.

John Gajdecki:
No, it’s genius.

Jenny Stiven:
Your wife and I can talk about that. I was lucky enough to work with Lucasfilm. Why aren’t the ones who were absolute supporters and cornerstones out there beating the drum. I know why James Cameron isn’t, but why aren’t they?

John Gajdecki:
They’re keeping their head down. It’s their careers.

David Read:
Keeping their head down.

Jenny Stiven:
Come on. George Lucas did not give a… He doesn’t care. He’s got nothing to lose by going out and saying, “Hey, everyone. This was something that is integral to who I am in my career. Obviously with ILM, it is one of the biggest parts of Lucasfilm that I’ve retained.” He’s retained ownership of it.

David Read:
Is it perhaps because they’ve already got theirs?

Mark Savela:
You know what it is? I believe, and again, my opinion, is with some of those people that you mentioned and what I’ve heard stories, there’s a certain need to be loved and admired. If there’s a backlash out there that they’re proposing, to stand up against that backlash wouldn’t be a popular opinion.

John Gajdecki:
No, it’s all dangerous. That’s how the world works. I think we see it politically; we see it economically. I think probably that’s how people are wired. The US military has been flying AI fighter jets. If you take the need to protect yourself out of the equation, they win every single battle. As humans, we need to protect our, whether it’s our reputation, whether it’s our legacy, whether it’s our life, whether it’s our employability, and that’s always right here. When AI takes that out, they win every time. It’s not even close. So, that’s depressing. Which goes right back to my original point: Is there gonna always be a person collecting the pay check? Is AI gonna reach the point where they’re like, “Yeah, we got this. Go grab some food pellets. You’ll be fine, biped.”

Jenny Stiven:
I like go grab some food pellets.

David Read:
Food pellets.

John Gajdecki:
Sorry about that. That was depressing.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s OK. Look, I’ll bring it back. I’m always good for the cheerleading part. Here’s the thing: both of you have amazing, not soapbox, genuine, super on-point points of view and opinions that are shared by the majority of the VFX industry. I’m being very specific in that title.

Mark Savela:
There are different opinions everywhere, but yes.

Jenny Stiven:
I think that you guys are, as are some others, as I talked about, there are influencers on TikTok who are banging the drum, walking the walk. I genuinely believe that it’s now up to others of us in the industry, Mark, going back to one of your very first points, who have been at the table and have not stood up for VFX. It is up to us to have that conversation and to bring it to the table. I don’t understand why VFX is not represented at the table. I am hoping that what’s happening in the unionization, the fact that Disney is doing it, blew my mind. Of all the studios that was gonna be next, that was not the one I thought was gonna be second or third or fourth or fifth. I’m hoping that what starts to happen is the conversation isn’t among VFX people. It has to be that the directors and the writers and the actors pull it above the line. There’s no reason for it not to be.

Mark Savela:
That’s a big giant ask.

John Gajdecki:
That’s a big ask.

Jenny Stiven:
It is. It is. And you know what? Screw it. Start the revolution. Be more revolutionary.

John Gajdecki:
The work we do on a daily basis, the work, Mark, you’re talking about on Barbie, everything else, we’re helping. We help every department. We work with wardrobe; we work with makeup. We do makeup, we clean up stuff, we do cool stuff, makeup wins the award. Happens, good for them, we’re happy for them. Visual effects is involved in almost every, aside from craft service. We work with every single department. We start right in prep and we’re one of the last people to be let go. Power is the wrong connotation, ’cause as you’ve been saying, as we’re aware, it’s not really power. But that’s a lot of responsibility, that’s a lot of influence. I don’t know if everybody wants to let us out of the bottle. It’s a lot safer for everybody if we’re doing what we’re doing, and we like doing what we’re doing.

