Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works nott com something. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
Speaker 1: and I'm Kristen, and we're talking about sort of behind
Speaker 1: the scenes type of magic in Hollywood this week and
Speaker 1: today we're talking about visual effects, you know, known by
Speaker 1: the cool kids splash, like everybody is as VFX. And
Speaker 1: I had thought I was under the impression, the very
Speaker 1: distinct impression that we had gotten like a specific request
Speaker 1: to tackle this topic of women in visual effects in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Uh and you know all around the world where people
Speaker 1: are working on visual effects. It turns out we just
Speaker 1: got a letter talking about another episode from a woman
Speaker 1: who works in VFX, and it's just like, oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, I love your women in Hollywood episodes because
Speaker 1: I work in VFX. So, dear listener, I think her
Speaker 1: name was Christina. Even though you didn't request it, this
Speaker 1: one's going out to you and for people who have
Speaker 1: been fans of our STEMS series Women in Science, Technology,
Speaker 1: Engineering and Math. This is a STEM job in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: something that I would not have considered STEM at all,
Speaker 1: but it very much requires a lot of those skills,
Speaker 1: so it really ties in with a lot of things
Speaker 1: that we've talked about on the podcast before in terms
Speaker 1: of gender gaps, glass ceiling stem jobs, representation on screen,
Speaker 1: how the images that we see and influence our self
Speaker 1: perceptions are manipulated behind the scenes. So let's talk about VFX, which, honestly, Caroline,
Speaker 1: I knew next to nothing about going into this. So well,
Speaker 1: so there's visual effects and special effects, and for the
Speaker 1: most part they kind of go hand in hand. Their
Speaker 1: like siblings, you know, they're very similar, but not the same.
Speaker 1: Maybe they have the same nose or something, but they're
Speaker 1: not quite the same person. So visual effects are what
Speaker 1: happened after the movie has been shot, after you've got
Speaker 1: the film, so to speak, or after you've got the
Speaker 1: digital product completed. Visual effects is when you go back
Speaker 1: in and you add or manipulate things. You do things
Speaker 1: like animation or a visual clean up, things that cannot
Speaker 1: be caught on camera. Whereas yes, these count is like
Speaker 1: special effects, but special effects can also be the things
Speaker 1: that happened during shooting. So maybe it's like crazy monster
Speaker 1: makeup or something to that effect that well, it's not
Speaker 1: a natural thing that would happen just on its own.
Speaker 1: It is an effect that can be captured during filming,
Speaker 1: so so way, way, way more intensive like Instagram process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: super super filter. So we are when we are gramming
Speaker 1: our photos kind of doing a little tiny tiny yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah. If I'm taking an Instagram selfie and I
Speaker 1: put on lots of makeup, that's the special effects. But
Speaker 1: when I go in after and I add a bunch
Speaker 1: of filters and take out my pimples and take out
Speaker 1: my under circles, that is intense and extreme visual effects.
Speaker 1: And it's all of this is part of the post
Speaker 1: production process in film, which also involves things like editing footage,
Speaker 1: adding voiceovers and sound effects, going in and creating the score,
Speaker 1: all of that. And so like, I just I read
Speaker 1: the words creating the score, and I just imagined John Williams,
Speaker 1: and now I have the Indiana Jones soundtrack in my
Speaker 1: head and I'm just loving it. Everything's great. But the
Speaker 1: visual effects artists obviously are not John Williams. They're not
Speaker 1: creating the score. What they're doing, very simplistically, are things
Speaker 1: like drawing concept sketches, three D modeling, recreating those sketches
Speaker 1: and three D models on computerurs and then that imagery
Speaker 1: would be used obviously in the footage. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: that means that they can insert things like a lion
Speaker 1: running through fields and forests. This is a very happy lion. Um.
