Visual Effects Artists to Protest Obama’s DreamWorks Animation Visit

Variety reports:

As President Obama visits DreamWorks Animation’s Glendale campus on Tuesday, visual effects artists, frustrated by the outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries that offer generous subsidies, are planning a rally outside the DreamWorks Animation campus in Glendale.

An effort also is underway to get those attending the speech — largely restricted to studio employees — to wear green shirts in solidarity on the issue and to call the president’s attention to the problem. The green shirts represent a blank greenscreen — the message being “This is your movie without visual effects.” The green color has been adopted as the symbol of protests over runaway VFX production.

Digital artists move freely between animation and visual effects companies, and many current DWA employees have worked at companies that are now shrunken or defunct as VFXwork has followed subsidies abroad. DWA itself had layoffs in February, and those laid-off employees had fewer alternatives with VFX work gone from California.

The Obama coalition is upset with the grand leader whose policies don't much help Hollywood workers. Ironic.