Mark Savela:
It honestly makes us easy targets because we’re to blame if something goes wrong. If we do a movie with a thousand visual effects that are all invisible, “Oh, it was a great movie without using CG.” If people don’t like the effects because there wasn’t enough time, there’s a billion reasons why effects go wrong. There’s direction of the director, there’s the studio gets involved, there’s no time to do it, it has to be spread out over 30 vendors. Then some people talk about it and everybody goes, “Well, it’s shitty visual effects.” I worked on a show once where I think the show had, I don’t know, let’s say 100 comments. 90 comments out of 100 said, “Oh, my God, this show’s horrible. The acting and writing is so bad.” Someone said, “The sets are really horrible,” blah, blah, blah. “The acting and writing are terrible.” There’d be maybe 8 to 10 that say, “Oh, the visual effects look like shit,” or they look cartoony. Where it got stomped on in color, whatever. If there’s Season Two and the producers start talking, they go, “Oh, with go Season Two,” you think they’re gonna sit there and go, “Well, there needs to be a change. Should we change the writing how we’re doing that?” “We’re fine.” “Should we bring in new actors? No, let’s make a change in the visual effects department.” They had fucked up. Nobody wants to take blame in our industry, and again, generalization. There are some producers who are great, but a lot of people, they easily pass on blame to somebody else. It happens.

Jenny Stiven:
I think, to both of your points, VFX is woven throughout every cross-functional department and division. I think for people who might wanna be helping, they may feel overwhelmed. They may feel, “Where would we start? How would this even be approached?” That’s where we need to have the Cesar Chavez of VFX that says, “Here’s how you can do it.” Instead of looking at all the things that are wrong and all the things that don’t work, you can only do this, especially in a labor dispute like this, by starting with one small piece. I can’t remember the proverb, but how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I can’t imagine that there’s anybody, any studio or any union is gonna be able to look at all of the issues that are happening with the VFX, writers, and artists and creators and supervisors and the 40,000 different jobs that come underneath VFX. You can’t do it all at once. Where can you start? There’s a twofer. It has to be practical and do something for the workers, but it also has to be something that you can use as leverage to keep going, to go to that next step. Is it wages? Is it hours? What do you guys, the two of you, think? I’m asking your opinion. What do you think would be that first step that would make a difference in moving forward with a workers’ revolution in this area in VFX?

John Gajdecki:
Are you trying to incite one or avoid one?

Jenny Stiven:
Incite one, I would hope. I would love to see you guys at the table. It doesn’t have to be that drastic, but what would be that first step?

John Gajdecki:
For me, on a fundamental level, you have to respect labor laws. Visual effects is this weird thing where you get into these little companies, and sometimes they don’t, and there’s a whole bunch of reasons why. The money’s not there, as Mark said. There’s not enough money. There’s not enough time. “Uh-oh, we have two weeks to deliver. It’s on TV and we need to deliver.” You give it to a group of people who go, “I love this show. I love what I do for a living. I’m gonna work all night ’cause I can’t help it.” The level of fanaticism in visual effects, as in all departments in the filmmaking industry, is really high. You can’t even make them go home.

Jenny Stiven:
We create our own problems. We really do.

John Gajdecki:
We do.

Jenny Stiven:
I know that. That’s part of it.

John Gajdecki:
When I’d come into my office in Hong Kong, there would be people sleeping on my couch every day. It’s as if they played paper, scissors, rock to see who got to sleep on John’s couch, because they thought, I thought, that they were working hard. I had to say, “Go home. We’re not working this weekend. We’re in good shape. Your shots are looking great, but you’re gonna be useless to me and to my studio if you sleep on my couch every day.” The labor laws have to be respected, because that’s something outsiders, I think, can point to and say, “This isn’t right.” That’s one place where I would start. We worked on Superman and Lois last year and they were scrupulously good about making sure that everything was covered. Everything. If we bought a piece of stock footage, they were there. “We used this little corner.” “Nope, we’re paying for it.” I think this is very common. This is what I’ve been experiencing lately. No overtime for anybody without permission and if they did work overtime, they were paid every single time. That does exist, but that’s what it’s gotta be. It’s a business. It’s show business.

Jenny Stiven:
I love that answer, John, ’cause it seems simple, but it’s not.

John Gajdecki:
It’s not.

