With Marvel Studios‘ internal visual effects artists having unanimously voted to unionize, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier VFX coordinator Alexandra Rebeck has opened up about the difficult working conditions on the 2021 Disney+ series.
While speaking with with IndieWire, Rebeck explained that members of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s VFX crew worked 75 days in a row and only got time off if they “had a nervous breakdown.” “I don’t know how this is acceptable,” she said. “I don’t know how you can work people like this. It was the first-ever Marvel TV show, it was during COVID, there was a lot of things that didn’t work in our favor.” However, Rebeck’s experience on TFATWS didn’t stop her from returning to work on other Marvel shows, which she says weren’t quite so demanding.
More specifically, Rebeck went on to serve as VFX coordinator on both 2022’s Moon Knight and the upcoming second season of Loki. “[T]hose were way better,” she said. On that note, Rebeck does not think VFX artists being overworked is by any means exclusively a “Marvel thing.” Rather, she says that “on a show-to-show basis, things can really go horribly wrong.” Still, Rebeck hopes no one else has to go through what she went through on TFATWS — “because that is not humane. That is not normal.”
Marvel Studios VFX workers’ unionization vote made history
Rebeck’s sentiment is echoed in IndieWire’s larger piece, which discusses how the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees’ (IATSE) new VFX union is seeking better conditions industry-wide. As a result of the aforementioned vote, Marvel’s in-house VFX workers became the first to join the new union. However, they could soon be joined by parent company Disney’s own internal VFX artists. IATSE is also working to organize unionization efforts at other studios, and hopes to eventually bring third-party VFX vendors on board as well.
In the meantime, IATSE will begin negotiating with Marvel to secure its represented VFX workers a contract at a sill undetermined date.