Speaker 1: That's the only thing they can do. Only lions, only forests. Listen,
Speaker 1: if you want a monkey in a jungle, sorry, go
Speaker 1: somewhere else you're out of luck, or you know, it
Speaker 1: can be things like a mountain. Um. Some things that
Speaker 1: jump to mind are our movies, Like I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: something like The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings where
Speaker 1: you've got all sorts of visual effects added, you've got
Speaker 1: entire armies of orcs like crazy things like that. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's not just those very obvious visual effects that
Speaker 1: you see on screen. You're like, of course that there's
Speaker 1: not literally an army of orcs like coming over this
Speaker 1: giant meadow. It's it's smaller and more subtle things too,
Speaker 1: things that I literally did not know existed. And one
Speaker 1: of those things is called beauty work. And this is
Speaker 1: so interesting because it's essentially like the photoshop being an
Speaker 1: air brushing that we talk about frankly complain about and
Speaker 1: protest in magazines and advertisements and stuff like that, but
Speaker 1: it's going on in your movies. Too. Yeah, this article
Speaker 1: and mash double that we were reading about apparently took
Speaker 1: years to put together because the people in the industry
Speaker 1: doing this beauty work at these very specialized VFX houses
Speaker 1: that do it, we're so resistant to talk to anyone
Speaker 1: on record about it. And continually throughout the interview process
Speaker 1: reiterated how the journalist was not to name any of
Speaker 1: the names that they were mentioning because I mean, it
Speaker 1: would essentially be outing these actors who aren't just older actors,
Speaker 1: we're talking young ingnews as well, who are getting this
Speaker 1: kind of on camera work in quotes done so that
Speaker 1: might be slimming, d aging, enhancing faces and bodies. Essentially
Speaker 1: we're moving any kinds of blemishes and lying to all
Speaker 1: of us who were in the movie theater. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's what's so interesting that um one of the
Speaker 1: people quoted, an anonymous VFX artist quoted, was saying, Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody in a movie looks that way in real life,
Speaker 1: Like even even the beautiful young Angeneus, even if they're
Speaker 1: doing nothing but eating kale and drinking water, that's still
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. They're still going to go in a
Speaker 1: lot of the time and do nips and tucks. They
Speaker 1: even cited a crow's feet transplant. Apparently there was some
Speaker 1: actor in some big action movie who didn't like it
Speaker 1: when there was a close up of him squinting into
Speaker 1: the sunlight. But to totally remove his crow's feet would
Speaker 1: have been unnatural, right, You squint, you get lines next
Speaker 1: to your eyes. So they literally went in and took
Speaker 1: these squint lines from a younger actor and put them
Speaker 1: on his face. And in this article they talked about
Speaker 1: how and I kept reading this article thinking this isn't real, like,
Speaker 1: this can't be real. This is gonna be like a
Speaker 1: weird myth right now, it's it's it's so true. And
Speaker 1: they talk about how even in some cases, actors or
Speaker 1: actresses will go into the VFX studio and sit shoulder
Speaker 1: to shoulder with the artist being like, okay, take out
Speaker 1: that dimple, take out that blemish, do this, do that,
Speaker 1: working with them to craft this imaginary person that we
Speaker 1: then see on screen. Yeah, And and the one A
Speaker 1: list name that was dropped is Brad Pitt because where
Speaker 1: you can see this beauty work most on display, or
Speaker 1: most obviously on display, i should say, is in the
Speaker 1: curious case of Benjamin Button and This was what was
Speaker 1: used to have the young super hot like river runs
Speaker 1: through it, Brad Pitt prancing around on screen where you're
Speaker 1: like he's back, and then of course like baby baby
Speaker 1: Brad Pitt, an old man Brad Pitt. That, my friends,
Speaker 1: is the beauty work we're talking about. No, I did,
Speaker 1: because I had always wondered, like watching Menjtionment Button. Obviously
Speaker 1: there's VFCS work going on there in addition to special effects,
Speaker 1: because obviously you have Brad Pitt going from a very
Speaker 1: old man down to a baby, so there's got to
Speaker 1: be some movie magic obviously. Um. But there is that
Speaker 1: scene when like Thelma and Louise era hunky Brad Pitt
Speaker 1: walks through the doors of the dance studio and he's
Speaker 1: enveloped in this like soft golden light, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: what witchcraft made this happen? What like black magic? Wh
Speaker 1: what do we have to cook in a cauldron? And
Speaker 1: and how can we repeat this? This is wonderful. He's
Speaker 1: just a really good method actor. Caroline. Yeah, so method um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so, uh, no no idea that that was
Speaker 1: going on. But that is also an example of VFX.
