Los Angeles feature film visual effects industry in full collapse

Two kids in college and a third one will be starting soon. We are paying to put one through, the other decided on her own to take on debt against our advice. The fact that college is so expensive is just another symptom of the greed our country has become. I see your points. I guess I was simply using my kids as my own life example, but you bring up a good point regarding where our kids learn what they learn. Maybe my kids were raised in a bubble not typical of the average american child. We were fortunate enough to send our kids to private schools so they were taught the same principles we taught them. They will therefore work hard and make their way. But you're right....where are the majority of kids learning their values from? Look at it tha way and a lot of what you said makes more semse to me. I just see our country for the most part going in all the wrong directions and I think we darn near have to start over again, get rid of the majority of our current government system along with the lobbyists, and get back to the basic principles of capitalism without corporate america getting in the middle amd making purely financial decisions with no regard to the people that work for them. And back to the vision our founding fathers had. Pretty naive to say, I realize, it isn't going to happen until the middle class rise up. And that's a scary thought but as soon as too many can no longer afford the basics of life despite working fifty hours a week, it could happen. Again, my sincerest sympathies to those that lost their jobs this week. And thanks for spending so much time elaborating your point that initially upset me....I get it.

 

Hard to disagree. Thats basically what I did...started off in college but got a job doing what I thought I would enjoy. Learned the biz and then opened my own at 21. Still doing it all these years later, and it was enough to support one wife and three kids. College is only necessary for certain trades. Also, it depends on your reason for going. My daughter wanted the "experience". Pretty expensive for an experience.

 

Tell that to Jeffrey Katzenberg. He's the one who greenlit all those awful Dreamworks cartoons that bombed, which is why they had to axe this many people. I'm always astounded how a corporation's management can make terrible decisions, resulting in huge losses, and instead of getting rid of the people who made the mistakes, they lay off the rank-and-file workers who were just doing their jobs.

 

That seems like an ideological position to me as if 'true' capitalism is some kind of panacea. 'True' (unregulated) capitalism leads to the situation we now have of gaping wealth inequality where conditions are stacked in favor of big business and de facto monopolies. The lack of regulation and oversight extending all the way to the so-called credit rating agencies is what led to the biggest capitalist global meltdown - the global financial crisis, whose after effects are still ringing around the world.

That's a notion not shared by most of the first world, western democratic countries. Again, it comes down to living in a society where all members derive some kind of benefit. That's why you have a progressive taxation system where the wealthier individuals who can afford to pay more tax are taxed at a higher rate compared to the poorer members. The extremist capitalists would do away with taxes completely ostensibly to free 'everyone' of the burden of giving away a portion of their hard earned money. How did that go for Kansas?

Sorry, but I had to laugh at your overoptimism. If the 'benevolent' market had the capacity to do that, we wouldn't need measures like the affordable care act in the first place.

As it should, for the benefit of society. That's why once corporate monoplies were broken up to allow fair competition. Not so much lately.

 

TWC and Comcast operate with government-issued (near-)monopoly franchises. They are not examples of free-market capitalism. Here's a good article about why European internet service is cheaper and faster than America's:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european-broadband-faster-and-cheaper-blame-the-governme/

The example illustrated in great detail is the UK:

"The solution, the British government decided, was more competition: If consumers had more options when it came to broadband service, regulators reasoned, prices would fall and speeds would increase. A duopoly of telephone and cable service wasn't enough. "You need to find the third lever," says Peter Black, who was the UK government's top broadband regulator from 2004 to 2008.

Starting around 2000, the government required BT to allow other broadband providers to use its lines to deliver service. That's known as "local loop unbundling" -- other providers could lease the loops of copper that runs from the telephone company office to homes and back and set up their own servers and routers in BT facilities.

You can see evidence of the UK's competitive market on the streets of London: Broadband providers splash ads across bush shelters and train stations, touting prices that seem outrageously low by U.S. standards. Post offices sell broadband service; so does Tesco, one of the UK's largest supermarket chains."

 

That's similar to the situation here when the government broke up AT&T back in the '80s.

 

Welcome to Late capitalism.