Jenny Stiven:
I wanna shine a light like you did on the ones that are doing it right. It should be embarrassing to an industry that the bare minimum of what you should be doing anyway, that we’re gonna give them a gold star for. I wanna feature that. I wanna lift that up, ’cause if we can say, “This is the measurement. This isn’t a gold standard, this is the standard that you should be doing,” I love that. I’ll do it.

John Gajdecki:
But it’s expensive. When I was in Hong Kong, the company had these glass cases as you walked in and I’m like, “Why are all your software boxes in these glass cases? Shouldn’t there be awards or sandwiches or anything other than boxes of software?” They had a really interesting answer, and that was, “Because we pay for our software” and that gives the companies who don’t an unfair advantage and that’s about half the world.

Jenny Stiven:
Holy crap.

David Read:
That’s extraordinary.

Mark Savela:
There are different levels of how people operate. When the writers’ strike happened, I was, like you, Jenny, completely supportive of the writers, the WGA and SAG, but there were so many things that came out. It was the first time I ever heard the term gig economy, was in the writers’ strike. I go, “Why you job to job?” I go, “I’ve been doing that for 30 years.” Welcome to the industry. I’m going, “Why?” And cost of living, I’m making pretty much the same or sometimes even less for jobs that I do now than I did 15 years ago.

David Read:
15 years ago?

John Gajdecki:
No, 30 years ago. When I was on Stargate… OK, funny story and then we’ll move on. There’s a great story of me and Jonathan going out. They said, “Well, what do you want?” ‘Cause you didn’t talk about the show. We went to a lovely restaurant. I said, “I wanna get paid what the Americans get paid. That’s what I want.” They doubled my salary, and, to Mark’s point, it’s barely moved since.

David Read:
It’s because it’s what? Because it’s the competition or…?

Mark Savela:
It’s the shows that come in, they don’t move that line item up. They never have and we have nobody to negotiate. We negotiate rate for every show.

John Gajdecki:
Earlier I was talking with Superman and they definitely did. They moved me up to what was a solid, fair wage for today. But a lot of shows, you go in, “This is what I get,” and they’ll say, “That’s really funny, ’cause this is what we have.” Then it’s up to you, isn’t it?
Because we don’t have a union. But in truth, for Mark and I, we would be above scale anyway, as far as things are. It’s not what you deserve, it’s what you negotiate. That’s the world we live in. For me, I don’t have an agent. I don’t know, Mark, if you do. I probably should’ve got one, but I never did ’cause I never look for work. People call me. I don’t have that good-cop, bad-cop world where I can say, “You go get me money so I can be nice to you guys.” I have to be the asshole at the beginning. Producers know I’m not really that good at it. Mark, you know that. I’m good at pictures. I can see the art instantly. I can do the budget. I know I’m gonna come in on where we said we were gonna come in. But I don’t wanna negotiate for my rate.

David Read:
No, you need to have a pit bull standing by to make sure that you get what you’re supposed to get.

John Gajdecki:
And that’s what agents are for.

Mark Savela:
I’ve tried to do deals on the other side with friends of mine who are writers and stuff. They go, “Well, talk to my agent right away.” You talk to the agent and go, “God, they’re such assholes.” Then you’re friends and they come in and they’re happy and you’re going, “OK. That’s the way things work on that side.” But on our side, we cannot be an ass about it.

Jenny Stiven:
Hey, guys, I’m so sorry. I’m gonna have to hop.

David Read:
Thank you, Jenny.

Jenny Stiven:
Thank you, guys. John, it’s a delight to meet you. I am sure we ran into each other somewhere along the way, but it is so nice to meet you. Mark, as always, I love seeing you. Thank you for everything that you’re doing. Thank you for your voice. Thank you for leading the way.

Mark Savela:
Thank you for being a supporter of us. Ee are passionate about it.

Jenny Stiven:
Absolutely. Whatever I can do, please let me know too.

David Read:
Thank you.

Jenny Stiven:
You guys let me know. And David, love you, babes.

David Read:
Love you. I’ll call you later.

Jenny Stiven:
Bye, guys.

David Read:
All right, bye.

Mark Savela:
Bye.

John Gajdecki:
Bye.