Speaker 1: It's anything from going in and slimming and trimming and
Speaker 1: d aging and crow's feet transplanting, all the way up
Speaker 1: to inserting a giant orc army on your screen. But
Speaker 1: before we had people doing a lot of this on
Speaker 1: like Giant Max with super fancy computer programs, we had
Speaker 1: what we're called optical effects, which were the same kinds
Speaker 1: of effects created through science. Here comes the stembar of
Speaker 1: the show friends. That's right, the science of light. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is coming from a very interesting article in
Speaker 1: The Mary Sue by Jennifer Lee. She looked at a
Speaker 1: couple of lady pioneers in the optical effects early v
Speaker 1: effects days, and Lee points out that not surprisingly, most
Speaker 1: of the people doing this work in the early days
Speaker 1: until about the nineteen seventies were dudes. But we get
Speaker 1: some women, some lady VFX pioneers. At Lucasfilm's Industrial Light
Speaker 1: and Magic, they had the most well known optical effects department,
Speaker 1: and you might know them from things like Star Wars,
Speaker 1: that small independent series. And these departments would be split
Speaker 1: into two in areas. You would have camera, which were
Speaker 1: generally handled by the dudes, and then line up, which
Speaker 1: was where the like three women were, and they used
Speaker 1: what we're called optical printers, which were essentially cameras attached
Speaker 1: to projectors. So what did these lady lineuppers do. They
Speaker 1: would create math intensive instructions for the optical printer cameraman
Speaker 1: to shoot a collection of elements like a live action
Speaker 1: background model, spaceship's explosions, etcetera, into one final shot. So again,
Speaker 1: here comes so much stem in here. I mean, the
Speaker 1: Mary Stue article gets into some nitty gritty detail of
Speaker 1: how these women would have to do perform all of
Speaker 1: these special equations to figure out exactly how to make
Speaker 1: the light hit this set and the camera lens in
Speaker 1: the exact kind of way to make these incredible effects
Speaker 1: that obviously we would probably be doing on computers now.
Speaker 1: So the job required that stem knowledge within optical effects,
Speaker 1: and he had to know that machine inside and out.
Speaker 1: Not to mention the job was a pressure cooker. They
Speaker 1: talked to one woman who said that over the course
Speaker 1: of working like a million hours on this one project,
Speaker 1: she screwed up twice and she got a very stern
Speaker 1: talking to I mean, there was just no room for
Speaker 1: error basically, and uh Lee cites a couple of pioneers,
Speaker 1: and it's funny because I'm so used to with Sminty episodes, Kristen,
Speaker 1: when we talk about Pioneers, if we're not going back
Speaker 1: to the Greeks, were at least going back to the
Speaker 1: Victorian era. But of course there was no such thing
Speaker 1: as a movie with special effects in the Victorian era.
Speaker 1: So we go back to really about this era that
Speaker 1: we're talking about about, the nineteen seventies. And Lee talked
Speaker 1: to peg Hunter and Mary E. Walter. So peg Hunter
Speaker 1: was hired by feminist Leave specifically points out feminist producer
Speaker 1: Rose dween In to do lineup on Return of the Jedi.
Speaker 1: She was the second him In hired, so she wasn't
Speaker 1: the first, but Hunter was the first to actually stick
Speaker 1: it out. Apparently when she came in, people were still
Speaker 1: bad mouthing the woman who had been there before her,
Speaker 1: and so she was like, oh, I better make a
Speaker 1: good impression. And that's new significance for one of my
Speaker 1: favorite childhood films. I know that purists are like, oh,
Speaker 1: Empire Strikes Back is totally the best, but listen when
Speaker 1: Christmas rolled around and TBS would show the Star Wars
Speaker 1: trilogy all day long, back to back, I was always
Speaker 1: pumped about returning the Jetty. I know it's because of
Speaker 1: the e Walks and their teddy bears, and people think
Speaker 1: that that's gimmicky, but listen, I was a kid. I
Speaker 1: used to have a boss that looked like an e walk.
Speaker 1: One of my previous was that was that VFX or
Speaker 1: just just genetics. I don't know, maybe it was really
Speaker 1: advanced beauty work. Maybe he was wearing a suit of
Speaker 1: VFX suit. But you know, being that this is sort
Speaker 1: of a stem or steam if you include art into it,
Speaker 1: a stem or steam environment, it should become as no
Speaker 1: surprise that there's the whole issue of like a broy
Speaker 1: macho dude culture, steamy steam culture that just sounds like
Speaker 1: a locker room or something that needs to be four
Speaker 1: or nine or Clorox or whatever. But but Hunter told
Speaker 1: Lee that yes, there was indeed a macho environment. But
Speaker 1: the thing is it wasn't just like anti woman, we
Speaker 1: hate you, Get out of this room, lady and gonna
Speaker 1: make us a sandwich. It was so MUCHO that it
Speaker 1: was intimidating to both men and women, like there were
Speaker 1: there was apparently a very heavy air of macheesmo going
Speaker 1: on in these rooms. But helping a thin out that
Speaker 1: Air One woman Mary E. Walter quickly followed Hunter in
Speaker 1: her job at Industrialite and Magic, but she'd previously worked
Speaker 1: in a number of different types of jobs, sort of
Speaker 1: working her way up the ranks at the Westeimer Company
Speaker 1: in Hollywood around a bunch of old crotchety World War
Speaker 1: two Eric Camerman, who were she said, openly hostile to
Speaker 1: the idea of women taking their jobs. Apparently there was
Speaker 1: no concept of like we hire openly and we consider
Speaker 1: the best man or woman human person for the job.
