Mental Health in VFX
So……This was a tough one for me to write.
I’ve been wanting to write this for a while, but part of me didn’t want to write it because I wasn’t finished dealing with my own pain from my life events.
But that has changed, that I feel like I am in a better place, and also because of some observations I started to make around me. As well as general fuck’ups I’ve made.
This article is going to be less about sharing my personal trauma, but more about how you can deal with yours in VFX. Why actions and events stick with us in this industry. As well as how to look after yourself. Also listing any mental health resources you may need down below. So let’s get started. But first a little back story, and then I’ll shut up. I promise.
When I started VFX, I had a lot of terrible things happen to me. The first being, that on my first week in the VFX industry, my grandpa died of cancer. I didn’t quite have the time to process it, as I was commuting 3 hours one way to a studio everyday, being overwhelmed with work, and overall being terrified of everyone around me, and trying to prove myself. So it sat with me…for a long time. And I did not realize it until it was too late.
The second one, I cannot mention here, for many different reasons. Because legally I shouldn’t. But two weeks before I started a job in my very first FX artist position something bad happened which caused me to relive a lot of things. It changed my perspective of the teams that I worked with, made me distrust my coworkers, made me incredibly shy, and had huge effects on mood. It ruined my focus for shots, and made me frustrated with tasks even if I did them correctly.
I was silent about it for three years until I decided to mention it to my partner at the time. It was the most terrifying thing I did, and standing up for myself is not one of my strong points. But literally minutes after saying something it was as if…all my back pain was removed. I know that is a weird example, but I no longer felt pain and burdened by something beyond my control. I felt so happy. It didn’t feel like I was lying to myself or anyone anymore.
And strangely enough, in the two months following that, my publishing rates and workflows started to improve as an artist. As well as my general mental health of what I should do to deal with the situation I had been through.
Additionally, I’ve listed some resources for mental health in case any readers need them below. As well as some interesting studies in artist workplaces.
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Introduction:
Trama: Why Don’t You Trust People?
I was asked this phrase by someone who I met at a studio in my first ever FX position. I was his replacement, and on his last day he turned around and asked me: “Why don’t you trust people?” I had no idea what to say, and responded with: “Trama?” At the time, I really didn’t have the energy to open my mouth and explain it. But his question made me think about the environment I was in, and why my body language was the way it was with my team.
I think one thing we forget about trauma, is that everyone has different levels of it. Everyone's trauma is different, and there isn’t really a scale or measurement scale to explain it either. What I mean by this is, trauma isn’t a competition on who’s been hurt more. Any situation can leave you with trauma. This could be as simple as feeling bad that you weren’t there for your child after they had a really bad day at school, someone making a rude comment at you in an interview, or just overall exhaustion.
When you come out of any stressful situation, and thrust into another one, often your mind just refocuses onto the next task. I think there isn’t much argument to say: VFX is stressful. The workflow, hours, and time put into it are not like other traditional industries. Plus, if the studio you are working at has toxic behaviors, this just adds even more stress.
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Coming out of a tough situation where you fully haven’t processed what has just happened, and then walking into work and being told there is a delivery on Monday doesn’t help either. You’ve just come out of a personal situation where everything around you failed, and now you might be set up to fail again by having that urgent deadline. This is a perfect situation explaining why a lot of people in VFX have trust issues.
For female VFX artists in the industry. A few of the issues that impact our workplace trust is being typecast for the same effects, animations, and scenes more frequently. Sexism, gender bias, and harassment are also a few other issues. The industry has certainly come a long way from what it was like 10 years ago. For example, if you visit the wayback machine, look up VFXhell.com, (April 27 2007) you’ll find a thread entitled: “The Hottest Women are in Which Department?” Internet discussions like these would be shut down today extremely fast. Especially if a studio found out its employees were the ones starting it. However, the lasting trauma from incidents like these for senior female artists who worked in the industry during that time has been exponential.
It’s hard to adjust to a safer work environment when the environment that you originally grew up in was toxic, and shaped your own personal work ethic and standard stress levels. The residue stress can cause people to have shorter tempers, more personal walls, and the need for more personal space than might be accepted.
The industry in North America has been the safest it’s been in awhile for female artists. But there are still a handful of examples we all point to in recent years where I think a majority of people would say, regardless of gender: That situation sucked for everyone involved.
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Loss:
You can lose almost everything in your life at some point. Relationships, money, status, pretty much anything. Relationship loss can be the hardest, especially when it’s someone you met in the VFX industry, and you’ve worked, lived, and grown with them through huge sections of their life.