Mark Savela:
I think we can probably wrap it up soon if you want. I’m done. We’ve been on for, what? An hour and 30 minutes.

David Read:
Hour and a half.

Mark Savela:
It’s crazy. Short story beforehand, I think, as the writers move forward, as the actors move forward and everything, they should be like everybody else. They need to vet their people. The writers wanted more people on set to produce their own episodes and whatnot and I’ve seen that happen where they’ve put people out there who shouldn’t be out there. I have a great story. I was working on a series and the showrunner was in post and they called out to set and the showrunner’s working on an episode beforehand, not the current episode that we were shooting. So, they called out to set and I was on the phone because it had a visual effects component, so I heard this call, and the showrunner wanted a clean POV of a sign. We all said, “OK.” The AD was there. When we were breaking down one of the setups, I said, “Why don’t we get that POV of the sign?” The director, I think, had done a short film and the writer was younger and was the writer/producer of this episode that we were doing. Everybody goes, “We need the actor for that.” I go, “The showrunner said a clean POV.” Both the writer and the producer and the director said, “But every POV has the actor’s body in it.” I’m going, “No, that’s a dirty over. The showrunner specifically said a clean POV. That’s what you need.” I’m the asshole because I’m not agreeing with them about filmmaking and they took two hours because the actor that we needed wasn’t there, so they had to get a body double and send them to wardrobe because we were shooting in the middle of nowhere in a forest. It took two hours to get them back and then shoot a dirty over and they agreed to shoot my clean POV as well. But you took two hours out of your day. Does that make any sense? I would never send a supervisor that I was training out there if I didn’t think they could handle the set. I think that’s irresponsible and I think the writers should be responsible as well and make sure their writers are equipped to go out and produce an episode if called.

David Read:
Do you know if they ended up using the clean POV that he asked for?

Mark Savela:
They ended up using the clean POV, of course. That’s what they wanted.

David Read:
Jesus.

Mark Savela:
Why would they ask for that if they wouldn’t… It’s so weird. I had my assistant with me, and we were looking at each other going, “There isn’t a shoulder in a clean POV. What are they talking about?” We thought we were in Bizarro world. It was crazy. So, with everything that we’ve said and everything, the future, I know there are people who are more optimistic than me. People say I’m a bit of a doomsayer, but it is my opinion. When everybody comes back, I think it’s not gonna be like it was post-pandemic. Post-pandemic was insane. Everybody wanted content right away, blah, blah, blah and nobody changed their schedules, everything. I think there’s gonna be less shows produced. I think everybody’s learned that the Netflix model doesn’t work. Everybody followed Netflix like sheep jumping off a cliff because Netflix operates at a loss every year. All of a sudden, Disney’s losing billions of dollars a year trying to get into streaming. So, it doesn’t really work, so I think people are gonna go less content. I think there may be a little bit of an evil side to it where the studios are going, “Yeah, writers, you wanted more people involved? Well, here’s a lot less jobs for you.” They’re gonna go with their established content, stuff that they know audiences are gonna miss. They’re gonna go with that first and they’re gonna take less big, giant, expensive swings. They aren’t gonna go for the fence in every single thing, I don’t think, like they were post-pandemic. I think it’s gonna be interesting to see, because in terms of visual effects, I don’t think… Everybody’s expecting a boom where I don’t think it’s gonna be a boom.

John Gajdecki:
That’s an interesting point, Mark. I hadn’t really thought about that, ’cause I think we’re all hoping for work. There was this really interesting analysis, and you probably read it or watched it, of all the blockbusters that were made. The blockbusters, they were talking about feature films, but you could talk equally about the huge streaming shows. They made more blockbusters than there simply was an audience to watch. Nobody did the math, or everybody assumed that they would get the lion’s share, or both. That’s what they do: swing for the fences. But mathematically, it was impossible, and I think you’re right. Mathematically, a lot of the big shows, there’s not enough viewers for them to see the return.

David Read:
I would argue quality had a little bit to do with that as well. I think that people are beginning to face the possibility that when this all comes out at the other end, there’s simply going to be less content, and I fear, and I forget who it was who said this, someone can fact-check me online, that the dirty little secret about why these new studios don’t want their numbers out is because people are not watching in the volumes that people think that they are.