Speaker 1: It was just like, no, it's you're taking men's jobs actively.
Speaker 1: And Walter actually got her start in optical effects, specifically
Speaker 1: by being trained by another lineup woman, Benita Nelson. So
Speaker 1: even though uh, there were lots of dudes doing the
Speaker 1: work who could have helped her out, it was it
Speaker 1: took another woman training her in this work for her
Speaker 1: to get her start. And even today for VFX artists
Speaker 1: that kind of apprenticeship is important for getting in the
Speaker 1: door as well. So training before you even get into
Speaker 1: say a dream lucasfilm type of job, you usually get
Speaker 1: a bachelor's in computer graphics or art with some experience
Speaker 1: in computer programming, and even if you're not a math whiz.
Speaker 1: It just really helps to have a grasp of trigonometry,
Speaker 1: applied mechanics and basic algebra. I mean, you know what say,
Speaker 1: same same seased for being a professional lady podcaster, absolutely,
Speaker 1: but it also helps to know how the eye works,
Speaker 1: so knowing that what you put on the screen has
Speaker 1: to look natural, knowing understanding movement, understanding how bodies and
Speaker 1: objects move, but also understanding how the landscape behind a
Speaker 1: body or object will move as you turn the camera. Um.
Speaker 1: But most importantly, obviously you have to have that eye
Speaker 1: for artistic detail, which ties into of course, understanding how
Speaker 1: things move and how they look when they move. So
Speaker 1: you might assume that you need some kind of fancy
Speaker 1: art degree in order to get that train that i
Speaker 1: for artistic movement. But keep in mind, if you get
Speaker 1: an expensive one of those, you're likely going to be
Speaker 1: starting your job hunt off in the whole at least.
Speaker 1: According to filmmaker Mary Lewis Thompson, who was talking to
Speaker 1: Indie Wire about how her career path was really defined
Speaker 1: by just like finding any job, it wasn't going straight
Speaker 1: for the dream job. It might have been a little
Speaker 1: bit of a meandering course and sometimes as she mentioned,
Speaker 1: putting up with sexual harassment to get the job that
Speaker 1: I mean, just get something under her belt. Yeah, And so,
Speaker 1: rather than pursuing exactly the career path that she wanted,
Speaker 1: she found that she was not really off ramping, but
Speaker 1: sort of just taking different types of jobs than going
Speaker 1: into post production specifically or filmmaking specifically. Um. But meanwhile,
Speaker 1: she was talking about a German filmmaker friend who came
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles and was able to intern for a
Speaker 1: year and have all of her expenses covered by her government,
Speaker 1: which is an investment that let her progress more easily.
Speaker 1: And I mean this is hardly specific to VFX or
Speaker 1: post production in the film industry. I mean it's kind
Speaker 1: of like any applied arts job. If you shell out
Speaker 1: boku bucks for an expensive degree, I mean, you've got
Speaker 1: to pay that back, You've got to worry about finances
Speaker 1: and money. And so that means that you're not as
Speaker 1: freed up to pursue the exact artistic or in this case,
Speaker 1: fusion of artistic and stem job that you really really want.
Speaker 1: It's like you almost have your passion for it has
Speaker 1: to be overwhelming, it has to be louder than the
Speaker 1: voice saying, hey, you've got to pay your bills. And
Speaker 1: even if you get the internships and apprentice ships and
Speaker 1: put together a strong reel to get you in the
Speaker 1: door at stay a company, is studio, or even just
Speaker 1: starting off as a freelancer, the money that you get
Speaker 1: is gonna just depend on where you are and what
Speaker 1: you're working on. For instance, junior VFX supervisors earn an
Speaker 1: average of a week, which doesn't sound half bad, but
Speaker 1: top supervisors can make tens of thousands of dollars every
Speaker 1: single week. But this all depends on whether you're working
Speaker 1: for a comp any, studio or as a freelancer, and
Speaker 1: it also depends on studio budgets the cycle of making movies,
Speaker 1: and this industry is like many jobs like this, moving
Speaker 1: farther and farther to the freelance side, which means you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna miss out on certain benefits on regular pay,
Speaker 1: on job protection, because as a freelancer you can get
Speaker 1: benefits through the industry group visual the Visual Effects Society,
Speaker 1: And if you're working for a post production company and
Speaker 1: you're lucky, you might get some regular office worker benefits.
Speaker 1: If you're even luckier, you might even get maternity leaf
Speaker 1: but this is another one of those jobs where you
Speaker 1: are expected to work at least ten hours a day
Speaker 1: under high pressure deadlines, with lots of travel, and if
Speaker 1: we're being realistic, a lot of people that because I
Speaker 1: this is a situation where, like I read the comments
Speaker 1: on the articles, I usually don't I try not to,
Speaker 1: but it was fascinating to read people's takes on this.
