SPECIALIST WANTED!

Over the last few weeks, I have shared quite a few job offers for VFX and graphic artists. Looking at my LinkedIn feed, you could easily get the impression that the industry is booming again. And maybe, in some ways, it is. Summer is ending. Projects are starting. Companies are looking for people again. But I keep wondering: booming compared to what?Are we returning to the level of activity we saw last summer, or are we simply seeing growth from the much lower point the industry reached during the winter and spring? Because quite a lot happened in between.

Production slowed down after the strikes. Film budgets became tighter. Competition became stronger. Public financing came under pressure in some territories. Studios closed, downsized or substantially reduced their permanent teams. And then there was AI. Not only AI itself, but the expectation of AI. Long before we really knew how much these tools would change our workflows, there was already an assumption that certain kinds of work would become faster and therefore cheaper. I saw prices going down, teams becoming smaller and companies becoming more cautious about permanent employment. Some of this was undoubtedly a necessary response to real market conditions. But I still wonder how much of what happened was driven by what had already changed and how much by anxiety about what we expected was about to change. Perhaps it is impossible to separate the two. And perhaps it doesn't matter anymore. Because those changes are now part of the market.

What interests me much more is what happens when the projects come back. Because the market they are coming back to is organised differently now. Many highly experienced artists are independent. Others have joined smaller companies or created their own. Studios that once carried large permanent teams now often operate with smaller core teams and expand when projects arrive. The expertise hasn't disappeared. But a lot of it is sitting in different places now.

And for international postproduction, I actually see a lot of opportunity in this. Services can become more compact and flexible. Teams can be assembled around the actual needs of a film rather than around the permanent capacity of one facility. A producer can access specialised talent across different countries and build a structure that makes sense creatively, technically and financially for that particular project. But flexibility also creates another need: somebody still has to see the whole picture. A film still needs continuity. Someone still needs to understand what happened on set and what it means for post. How editorial decisions affect VFX. How VFX connects to finishing. How sound, colour and picture interact. Where reviews and approvals happen. What needs to be delivered, when and in which format. Which decisions are creative and which quietly change the budget.

And now there is another question: Where are the right people for this particular project? There is another part of this change that I find particularly interesting. Has the financing side of our industry changed as quickly as the way we actually make films? Many public funding and incentive structures still favour spending through established companies and facilities. There are good reasons for this: accountability, territorial spend, infrastructure and a proven track record. But I wonder whether this model always reflects where the expertise actually sits today. A recognised studio traditionally represented infrastructure, permanent expertise, employees, technical capacity, accountability and a proven pipeline. But what exactly does the name of a studio represent today?

In parts of postproduction and VFX, permanent teams have become considerably smaller. A company may still provide the pipeline, production structure, technology and contractual framework, while some of the artists actually making the project are freelancers assembled specifically for that production. There is nothing inherently wrong with this model. It may actually be one of the ways our industry becomes more flexible and resilient. But it raises an important question: Are we sometimes financing the organisational structure of yesterday while already producing through the structure of tomorrow? And if so, perhaps producers should also start asking different questions when choosing their postproduction partners.

Not only:

Which studio has the strongest credits?

But:

Who will actually work on my film?

Who is putting that team together?

Where does the expertise sit?

How is responsibility distributed?

How flexible is the pipeline?

And does the structure I am paying for actually make sense for my project?

Because behind the credits of a large facility there may now be a much smaller permanent organisation supported by an excellent network of independent specialists. The credits still matter. The infrastructure still matters. The studio still matters. But perhaps the network behind it matters more than it used to. And that brings me back to all those job offers I have been sharing. Maybe their abundance doesn't simply mean that the old industry is coming back. Perhaps it tells us something about the shape of the one that is forming now. Maybe we are moving from an industry organised mainly around permanent infrastructure towards one organised much more around people, projects and networks.

If that is true, the ability to build, understand and manage those networks becomes a form of infrastructure itself. For me, this also changes the role of the Postproduction Supervisor and VFX Producer. When expertise is spread across companies, freelancers and countries, the ability to build the right structure around a project matters more than ever. Not because one person has all the answers. But because somebody needs to know which specialists to bring in, which companies genuinely add value, where the work should happen, where financing opportunities exist, when decisions need to be made and how to keep all those moving pieces connected.

The industry is hiring again.
But are the senior specialists still where the industry expects to find them?

By Ewa Babska