John Gajdecki:
I think that’s true.

David Read:
If that comes out, their stock prices will go down and the content that they can produce will be slashed in half to match what content is actually being consumed and everyone in the film and television industry will lose. They’re on TikTok. They’re on YouTube.

John Gajdecki:
If you look at music, David, my kids don’t listen to a lot of music from today. They listen to music from when Mark and I were kids.

David Read:
You mean actual music?

John Gajdecki:
We get in the car and we put on Rock Lobster. What is that? Or they’re listening to Tears for Fears. I wonder if that metaphor applies to the visual industry, our industry. If people keep watching old stuff, the Tears for Fears and the B-52s of TV and movies, maybe that’s why a lot of modern content isn’t working. It’s not resonating. I don’t know what it is. I watch less today than I used to as well.

Mark Savela:
The scary part of it is you talk to civilians out there, people outside of the film industry, and a lot of them don’t even know the strike is still going on. They go, “You’re back to work, aren’t you?” You go, “No.”

John Gajdecki:
It happens every day.

Mark Savela:
“Oh, I heard the strike was over.” “No, that was the WGA, the SAG.” People aren’t gonna notice content is not there for a while because you have the dog days of summer, which nobody expects content. Fall: hockey’s back, the baseball playoffs, the NFL’s back. Everybody takes Thanksgiving to Christmas off anyway and there’s Christmas specials. So, until February, until the Super Bowl is over, nobody’s gonna notice that their stories aren’t there, that the new episode of Bob Hearts Abishola isn’t on, then they’ll start to get mad. They’ve got a lot of time. Plus, they’re flooding the networks with reality right now.

David Read:
That’s true.

Mark Savela:
I don’t know how many shows Gordon Ramsay has on the air. There are super-sized episodes of Survivor and Amazing Race. They’re an hour and a half long. They prepped.

John Gajdecki:
They’re fine. That happened last time.

David Read:
That’s true.

John Gajdecki:
The rise of reality TV, but also the last big strike, they also stockpiled before it happened.

David Read:
One of the last thoughts that I wanna leave you guys with before we wrap up, you guys got a few more minutes?

John Gajdecki:
We have nine minutes.

Mark Savela:
Yeah, totally.

David Read:
Perfect. Phil Tippett had said, “I think I’m extinct,” when Jurassic Park came out and they were doing the tests and Spielberg went all digital and left the stop motion in the dirt. Tippett’s team became the physical animators to assist in the image capture of the dinosaurs. They actually got into the minds of the dinosaurs. They found a new place to fit in when stop-and-go motion were not going to be used on Jurassic Park because you couldn’t imitate the fluidity of the digital creatures that were being developed. Do you think that with this new industry coming in, with AI, you guys could harness these tools to help guide them the way that Tippett’s team did for Jurassic Park? Or is this a completely new ballgame?

Mark Savela:
I think it’s helpers. You look at what AI’s being used for now – tracking and everything else – but there always need to be artists at the head of it. You will never take that away. It’s funny that you tell that story because the person who did all that, Spaz Williams, you look at the backlash. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that, but he wasn’t invited to the… They are trying to erase what he did somehow. If you look it up, he’s had conversations with other people these days and he’s not happy. He’s the guy who basically began computer animation, brought it to the mainstream and now he’s being erased somehow.

John Gajdecki:
If they had done the dinosaurs using stop motion, using go motion, there would have been… The model builders would have built the dinosaurs. They would have been on set. There would have been gaffers and grips and standby painters and the camera department. All of those people disappear because it went digitally. Other people appeared. You had IT people and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But a smaller proportion, more of the work went to… I’m not saying the machines in a negative way. That’s not the right connotation. But that’s going to happen again. We have fewer people, again, doing more work. So, then the question becomes, and the studios will be part of that decision: Do we wanna pay less for the effects we have, or do we want more effects for the same money? Those two things happen. Where it does hurt, Mark, and I know ’cause we were all kids once, this technology, I think, affects the entry-level jobs. I became an effects supervisor when I was 24 years old. I was lucky to be on a show where they fired everybody above me within six months and I could figure it out. My first Emmy nomination, I was 27 years old. I’m still an effects supervisor 30 or 40 years later. I’m lucky that I like what I do. But I’m still sitting in my shoes. Mark, you’re still sitting in your shoes. That event we were at the other night, we’re all old now. It’s hard for people to get in because we’re still sitting in our jobs.