Speaker 1: That's like no realistic lee, especially if you're like in
Speaker 1: the thick of a project, you're gonna probably end up
Speaker 1: working days that veer more towards sixteen hours at a time,
Speaker 1: just to get the work done, just to prove that
Speaker 1: you're a team player, and honestly to try to secure
Speaker 1: your job. And it's a job that isn't necessarily secure
Speaker 1: because industry wide, even though so many films and big
Speaker 1: films rely on VFX, the situation isn't super great for
Speaker 1: the artists making that movie magic happen. Um Speaking to
Speaker 1: Animation World Network in March, Steve Parish said, it's a cutthroat,
Speaker 1: globalized business. At the beck and call of the six
Speaker 1: big movie studios, they demand profit and lots of it,
Speaker 1: and and this was a really interesting part of the
Speaker 1: industry that I just had thought about before in terms
Speaker 1: of how, like a lot of other creative services, if
Speaker 1: you were working for a firm, you it's a it's
Speaker 1: a bit process essentially, and you have to outbid the
Speaker 1: other firms. And outbidding those other firms often means meeting
Speaker 1: studio demands to make the product for as little as possible,
Speaker 1: because they can simply say, well, well outsources or well
Speaker 1: we'll go somewhere where it's cheaper, because they can always
Speaker 1: find it cheaper. Yeah, and this is something that, uh,
Speaker 1: this is something that when Jurassic World came out, I
Speaker 1: did a little bit of reading on because I was like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is great. Actually hated that movie. But she was
Speaker 1: running in heels the whole time. That got to me
Speaker 1: so much. The credits hadn't even rolled and I was
Speaker 1: already tweeting like the most unrealistic part of this was
Speaker 1: not the giant whale that eats the shark. It was
Speaker 1: the woman running in heels for two hours. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so like speaking of that giant whale that eats the shark,
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, this is great and it's awesome
Speaker 1: and fun and whatever, but it just looks like it
Speaker 1: just looks like it's on the computer. I mean, it
Speaker 1: doesn't to me look as realistic as the Jurassic Park,
Speaker 1: which of course they did use special effects. They used
Speaker 1: visual effects, but they also use special effects. The giant
Speaker 1: Stegosaurus on the ground next to the giant pile of
Speaker 1: poop that Laura Dern puts her arm into, all of
Speaker 1: that good stuff. I'm like, why do things these days
Speaker 1: look just so different? So obvious. No, it's not the
Speaker 1: claimation Godzilla of the nineteen sixties, but like, it just
Speaker 1: doesn't look maybe as good as VFX did a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. And I'm saying this as an ignorant podcaster,
Speaker 1: like someone who does not sit behind a computer and
Speaker 1: create visual effects. But anyway, but dinosaur poop, this isn't
Speaker 1: the same, Caroline, Is that what you're saying, That's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Well, so I started reading about how really
Speaker 1: the post production industry in general, but specifically VFX is
Speaker 1: in such upheaval because of those reasons you were talking
Speaker 1: about about having to outbid your competitors, having to promise
Speaker 1: to keep costs slow, and if you can't, it's essentially
Speaker 1: coming out of your pocket because you've signed on the
Speaker 1: dotted line that you're going to provide services for this
Speaker 1: much money. But then you've got people like ang Lee
Speaker 1: who directed the Life of Pie, who they went all
Speaker 1: sorts of awards for their film, but they're still saying
Speaker 1: things like, yeah, but I wish it was better, faster, cheaper, um.
