Effects Firms Decry Lack of Arts Education

The employment roster at digital effects firm Rhythm & Hues reads like a mini-United Nations. Computer graphics artists from more than 30 countries work at the Los Angeles-based company, which won an Academy Award this year for the motion picture “Babe.”

In fact, there are only seven California natives among the firm’s 75 digital artists. Just half are from the United States.

But this is no experiment in international filmmaking. The reality is that Rhythm & Hues could not find enough qualified digital artists in the local market to handle its swelling workload.

And so it is throughout the visual effects industry. Business is booming, thanks to the soaring use of computer-generated effects in films, television, commercials, computer games, the Internet and theme parks. The industry currently employs about 6,000 digital artists in California, 10 times as many as in 1991; companies say they could collectively add several hundred new jobs in the next few months, possibly more.

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But digital effects executives uniformly lament that they are increasingly forced to recruit overseas, mostly because American schools have not provided even the most fundamental arts curricula. As a result, they say, artists capable of producing sophisticated visual compositions on computers are scarce.

“I blame it squarely on the failure of the education system,” says Rhythm & Hues President John Hughes.

Look at the skills that will be needed in the coming century, then consider the curricula offered in grades kindergarten through high school, said Dave Masters, manager of artist development and training at Warner Bros. feature animation.

“There’s a giant hole: visual arts.”

Although industry executives complain that American workers are often deficient in fundamental skills such as reading and math, it is the absence of art and composition knowledge that hurts these kinds of businesses most. The problem is particularly acute in California, where arts have been stripped from budget-strapped schools since Proposition 13 rolled back property taxes in 1978. All that’s left at many schools are crafts projects.

The repercussions of the dearth in arts training are only now becoming apparent in the digital effects trade because that young field is growing so rapidly, industry insiders say. The growth is being fostered by technological advancements that have made computerized images commonplace in films.

These days, it’s not just big-budget, effects-laden movies such as “Independence Day” that use computers to simulate giant space ships and planets being blown to bits. Even character-driven films such as “Sense and Sensibility” incorporate computerized images--digitally created clouds, shadows and city skylines.

Star-filled skies, which special-effects artists used to simulate by splattering paint from a toothbrush on a dark background and filming it, today are mostly keyboard creations. Filmmakers even employ computers to remove unwanted images--wires, for instance, that have inadvertently appeared in a shot.

“Now that the actual production process lives or dies by the computer, you need people who are qualified to operate those computers,” says Tim Sarnoff, senior vice president and head of Warner Digital Studios, the visual effects arm of Warner Bros.

The mistake is in thinking of digital artists as merely technicians, executives say--rather, they are artists, just as surely as those who use a paintbrush.

The movie screen is their canvas. They use computers to sculpt images by plotting in points, lines and curves, and by manipulating light and shadow. The work can range from subtly enhancing live-action scenes with touches of color to creating an entire scene digitally.

Yet Masters estimates that 99% of the applicants who submit computer graphics-imaging tapes to Warner Bros. in hopes of landing a job are rejected. “They have computer skills,” he says. “They don’t have artistic skills.”

“The computer is just a tool,” says Steven Lavine, president of CalArts, the private Valencia college that trains animators and other artists. “It doesn’t in any way do away with the necessity to teach drawing.”

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Now, faced with this hiring squeeze, industry executives are speaking out. Masters, Hughes and other company heads stunned state legislators in June when they testified about their hiring woes before the Senate Select Committee on Workforce Preparation.

“It was startling,” recalled Rona Hallabrin, consultant to Sen. Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton), who chairs the committee. “When one of the testifiers said he could double his work force for each of the next five years if he could supply it, it was quite overwhelming.”

Indeed, demand for computer graphics artists is expected to explode in the next year or two, as technology becomes more advanced and affordable.

Industry insiders predict that the need for digital artists could soon mirror the seemingly insatiable appetite for traditional animators that has consumed studios in the past few years. Artists who draw major characters for films such as “The Lion King” are Hollywood’s newest superstars, courted by studio heads offering big salaries.

Artists who ply their craft with computers instead of ink could become the next hot items. “There’s a huge need for talented people,” says Hoyt Yeatman, visual effects supervisor and founder of Dream Quest Images in Simi Valley, which was acquired earlier this year by Walt Disney.

Already, salaries in the field are surging--25% in two years. Annual salaries range from about $42,000 to more than $150,000, estimates Steve Hulett, director of the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Union Local 839 in North Hollywood.