 

Well yes the SEC relaxed debt-to-net-capital ratios in 2004, eliminating the still-high 15:1 limit. Bear Stearns was at 33:1 when it imploded, yet the US inspector general found that Bear was fully compliant with the SEC's requirements as it melted down. However Bear was able to abuse the debt-to-capital ratio because its risk was backstopped by the government (taxpayers). "Privatized profits, socialized losses" is the antithesis of capitalism.

Understand that free (free to succeed and free to fail) market capitalism doesn't shift risk. Companies have to answer for their own mistakes, and thus are more risk-averse.

 

Yeah, kinda replaced one big monopoly with several regional monopolies. Then we had an era of lots of wireless services (VoiceStream, MetroPCS, etc.). Now wireless is moving back towards consolidation. It is possible to have innovation and price wars even in a market with only two competitors (see: Intel vs. AMD) but when competition is forceably removed, innovation stagnates and prices rise.

 

Damn that sucks. One of my college friends worked there, wonder if he got cut too. that's a lot of animators waving, huge shame.

 

Thanks for the article. I guess its telling us what most of us know...its something else that has been handled poorly, and likely led by lobbyists, like so many other things. Greed winning out over what is best for the majority. There is no doubt in my mind that broadband service is going to steadly go up once the merger goes through. I have no clue why we have a government body that is supposed to stop mergers like this for the benefit of the consumer. They don't seem to make decisions based on the common good. I can see it if a company is in trouble and the alternative is lost jobs due the liquidation of a company, but TW isn't exactly in that position.

 

"I believe that, with the actions we take today, consumers will reap the benefits of increased Internet access competition and enjoy innovative high-speed services at lower prices."

- FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in 2005, when the FCC last significantly tinkered with internet service classification, removing the exact line-sharing requirement from DSL providers that the UK has used to help foster competition.

 

A lot has been said about tax breaks. What also should be mentioned is that compared to the US, Canada has pretty
liberal immigration laws. The ability to get work visas for people from all over the world, so they can come to work
for your business, is also a important factor when deciding where to locate your company.

 

Well in my post # 107, I was talking mainly about issues that too much availability is bringing to jobs that have no use for it (except for reducing workers to 24h slaves), but since we're at it I'll have to clarify that if I want to stay connected with friends and relatives I'll simply meet them alive in person. Or send a letter or an email. My mother and her sister live about 800 miles apart and call each other once a week. The only difference is they're doing it via mobile now. Did they really need a mobile to do it?
As for people for disability issues, I agree that it's a great help for them but then again, regular "home" telephone services have been with us for a while.

Countless benefits of the internet and ubiquitous communications: in my case; it helped me just to track down older CDs and vinyl and order them from abroad. Yeah, audio is my main hobby but in the end it's just stuff and my life would be more or less the same without it. It's a plus; not a necessity. Furthermore, the internet doesn't allow me to support my local CD/records stores anymore as they are all defunct. Same for bookstores; another one ceased its activities last week. The owner blamed Amazon for that. I won't be a hypocrite; sometimes I've found amazing deals on Amazon for new books and took advantage of them. But for "regular" purchases, saving 1 or 2 euros doesn't matter to me and whenever a bookstore dies, I feel the city is a little poorer and sadder.

Ubiquitous communications, eg mobiles and smartphones: the only really useful thing I would say is they can be of great help if you car stops in the middle of nowhere at night and/or if you have a stroke and need to call the 911. A telephone call can be life saving and I am glad people are able to do it now. What I personally find unnecessary and somewhat lame is that we're being so brainwashed that it looks like not only we have to have a mobile, but that it has to be turned on 24h, 7 days a week. Heck, major rock acts have been organizing major world tours for decades without mobiles! People were able to travel all over the world without mobiles. We were able to drive a car and find a road without having to check google maps. Did we suddendly become a bunch of idiots just because mobile/smartphones were invented and companies had to sell this tool (that I personally find useless except for the aforementioned live saving cases)? I could go on and on; in the summertime I often go to the beach. Before, people used to go there to walk, to relaxe, to bathe, to make castles of sand or to play guitar. Now, a good 75-80% of them are zombies with their faces glued to the screen and loud ringtones all the time. For fu*c's sake! Just enjoy the sun. Heck; one of these days I expect to see a surfer taking a mobile from his/her wetsuit and answer a phone call while riding the waves!