Speaker 1: And so you end up, especially once things start getting
Speaker 1: outsourced to other countries, you end up having a lot
Speaker 1: of VFX houses closing their doors. And so this ties
Speaker 1: back into my initial like after Jurassic World, why does
Speaker 1: this look the way it does question, because if you're
Speaker 1: having to provide things, uh, you know, faster, cheaper, all
Speaker 1: of that stuff, it's possible, and listeners send me letters,
Speaker 1: tell me what the real deal is. I want to
Speaker 1: hear it. But like, it's possible that there's not the
Speaker 1: same level of attention to the work going on because
Speaker 1: you just don't have the time, not because you're not
Speaker 1: a good artist, not because you're not a great VFX house,
Speaker 1: but because somebody is standing over you going faster faster
Speaker 1: if you're cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. So we actually spoke with
Speaker 1: Kylie wallpaina who's been super vocal both online and in
Speaker 1: some pretty cool lady lead forums on the Internet about
Speaker 1: gender issues in the post production industry. So to give
Speaker 1: you a little background about who Kylie is. After years
Speaker 1: as an editor, she now works as a workflow supervisor
Speaker 1: at a company that manages workflow and dailies for TV
Speaker 1: and film. So basically, a TV show or a movie
Speaker 1: will hire her company and her and her workers to
Speaker 1: manage everything that happens from the camera through the editing,
Speaker 1: and then through to the finishing, including VFX. So uh,
Speaker 1: Kylie gave us a little perspective on the industry and
Speaker 1: she helped to illustrate why it's not so rosy, uh
Speaker 1: kind of. In general, there's also a culture of not
Speaker 1: wanting to go against the grain because they're going to
Speaker 1: hire someone else. If you put up a fight and
Speaker 1: demand an eight hour day, they probably won't hire you
Speaker 1: for a job because there are a dozen other people
Speaker 1: that will fill that role. Or if you're working a
Speaker 1: gig and you want to leave at a certain time,
Speaker 1: many people look at you like you're not being a
Speaker 1: team player, even if you're getting your work done and
Speaker 1: you're doing it better. And a lot of people might
Speaker 1: have heard the phrase will fix it in post, but
Speaker 1: that's actually not a joke. A lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: runs downhill, and people on post end up having to
Speaker 1: fix stuff at the last minute, which can really mess
Speaker 1: up your day or week or weekend or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: expected that you'll do whatever it takes to make the goodline,
Speaker 1: and some wonder whether that environment might be what deters
Speaker 1: or outright prevents more women from being in rising within
Speaker 1: this industry because it's not ideal for a family life.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna talk more about that when we come
Speaker 1: right back from a quick break. So what we were
Speaker 1: getting at before the break was essentially that the VFX
Speaker 1: life is not easy UMX life seriously, And I mean,
Speaker 1: I know we're we're basically talking about a very small
Speaker 1: segment of the population. This is a very specialized job,
Speaker 1: a very small, tight knit group of people. UM but
Speaker 1: I still think it's worth discussing because the problems that
Speaker 1: these people face. It's just another example that Kristen and
Speaker 1: I feel like you and I talk about a lot
Speaker 1: in various aspects of STEM. Jobs are really any career
Speaker 1: where the worker isn't provided for, isn't taken care of,
Speaker 1: and people tend to say like, well, then you're just
Speaker 1: not cut out for this job, and it's like, well, wait,
Speaker 1: but why don't we make the industry better for everyone, everyone,
Speaker 1: men and women, families and unfamilied people alike. One point
Speaker 1: of relevance, too, for people who might feel so far
Speaker 1: removed from any kind of work environment, even marginally, you know,
Speaker 1: relatable to that, is that we still enjoyed the fruits
Speaker 1: of their labor and of going through like this very
Speaker 1: intense industry. I mean, I don't think that there is
Speaker 1: anyone listening who has not benefited entertainment wise from their work,
Speaker 1: especially the orcs. Especially the orcs need work, yes, yes
Speaker 1: they do, and they also need gender equality as well,
Speaker 1: feminist works. I wonder what a lady ORC looks like.
Speaker 1: Probably a lot like a like a dud to work,
Speaker 1: except she's just running in high heels. She's got eyelashes. Yes. Well,
Speaker 1: one thing that's often cited in terms of people men
Speaker 1: or women who have families working in VFX and it
Speaker 1: being sort of hostile to that whole situation is the
Speaker 1: travel thing. Because we were talking about how a lot
Speaker 1: of jobs get outsourced to other countries, and so it's
Speaker 1: almost like, well, whether you're a worker in America or
Speaker 1: whether you're a worker in India, the VFX industry or
Speaker 1: the Hollywood industry in the machine is not necessarily taking
Speaker 1: good care of you. And so basically the VFX work
Speaker 1: follows the film subsidies wherever those are, in whatever city
Speaker 1: or country they are, and the artists have to follow
Speaker 1: that work. Visual FX artist Philip Brosst wrote an open
Speaker 1: letter to Life of Pie director Angle after Angley said
Speaker 1: he wished the work had been cheaper, and he said, look,
Speaker 1: those same subsidies raise overhead, destroyed the market and cause
Speaker 1: wage stagnation in what are already trying economic times. And
Speaker 1: so if you're a VFX artist man or a woman,
Speaker 1: chances are you're going to be traveling the world for
Speaker 1: months at a time, chasing locations. And this is really
Speaker 1: hard for anyone, especially if you don't have the job security,
Speaker 1: if you're freelancer, maybe if you're relying on this job
Speaker 1: for any type of benefits, um of course you're going
Speaker 1: to feel like your job securities at risk at some point.
