Léa Paquette’s graduation gala in April was awkward to say the least.
Recent 3D-animation graduates dressed to the nines, mingled in a room of industry professionals in downtown Montreal, exchanging LinkedIn profiles and polite smiles while everyone desperately tried to ignore the CGI elephant in the room: there’s no work.
When they got into school, the industry was so starved for visual effects (VFX) and animation artists, the Quebec government extended its Perspective Scholarship Program to those students in 2022.
But, as they got closer to the finish line, the once booming industry was no more.
“It was heartbreaking,” said the 24-year-old, who specializes in compositing — essentially the art of making digital effects look real.
“I realized that I have to almost change what I’m studying. I did three years of study for almost nothing.”
Paquette started searching for an internship in November, but eventually realized she’d have to do a personal project for credit instead to complete her program in the Université du Québec network. Some of her peers didn’t even bother looking at all.
As awe-inspiring as visual effects can be, those specialized skills are difficult to transfer to other industries.
“I’m stuck,” said Paquette. “Video games, if they have to use [compositing] they will use a freelancer.”
She checks LinkedIn, sometimes several times a day from her supermarket job, to see if the market’s budged in her favour.
But every time she logs off, she feels the weight of reality get heavier; a future in VFX in Quebec just may not be in the cards for her.
So when earlier this year Quebec Finance Minister Éric Girard imposed a 65 per cent cap on tax credits for computer-aided special effects and animation and gave companies two months to adjust, Paquette was furious.
“I felt like they just told me to change what I love and change what I wanted to work in,” she said. “In the beginning of my life … this is putting a stop on everything.”
From hero to zero
Montreal is home to some of the biggest players in the movie post-production industry who have worked on major movies like Dune, Aquaman, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 — the list goes on. All of that is thanks to a workforce of over 8,000 VFX and animation artists.
But that number decreased by 42 per cent between Dec. 31, 2022, and Dec. 31, 2023, according to the Quebec Film and Television Council (QFTC).
It estimates a further 807 jobs were cut after the changes to the tax credit were made.
That includes 45-year-old Ohkba Ameziane-Hassani’s position as a VFX supervisor at ReDefine’s Montreal studio. He was let go at the end of March.
“I used to be headhunted and now it’s like ‘Oh yeah I have to apply,'” he said, chuckling. “You’re as likely to win the lottery as you are to get a job.”
Despite two decades of experience and an IMDb profile stacked with blockbusters, Ameziane-Hassani has not been able to find a job in Montreal.
He’s now in the complicated position of finding a tenant for his apartment so he can afford cheaper rent elsewhere while on EI.
“It’s only temporary, or I have to sell the place. It’s just really bizarre,” he said.
For him, Quebec’s decision to reduce the tax incentive highlights the general vulnerability of VFX artists to the ebb and flow of the industry — something he’s known for a long time having worked in nearly 20 studios over the years.
The first VFX studio he worked for in Montreal in 2004 no longer exists. In 2010, the California studio he was in announced it was shutting down — leaving 450 employees in the dust. After ping-ponging across the globe he settled back in Montreal in 2018, chasing some sense of stability.
“If anybody says that there is job security in the VFX industry, it’s a lie,” he said.
And the truth is the industry has been hit with a significant contraction of work predating Quebec’s 2024 budget.
Ameziane-Hassani was working on several productions when the pandemic sank everyone in front of their screens. But soon after, the demand for VFX artists declined.
Then the Hollywood writers’ strike came in spring 2023 and, just like that, he was “show-less.”
So, he took a vacation.
But when he got back things got worse; the actors’ strike started in July. He was asked to take a pay cut and layoffs continued all around him.
“And it just kept going,” he said.
So, he got deeper into coffee, a lifelong love of his, and hoped his industry’s trouble was just a phase.
Chloe Grysole, managing director with Framestore Canada, says the VFX industry was still reeling from the strikes when Quebec changed its tax credit in March.
Though some VFX studios felt an immediate impact and lost contracts, Grysole says others like Framestore who bid on projects several months or even years in advance will feel the brunt of the changes as of next year.
“A lot of the layoffs have to do with the strikes,” she said. “I think the point is that the [tax] incentive creates more uncertainty for the long term.”
The QFTC sent out a survey to assess the situation and learned that four studios would close their doors and four others were looking to relocate outside of Quebec.