I wish people had the common sense you were talking about, but so far I never noticed it. I feel sorry for the younger people born to the digital age, who in a few years from now are probably going to believe that their lives depend on perpetual connectivity, worry when and/or if the internet isn't temporarily available and devote a massive amount of their time to a display instead of real life.
At the risk of appearing a grumpy old guy, (and since this is the SH.tv board, after all ) I'd like to point out that I was born some years after The Beatles split up, so half of my life has been without the www or mobiles in it and I'll probably never perceive a luxury they want to shove down my throat as a necessity. Not to mention the radiofrequencies issues, something that worries me a lot since cancer runs rampant in my family and I'll avoid anything to help it; now some geniuses think even animals could act as hot spots. When are digital collars going to be obligatory for humans?

By the way, to each his own.

 

Exactly...and simplist or simple for me equals, 99% of the times, to "less is better". No need to add useless stuff; let's leave it to politicians
Regarding globalization and US workers fired to favour outsourcing just to make the very rich even richer, let me say that I thought this foulness was Italy exclusive and never crossed my mind that US studios would dump American artists that way and I'm still finding hard to believe what's happening; I feel very sorry for the Dreamwork guys shown in the video posted by Vidiot. Must have been a tragedy too for the families, of course. You find a great job in the movie industry in your home country, then suddendly you got dumped because for the big bosses a Porsche isn't enough anymore, they have to have 3 now! And, wow, just because we have the internet this is all so easy now! A godsend for the unscrupulous. Again, globalization sucks.

Agreed; if only the ones in charge had your mindset the world would be better. Too bad they just want a bunch of slaves, nowadays.

 

Companies that are privately owned have the luxury of setting their own priorities, as soon as you go public and your shares are traded on a exchange there's only one priority (to maximize shareholder wealth). That's the unfortunate or fortunate position management finds itself in, the position demands a certain mindset and there's no shortage of business school graduates willing to do the dirty work. For some people it's not something they like doing (cutting jobs) but a necessity of the marketplace and the demand for positive results.

 

I think the number of implosions and fire-sale buyouts during the financial crisis proved that management (Board of Directors and C-Level) are more than willing to throw shareholders under the bus so long as they get theirs. In Sept. 2008 Wachovia shareholders saw $30 billion in (imaginary) equity vaporized literally overnight.

 

I can't argue with that, shareholders need to hold the Board of Directors and management of these companies accountable for their actions, it's a slippery slope for sure and if they're in the too big to fail category you get politicians involved and then it's not just the shareholders left holding the bag, taxpayers get put on the hook to bail out these criminals which is exactly what they are.

 

That's what they are trying to do; make a fair profit. They just have a different definition of "fair profit".

 

Agree with your over all sentiments. Even though the internet is the reason my business exists, I really think the world was better off without it. Yes, a lot of people will think I'm nuts for saying that.....I guess the proof that I'm sane is that I recognize how absurd that feeling could be to a lot of people. I think the youth in particular are being robbed of the gift of wonderment. I too also wonder about all the RF floating around...don't see how that can be a good thing. But I love the internet as much as I question how much better off we are with it. It has made so many things much more convenient, but it sure has changed the attitudes of the younger generation and it will be interesting if that's for better or worse. I think we need to wait another ten years before we'll know.

 

The British East India Company once controlled one half of all worldwide trade, and it was dissolved. TBTF is a myth.

 

No, they are given the gift of information and knowledge, nearly the sum total of all human knowledge at your fingertips. How awesome is that? Knowledge is power. The sense of wonderment comes from learning more about the nature of things, why things are they way they are. This is unprecidented in all human history and truly a wondrous development.

This is where the internet can help to inform you on what is scientifically supported and what is conspiracy scaremongering. Look up things like electromagnetic spectrum, ionizing radiation, scientific findings on the use of cell phones and transmitters.

 

Man, I have nothing to do with the film industry but watching this little video of this group of hardworking people simply waving goodbye made me sad. So many dreams and aspirations, sent to a park to wave their goodbye through no real fault of their own.

 

And they did their jobs. Many of the people responsible for making the decisions to make bad movies that lost money are still employed. Go figure. (Although they did fire the president of Dreamworks Animation.)