Speaker 1: And not surprisingly, Kylie also had some fascinating perspective on
Speaker 1: how family life and the crazy industry expectations intersect and
Speaker 1: being a parent or not also can change how people
Speaker 1: think of you in post production. Knowing the culture of
Speaker 1: late nights and long days, the people who hire staff
Speaker 1: may avoid people with children. This is particularly true of women.
Speaker 1: Men with children are thought of this. They're not thought
Speaker 1: of as a flight risk because assume they have women
Speaker 1: around to take care of the kids. But I've talked
Speaker 1: to really high level female editors who have cut some
Speaker 1: of the biggest films in the last ten years, and
Speaker 1: they've told me they've been asked in interviews if they
Speaker 1: have children, and that's so illegal, but it happens a lot,
Speaker 1: and we have to go with it sometimes to get ahead.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I know some female editors that
Speaker 1: work with good companies and requests certain hours in order
Speaker 1: to be home with children, and those companies comploy because
Speaker 1: they know the good the value of good, happy editors.
Speaker 1: I think people outside the entertainment industries see the same
Speaker 1: patterns reflected here that happen in all jobs, where women
Speaker 1: are judged harsher for having children, and large companies are
Speaker 1: requiring more and more from people with no regard for
Speaker 1: their childcare needs. So we have well established that it's
Speaker 1: tough out there for VFX artists. But let's super huper
Speaker 1: close up onto women in the industry, because, as VFX
Speaker 1: supervisor Lyndy de Quatrow told Jennifer Lee, quote, there are
Speaker 1: more than there used to be, but not as many
Speaker 1: as there should be. And part of that might have
Speaker 1: to do with just how long it takes to get
Speaker 1: any kind of security, much less any advancement within the industry,
Speaker 1: at least according to a pretty in depth piece over
Speaker 1: at tech Crunch. Yeah, and tech Crunch did mention that
Speaker 1: this is an industry where you can be working for
Speaker 1: a decade and never encounter a woman in a top
Speaker 1: level technical position, and so that starts to breed that
Speaker 1: whole thing that we've talked about in STEM before of
Speaker 1: like the hiring bias and all these things, like people
Speaker 1: start to think, oh, well, just women aren't interested. This
Speaker 1: is just a dude's pursuit. Uh. That's cited over and
Speaker 1: over again in the comments and some of these articles
Speaker 1: that like, oh, well, there aren't a lot of women
Speaker 1: in this industry, which just means that they're not interested.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot more to it with this job,
Speaker 1: as with any STEM job where there's a gender disparity.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, speaking of tech jobs, and gender
Speaker 1: disparity stats are really hard to come by. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize this, but VFX houses aren't tracking their diversity data
Speaker 1: like other tech companies do. Whereas some tech companies might
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, we're gonna increase our diversity. We're gonna
Speaker 1: like put an effort into hiring women or at least
Speaker 1: talk about diversity, the X houses tend to be a
Speaker 1: little bit more insular. But there are a couple of
Speaker 1: stats coming from Celluloid Ceiling Report. Yeah, it estimated that
Speaker 1: women accounted for just five percent of all visual effects
Speaker 1: supervisors working on the top two hundred fifty films, but
Speaker 1: of those films had no female visual effects supervisors whatsoever. So,
Speaker 1: of course then we have to ask the question of why,
Speaker 1: what's going on? Well, part of this is related to
Speaker 1: the fact that it is a STEM job. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's reflective of what's going on in the broader tech industry,
Speaker 1: which is something that Lyndy to Quatro pointed out as
Speaker 1: well that you know, if you don't have enough women
Speaker 1: in STEM in school, then you get into the whole
Speaker 1: pipeline issue with not enough role models on the industry
Speaker 1: to really cultivate those girls coming out of school, and
Speaker 1: then you have all of the barriers that also exist
Speaker 1: within the industry. So this sort of hurdle after a
Speaker 1: hurdle as is, you know, reminiscent of of so many
Speaker 1: of these topics that we've talked about on the podcast before,
Speaker 1: one of which, as tech Crunch points out, is a
Speaker 1: super well roey culture. That's steamy broke culture, steamy, sweaty,
Speaker 1: hairy hill. I saw that, that steamy bro culture. That's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: they cite and we've talked about this before. Uh, conferences
Speaker 1: with booth babes and like super skin type motion capture suits. Um,
Speaker 1: but even then, and I mean, that's that's okay. You've
Speaker 1: got your booth babe showing off the suit like I mean, granted,
Speaker 1: a motion capture suit probably has to be pretty tight.
Speaker 1: That's related to VFX. Sure. Oh there's also the issue
Speaker 1: of women getting groped at conferences. And this is not anecdotal.
