Year: 2020

www.livemint.com/companies/news/big-tech-snags-hollywood-talent-to-pursue-enhanced-reality-11604470420726.html

https://www.cultofmac.com/726927/apple-among-the-tech-giants-snapping-up-vfx-experts-to-work-on-ar/

Silicon Valley’s biggest companies are snapping up the people and technology behind some of Hollywood’s blockbusters in an effort to improve their augmented- and virtual-reality offerings.

“It’s harder to make as much money working in visual effects,” said Paul Debevec, a veteran of the visual-effects industry who is now a professor at the University of Southern California. About 4½ years ago Google hired Mr. Debevec, an award-winning pioneer in the creation of convincing digital humans, to help the company advance extended reality.

Working in visual effects in film and TV can mean long, unpredictable hours, limited compensation, poor job security and paltry benefits—many call it the “cool tax” one pays for the pleasure of working in Hollywood.