sent from: London, UK. destination: Playa del Rey, California, USA

Digital Domain, one of the few VFX companies to go public, lost a lot of its value on the stock market this week. Its CEO, a businessman by the name John Textor, received a lot of flak from artists in the wake of this news. He lost a lot of goodwill over reports earlier in the year that their educational facility in Florida would be a place where student labour might be used to work on films. I don’t know Mr Textor, but everyone I know who does says that he’s a nice guy. I don’t feel good about DD’s misfortunes, in fact I was rooting for him to succeed, even if I didn’t agree with his philosophy. I like the idea of successful business people approaching VFX and trying to find new models that might succeed in making VFX a more profitable venture. The current news only serves to keep those people away from VFX, and if God forbid DD goes under, that only hurts everyone who wants to have a career working on high-end VFX. Let’s see if they can figure it out.