Mark Savela:
Yes. At the same time, when everybody comes back because of the huge post-pandemic flood of content, there are maybe 5 times, 10 times, more people out there looking at our jobs. So, now when there’s less production, you’re trying to put 10 pounds of potatoes in a 2-pound sack and it’s gonna be tougher to get jobs. People are gonna find it hard. That’s the big thing with this whole talk: Things are really tough and people are going through tough times. Artists are going through tough times. Crews are going through tough times. You have, what is it, a hundred days for the actors’ strike now and however long for the writers. You have this after people had a six-to-eight-month hiatus three years ago. People are still recovering from the pandemic hiatus and now this. People are being devastated out there. Because of our lack of representation, we don’t have any source of people saying, “Here’s a fund we created for artists.” There’s nothing like that. “Here’s something to help you out, to keep everybody in the industry.” Instead, everybody’s getting layoffs and pay cuts. That’s what’s happening and that’s driving people out of the industry and it’s a sad fact.

David Read:
I found that documentary you guys were talking about. It’s called Jurassic Punk and I cannot wait to watch this thing because it does talk about that transition. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Guys, anything else that we wanna call out before we let you go?

John Gajdecki:
No. For me, what Mark is saying is true, but that’s been the case for 30 years.

Mark Savela:
I’m spent. I wanted to thank you again, David.

David Read:
We’re losing him. The connection’s been not good for about five, six, seven minutes here. Mark, can you go ahead and say what you were gonna say one more time?

Mark Savela:
I wanted to thank you once again. I thank you a lot. Realizing how passionate I was about it right away, you were extremely supportive. Thank you and to thank anybody who’s out there watching. Thank you for your support of the Stargate show. I would have liked to talk a bit about Stargate at some point…

David Read:
We’ll come back.

Mark Savela:
…and what we do. I truly thank you, it’s so appreciated.

David Read:
You guys are artists and visionaries and you make magic happen. I know I’ve said that before, but it’s true. Anything we can do to help get that word out. Yes, John?

John Gajdecki:
I was gonna say, can we get that on a T-shirt?

David Read:
You know what? I think I can probably do that. John, thank you for coming in as well to add some additional perspective. I really, really appreciate everything that you’ve done for my program, both of you.

John Gajdecki:
No, it was fun.

Mark Savela:
Good to see you again, John.

John Gajdecki:
We should do it again sometime

David Read:
Absolutely. We’ll have you all on when this is in the rearview mirror. Until then, you guys hold strong, all right?

John Gajdecki:
OK.

Mark Savela:
Thank you, David. So appreciate it.

David Read:
Absolutely. You guys be well. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap up the show on this end. Bye bye, guys. John Gajdecki and Mark Savela, visual effects supervisors for Stargate. This was such a treat to have them on. I apologize for the audio trouble. The shift that is happening in their industry right now is so extraordinary to behold and I can’t imagine being in their position. I’m really glad that we got on to discuss the situation in a little bit more detail. We got a lot of additional episodes coming for you tomorrow. Pre-recorded shows that are gonna drop one after the other on Sunday. Flying an F-302, Gatecon Founders and Tara Mitrovic. These are fan-related stories that I’ve been kicking around for a while in my archive and wanting to get out. I really appreciate everyone who’s contributing to those. My thanks today to my moderating team, particularly Antony, Tracy, as well as Sommer and Jeremy. You guys make the show continue to be possible. My producer, Linda Gate Gabber Fury, Frederick Marcoux at Concepts Web, he keeps Dial the Gate up and running. Everyone here who has made the show possible for Season Three. My thanks to Jenny Stiven as well for coming in and adding some additional context as well. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate and I’ll see you guys on the other side.