Salaries are escalating even as digital effects companies undergo dramatic expansions. Warner Digital has tripled its work force in the last several months. Sony Imageworks, barely 4 years old, has about 250 workers and plans to hire another 100 in the next six months. Digital Domain, founded three years ago by Scott Ross, the former president of industry leader Industrial Light & Magic, now has more than 600 employees. Ross says he’s turning away work because he can’t add staff quickly enough.

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Company executives say they are combing film festivals and trade shows throughout the United States and abroad in search of experienced digital effects artists. These trips have captured workers from Canada, England, France, Italy, Japan and Brazil--countries where students typically receive up to several hours a week of arts education.

The National Endowment for the Arts, for instance, reports that in Japan an average of 14% of class time is spent on arts education at the primary level, compared with 5% in the United States.

Alesandro Jacomini, 32, a Rhythm & Hues digital artist, has a degree in computer science from the University of Milan. But he praises the “classic” primary and secondary education he received in his native Italy. Italian schools aren’t flush with money, he says, but they taught him “how to learn.” It didn’t hurt, he adds, to grow up in a culture steeped in art.

His colleague Nicholas Titmarsh, 34, says that in England, art classes are “treated just as seriously as the other subjects. You take them just like you’d take a math class or geography class or history class.”

Rhythm & Hues isn’t the only company whose work force is increasingly made up of foreigners. Ross estimates that about 35% of Digital Domain’s computer artists are from other countries.

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As many as 30 of Sony Imageworks’ artists are foreign, but that number is expected to grow quickly. Ken Williams, a Sony executive vice president who heads Imageworks, is dispatching teams to Ireland, Holland and Canada on recruiting missions.

Escalating salaries used to be a concern, he says. “Now, it’s just, at any cost.”

The reliance on foreigners is so heavy that a brief panic ensued at digital effects houses in August and September when reports surfaced that the type of visas issued to most immigrant digital artists had hit the cap for the fiscal year ending in October.

Company officials feared they’d have to cancel or postpone projects. The Immigration and Naturalization Service discovered an error in the way the numbers had been counted, and it resumed processing the visas after a week’s delay.

In hopes of more domestic candidates, some industry leaders say they’re encouraged by recent steps to foster arts training in the United States. Many studios are joining arts organizations, schools such as CalArts and Santa Monica College, and sometimes government agencies to offer mentoring and other programs.

Often, however, arts programs are small and poorly funded.

For example, the California Arts Council, a state agency, and the American Film Institute have started a program aimed at training digital artists. Its initial funding is just $100,000.

A state bill sponsored by Sen. Henry J. Mello (D-Watsonville) in 1992 created a program to pay for local arts education partnerships. A total of 42 school districts signed up, with funding requests totaling $12 million. But when the program finally got underway this year, only 12 districts received a total of $350,000 through the sale of designer license plates.

The California State Summer School for the Arts was founded 11 years ago with funding from the state, tuitions and private donations, and it has received high marks. But the intensive, one-month program is available only to a select group of high school students who have already demonstrated talent.

Many in the industry see hope in some recent initiatives, backed by Gov. Pete Wilson, that are aimed at preparing young people for careers in entertainment. They include a school mentoring program, a training program for media and technology, and various pilot projects intended to foster communication and coordination among schools and media firms.

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Now that, for the first time in years, more money is available for California schools, attention will be paid to gearing curriculum toward areas of growing employment, said Rosalie Zalis, a senior policy advisor and entertainment industry liaison for the Wilson administration. But she acknowledges, “You can’t change city hall in a day.”

Observers argue that it will take more than money to effect a meaningful change in the education system. It requires a conversion in the thinking of politicians, bureaucrats and even some educators, many of whom still consider art a luxury, they say.

“The schools, when they’ve had to make cuts, have always cut the arts as being an extra, a frill,” says CalArts’ Lavine.

Even Johnston, while acknowledging that the testimony by the digital effects executives was an eye-opener, says he is “not convinced at this point that the state ought to mandate additional offerings in any particular subject.”

Still, many arts advocates, who say their warnings over the years have gone unheeded, are now hopeful that the red flag raised by the digital effects industry will serve as a catalyst for action. An effective arts curriculum, including basic drawing and composition, should begin in earnest by about the fourth grade and be given equal weight as core subjects such as reading and math, they say; if not, the consequences for the economy could be severe.

“You have a lot of inertia in the system,” warns Paul Minicucci, staff director for the joint State Senate Committee on the Arts.

“If this was any other industry, if you were talking about logging or fishing . . . the reaction would be a lot different. They’d say, ‘How much do you need?’ Talk about being asleep at the switch.”