I’ve personally experienced this myself, and it’s not only a blow to your self esteem as an artist, but also to your work-friend group, professionalism, work ethic, and overall morals. Questions will arise in your mind such as:
- Will all my work friends exclude me out of the friend group now?
- Will this breakup ruin my career?
- Should I let our friends know?
- Did work ruin our relationship?
- Was I the dick?
- How should I act going forward?
- How do I move forward?
The worst part about all of those questions is that there is no correct or consistent answer. It’s one of the reasons that relationships in the VFX industry are frowned upon by some people. But in defense of VFX couples, when you are stuck in a studio space for 12 hours a day with a bunch of people who are collectively nerdy like you, something will happen.
But it’s also extremely hard to walk away from someone who works in the same industry as you. When you’re together it’s perfect. You can discuss work, vent about similar things, understand the overtime system together, feed off each other’s growth, and attempt to be the VFX power couple you’ve always wanted to be. But when that comes crashing down, it’s devastating. Especially if you work at the same studio, walked the same route to work with them every morning, had specific days after work where you would meet up, or even worked from home together.
I think it’s accurate to say that having someone walk out of your life after a significant amount of time with you, will always be damaging. You might not have the strength to even walk into an office, or complete more than the daily tasks at work. With work from home now the new normal at some studios, it’s easy to lock yourself away from socially interacting with your peers.
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There are also artists who suffer major financial losses when traveling to other countries to work. This can be due to unexpected living fees, lower salaries than what were expected, healthcare, and generally other unexpected costs. This can leave artists in extremely rough mental states. The pressure to survive in a country that is far removed from your family, support networks, and to be in a different culture is overwhelming. Junior artists who travel the globe can feel the brunt of this a lot more than senior ones. All of this pressure of working for a job that is causing more stress than it might not be worth, can cause artists to leave.
Dealing with death while working in post production is not easy. Losing a family member, friend or colleague mid production or during a crunch period is devastating. Not only to the person(s) the loss happened to, but to the entire team. It can affect the mood how people approach shots on the show, interactions the team has, and overall department interactions.
Death is also hard to process as the emotion with it comes in waves. There will be the initial shock of it happening, the slow month to month realization that your experiences with that person are now over, and the deepening reality that person meant a lot to you.
I often like to equate the loss of a relationship to the result of having someone die in your life. As the emotions are often similar. Some people never get to interact with their significant other post-breakup other than accidentally running into them and seeing how much time has actually been lost.
All of the reasons listed above can contribute to deeper, and longer lasting burnout. Which is why it’s so important to learn when to step away from stressful situations.
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Working Through It: Literally
I think anyone's first gut reaction to dealing with a bad situation is to focus on their hobbies and work more. Personally, I can relate. From experience, I know that when you are under duress you tend to focus on work statuses more, have an inability to shut off after work, need to be constantly doing something, and replay conversations and scenarios again and again.
There is a loop you can fall into where sadness and anger can fuel you to either create the greatest art you’ll ever make, or have an incoherent focus. There is a reason why the stereotypical personalities of famous artists are that they are sad people. Unfortunately you can also never predict how your personal work ethic will change after a mental health crisis.
The downfalls of “working through it”, is that you often start to ignore basic daily tasks versus your tasks at work. It’s easier to focus all your energy into the job that keeps a roof over your head, rather to maintain that roof. It also becomes gradually harder to pick up new hobbies when you are under duress. Hobbies can relax your mind, and give you a brief moment to think about something else.
Working through it places you in a situation where it focuses so much of your attention on one thing, that you’ll reactively limit yourself from creating new social bonds. Which will cause you to remember the painful event for longer, and wallow in your pain more. It’s a very human reaction to want to either try and use a coping mechanism to forget something, or try and hold onto the feelings that you had for longer. Depending if they were once comforting, or you feel the ongoing pain is something you either deserve or need to remember.
One of the worst parts of working through it is that you can easily displace your emotions from the situation you are going through into your work environment. Which is not something you want to do if you want to make friends. Everyone is guilty of this at some point, including myself. It also gets increasingly harder to manage this if the negative situation you are in is getting progressively worse.
I think one of the worst parts of being a successful person in VFX, while also battling your mental health issues, is that you never really feel fulfilled in the long run. I’m not referring to being a big name in VFX, but rather just being one of the various talents in a studio setting. You constantly have this weird feeling of people judging you, that people might be mentioning you behind your back, feeling excluded every time you see one of your studio friends in an event you weren’t invited to. Or even feeling worthless compared to the talent the senior artists have around you. I want to say as a fellow artist; you are not alone in those feelings. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have, those feelings will always be there to some degree.
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