LOL! DD almost a penny stock at this rate, NYSE is gonna give them the boot, I bet it won’t even finish the week.

On August 21, 2012, each of the holders of the Senior Notes severally notified the Company in writing that the Senior Notes were in default, asserting, inter alia, that the Company had failed to satisfy the terms of the Available Cash Covenant applicable as of August 20, 2012, resulting in an immediate acceleration of all amounts owing under the Senior Notes, consisting of (i) aggregate outstanding principal of $35 million, and (ii) accrued interest, make-whole amounts (representing the amount of future interest payments foregone as the result of such acceleration), and other amounts owing thereunder aggregating an additional minimum amount of approximately $16 million, for a total minimum amount due thereunder of approximately $51 million.

The actual degree means nothing to an employer, it’s the work you do on the side that counts. When I graduate, I will already have 4 years of work experience under my belt working with various production companies and doing many internships.

Useful idiots please follow the red line!

bottom line.

However, we won’t find out about any of it unless there’s enough media interest to keep it going through a few news cycles. Talking about it will hopefully keep it fresh enough that at least people will be watching.

I will take a brief respite from setting traps for Ymir to walk into in the other thread to respond.

I think it’s difficult to say what artists will do – the definition of VFX artist (at least post-1990) has been fairly fluid. Are a TD and a Lighter the same thing? Different positions have different meanings at different companies. I would say that part of the reason why VFX workers haven’t unionized is because the average VFX artist doesn’t see himself or herself as part of a monolithic group with common interests.

I’m not even sure that a trade organization would serve as a corrective to these trends. One of the big problems (in my opinion) is that there are too many VFX companies to support the actual amount of VFX work out there. I would say that growth of the VFX industry (and industry stability in the long term) was probably undone by the fact that no credible challenger to ILM emerged out of LA. SPI, old DD, R&H, Boss, etc. basically fought amongst themselves for the parts of the pie that ILM didn’t get. This might have been the American Way (free enterprise, everyone a job creator) but what it basically meant is that these companies were effectively cannibalizing each other for work and talent for years.

It probably would have made more sense if R&H and DD (being the most independent of the larger places) merged sometime post-Titanic – this is just based on my impressions of the market at the time. I have no idea if discussions to this end ever took place.

If the combined company (let’s call it DD because R&H probably would have had to pry the branding from Scott’s cold, dead hands) was created, I think you probably would have seen Sony corporate throw up their hands and realize that they couldn’t defeat DD on price with non-Columbia clients. Not to mention that there are a whole bunch of weird wild cards that were pushing tech forward at this point in time (would Square have decided to open up their own facility if uber-DD was seen as a place that could do photoreal humans/high detail animated characters, would Disney have just gone to uber-DD for the Gemini Man tests as opposed to trying to do stuff in-house at TSL).

In the end, it’s all masturbation but I feel that VFX as an industry would be better off if there was a bit a merger mania and there was only one major company in LA circa 2012. There would still be plenty of boutiques, but it just feels like a lot of mistakes were constantly being made at the macro scale to me. And strong macro would have probably ensured more unity at the artist level, paradoxically. One company is easier to unionize than 3 companies.

I think as artists we want to beieve it will all work out. it always has right? pull 100 hour weeks for 2 months and the movie comes right? right but the money spend is a loss and only so many loses till a companys goes bankrupt. DD has been bought, sold, revamped and reinvested more than any other VFX house out there. If cafefx, fuelfx, asylum, the orphanage, matteworld had as much “draw” as DD they would have survived longer. is thats a good thing or not is a different questions but I dont want to see DD die. I just want to see it get managed well and thrive rather then feel like a fake money laundry scheme by textor and his board.

However, if investors invest in a company, said investors expect a return on their investment… or in other words, a profit that will be distributed to its investors. When a company goes public, those investors are much less tolerant than private investors and they will demand that the company either return dividends or show growth in share price.

DDMG, a public company, is quickly running out of cash. The public investor is quickly losing faith that this ship can weather the storm. The company has very little options left for raising any more cash. Their recent cash raises have been very expensive. Some might say that the well has run dry. Without cash, a company will quickly die.

DDMG has seen its stock plummet 75%. It has hardly any cash. It shows huge losses.

Business 101…. class is adjourned.