Much as I love Johnny V, it's the other 299 people who just lost their jobs that I'd be worried about. Mass layoffs fucking suck, and it's the folks at the bottom of the ladder who always have to struggle hardest to regain their footing. Johnny V is going to be fine.
We're currently going through something almost identical in the VFX industry in the UK. There's been a lot of building tension over the past few years and we've even had a few departments within studios who banded together to join BECTU (Which is the UK's media and entertainment union) but the main problem we keep running into is also one of location; we're a global industry. Competitive subsidies mean it's cheaper for a studio to fly you to Montreal and employ you there than it is to keep you in London. People are terrified that a local union would almost directly mean more work being shipped elsewhere - "Don't want to work unpaid weekends in London? We've got an army of artists in Bangalore who don't even sleep. And they cost half as much" - the quality of your work will only keep you competitive for so long.
VFX shows are typically much shorter than game development cycles so we're either in endless crunch, or we're looking for work every six weeks. Deadlines get moved, people get dropped - I was made redundant as a result of mass layoffs twice in the same year. It actually worked out OK, as each time I landed in a much better job, but it's still not a fun experience. And people still put up with it, and even consider themselves lucky to be employed at all.
I've been on the union bandwagon, I just can't ever see it happening. Or, if it does happen, I can't see it ever being effective. As you say, everyone is replaceable, and there's plenty of fresh non-union graduates who will happily do your job for half the money. In Shanghai. How are unions supposed to compete with that?
@sinjunb: You haven't been here long so I'm going to forward you on to the forum rules. You, and everyone else here, should be able to express an opinion without being rude or dismissive of other peoples.
@nkster: I think we're both right here, and we're tripping each other up by attempting to apply broad generalisations to the entire series. There are definitely sections which are genuine and would be difficult to frame in any other way. I do think though there's merit to the idea that the producers had no interest in fairness or genuine investigative journalism when creating their show, however. While that doesn't mean that they were swimming upstream (obviously they aren't making stuff up, but they are definitely framing it in a way which is sympathetic to Steve and Brandon), that argument has still left doubts in my mind regarding certain aspects of the investigation.
I'm now at the point where I'm exhausted by the entire thing and I don't know what to believe any more, which seems to me to be a failure of both the US Justice system AND the producers of the show.
@sweep: if you watch the show, or look into Brendan's actual confession you would know you could basically ignore everything he ever confessed to.
Most if not all of the evidence the prosecution has brought up as being omitted from the series has been rebutted as irelevant I think quite well by the filmmakers and his defense.
Also the series started was filmed over 10 years, before social media was what it is today, I really doubt they designed this show to illicit twitter reactions.
I need to stop checking this page for new comments I'm tired of rebutting (i dont know why i keep doing it) the opinions of people who i dont think actually watched the show or read some of the follow up coming out of both camps.
Never said he was guilty. In fact I agree with you, in that he's probably innocent. The point remains though, the entire investigation was fucked up by the police, and that the producers of the show edited in a way that is extremely biased - which obfuscates any truth we may find in it. And there's no need to be pedantic, they made their documentary to provoke a response out of their audience regardless of how that response was expressed.
Most importantly, people need to stop getting so angry about it here, in these comments. Notice how my warnings are getting less and less subtle?
@jeff: I didn't really hear it as a pure joke the first time, but I'll give you that one if that's how it was meant. My main issue was judging the show without being informed on it.
It's pretty ironic that you're accusing people of not being informed when you're basing your entire opinion of the case on a show that was written from the ground up to imply the innocence of two men in order to cause a social-media shitstorm and was produced accordingly. Did you know that the show frequently excluded sections of testimonies, interviews and trials themselves if they at any point didn't line up with the agenda they were pushing? For example:
"They also omit important evidence against him, including the fact that Brendan Dassey confessed to helping Avery move Halbach’s S.U.V. into his junk yard, where Avery lifted the hood and removed the battery cable. Investigators subsequently found DNA from Avery’s perspiration on the hood latch—evidence that would be nearly impossible to plant."
Which is not to say that the suspects weren't innocent (That whole thing was a fucking mess and at the very least the Sheriff's Department is guilty of gross misconduct, so who knows) but rather that you've been manipulated by a TV show into an emotional response. Just a heads up: This isn't really the place to get upset about it.
sweep's comments