One tax credit to rule them all
The tax credit for special effects was created in 1998 at a time when Quebec’s unemployment rate was almost twice as high, said Vickie Fortin, the cabinet director for the Ministry of Finance, in a statement to CBC News.
At the time, some specialized software used by the VFX sector, like Softimage, was based in Montreal which helped cultivate and attract talent, explains Ameziane-Hassani.
During that first decade the Quebec government spent more on the credit year after year before expanding it in 2009 to cover all costs of production as opposed to just labour. The cost of the credit to the government jumped from $14 million to $51 million in 2010, and has followed an upward trend ever since.
Productions benefiting from the credit brought in $1.4 billion in 2022, according to Quebec’s statistics institute.
Tax incentives influence where movie studios send work and where VFX vendors open offices. Ameziane-Hassani described the incentives as a drug that studios can get hooked on.
VFX studio Double Negative, for example, started in London, U.K., then opened in Singapore, merged with an Indian company becoming DNEG, which owns ReDefine and has since opened offices in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Sydney, Los Angeles and Chennai, Mohali, Bangalore and Mumbai in India.
Although most Canadian films are made in English, the true critical and commercial success comes in Canada’s other official language.
As more jurisdictions try to appeal to Hollywood, unhealthy competition between vendors and pressure-cooker-like work conditions emerged for the staff, explains former VFX artist François Schneider.
He worked in the VFX and animation industry for nearly 30 years before he was laid off in March from DNEG.
“Competition in the industry is pretty bad, pretty fierce, and our clients are always asking for the job to be done faster and cheaper,” he said.
The first movie he worked on in Montreal was 300 (2006) and he had over a year and a half to work on it.
“Now this never happens,” he said.
Though the length of the post-production process varies, a stressful “crunch time,” often over the month leading up to a film’s release, is an experience all too familiar to artists.
Ameziane-Hassani has had 60- to 80-hour weeks and sometimes worked seven days a week for three to four months straight when he was in California. A 2022 survey by entertainment union IATSE found that nearly 40 per cent of VFX-vendor workers across the US and Canada were not compensated for those extra hours.
With no industry-wide guild, the movement to unionize individual shops has only picked up in recent years. DNEG Montreal just received its union recognition in February.
“My hope with unionization is that it would force vendors to form an industry association to try to negotiate better contracts for the studios because right now, how vendors work with their clients is self-defeating and has been for years,” said Schneider.
Grysole says both movie studios and vendors like hers are under immense pressure right now.
“They essentially want to stretch their dollars as far as they can to make the best possible work, to get the best possible product on the screen,” she said.
Ameziane-Hassani says unionization efforts now are too little, too late.
If studios protected their labour force as much as they chased tax breaks, he thinks the whole industry would benefit. VFX artists, mobilized by passion, often go where the work is. But at 45, he says that gets old.
“I can’t just pick up and say, ‘You know what? I’ll just move countries at this point,'” he said.
He’s still hoping things will improve but is perfecting his coffee skills just in case he needs to change careers.
“I don’t think anybody cares outside of the visual effects industry for someone who can do hair on digital creatures,” he said.
Wishing upon a star
Moshe Lander, a professor of economics at Concordia University, thinks Montreal’s heyday as a VFX hub isn’t likely to return.
“Rather than try and protect the things past maybe accommodate and move to the things future,” he said.
He said the best the government can do is provide income support and help the unemployed workforce gain new skills “to get on to the next big thing.”
Quebec hasn’t given up on the entertainment industry. The Ministry of Finance says it’s choosing to focus on shoots and Quebec cinema, adding that its VFX financial support is still very competitive with other jurisdictions.
Framestore Canada, for example, shut down its Vancouver studio in July instead of Montreal’s because of the latter’s well established reputation, says Grysole. She cited the “industry-wide slowdown in content” as the leading factor in that decision.
She also says studios are attracted to locations where they can execute a whole project.
Paquette might pivot to something else if things don’t improve by the time her school-funded VFX software licence expires next year.
But, she still dreams of chasing the big screen.
It was How to Train your Dragon that got her into this career. The dragon’s movements are modelled on a cat’s.
She watched it recently for the umpteenth time to try to cope with the stress of the uncertainty ahead. She also watched Inside Out 2 but that helped less.
“Those are the movies that are going to be watched by other children and inspire them to go into this industry,” she said. “I want them to look at this and be inspired and have that nostalgia that I’m feeling right now.”