Speaker 1: I'm not just being like and maybe there's some women
Speaker 1: who've gotten touched and appropriately. This is something that the
Speaker 1: filmmaker Mary list Compson, whom we started earlier writing for IndieWire,
Speaker 1: actually reported happened to her. She and some other women
Speaker 1: were attending a VFX conference and there was drinking um
Speaker 1: and it's a dark room and she was trying to
Speaker 1: leave the room and ended up getting groped. She encountered
Speaker 1: some other women in the bathroom, many of whom were
Speaker 1: upset because the same thing had happened to them. And
Speaker 1: as we hear about also in just tech issues at large,
Speaker 1: there's a lack of awareness about the in group favoritism
Speaker 1: that the steamy bro culture. I'm not going to stop
Speaker 1: saying steamy bros by the way that the steamy bros
Speaker 1: foster sometimes, but you know what's interesting, when we talked
Speaker 1: to Kylie, she was actually saying, it's not even really
Speaker 1: the browyeness that's the biggest issue in post production. There's
Speaker 1: generally less an outright bro culture. It's more of an
Speaker 1: institutional sexism and gender bias that's pervasive. A lot of
Speaker 1: people think they aren't sex to or they don't see
Speaker 1: your acknowledge the barriers keeping keeping women away. That's almost
Speaker 1: harder to do with than outright sexus And in many ways,
Speaker 1: since it's not so blatant as someone like snacking your
Speaker 1: ass or cat calling you or some mad men's stuff,
Speaker 1: it's more like the little voice in your head that
Speaker 1: assumes a woman is a resectionist instead of an executive
Speaker 1: producer when you walk in the door of a media company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is the whole idea that we just mentioned
Speaker 1: a little bit ago, that every comment you see on
Speaker 1: UH quotes and articles, comments on articles like, no, we're
Speaker 1: totally genderblind. It's really like the best man or woman
Speaker 1: for the job. It just depends on your qualifications, if
Speaker 1: you're driven, if you're a team player, all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and it's like, yes, skill absolutely matters, and yes, perhaps
Speaker 1: there are fewer women applying for these jobs, but there's
Speaker 1: a general as author John C. Williams points out in
Speaker 1: his book about this topic, um, there's also sort of
Speaker 1: a general denial that an internal bias, hiring bias, promotion
Speaker 1: bias could exist. It's the thing we've talked about before
Speaker 1: of like hiring and promoting people who are like you.
Speaker 1: And it's such a selective hiring process anyway. If you're
Speaker 1: hiring manager doesn't think that women are even available or
Speaker 1: interested or will stick around after they get pregnant, then
Speaker 1: there's sort of less of an impetus to try to
Speaker 1: seek out women for these roles and This is something
Speaker 1: that Kylie echoed when we talked to her about the
Speaker 1: challenges of getting and keeping women in the industry. There
Speaker 1: are unique aspects the post production that require its own
Speaker 1: initiative to get women in the pipeline. It's an odd
Speaker 1: cross section of creativity and engineering, and it's got really
Speaker 1: specific challenges from day to day. That's the most basic.
Speaker 1: Aspects of gender bias that keep women out of these
Speaker 1: fields can be applied to pretty much any industry where
Speaker 1: women are a minority. There's an institutional sexism that keeps
Speaker 1: women out. That is, men and women make assumptions about
Speaker 1: what one and want. They don't want to work these
Speaker 1: hours because they want to have kids. They don't like
Speaker 1: dealing with computers. They aren't interested in this stuff. The
Speaker 1: idea a lot of people get is that if women
Speaker 1: wanted to do it, they would, but that's false. If
Speaker 1: you look at enrollment and media programs like USC or
Speaker 1: n y U film schools, or the media program that
Speaker 1: Savannah College of Art and Design, which is a larger
Speaker 1: college for more media West film type education, the numbers
Speaker 1: are fifty fifty male female. So women are interested, but
Speaker 1: there's a bias against hiring them. That is so internalized
Speaker 1: you don't even realize you're doing it. And then there's
Speaker 1: something called the maternal wall bias, which is not the
Speaker 1: motherhood off ramp that it might sound like it is.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit more of a bait and switch
Speaker 1: that John C. Williams knows as well, where he contends
Speaker 1: that there's this automatic assumption that, oh, it's just culture
Speaker 1: that drives women out of the industry because they can't
Speaker 1: handle you know, being women, but particularly being working mothers
Speaker 1: within you know, all of these demands. But in reality,
Speaker 1: he argues that it's just straight up sexism, you know,
Speaker 1: stop blaming it on our ovaries really and focus on
Speaker 1: getting the institutional sexism out of the way. And also
Speaker 1: not enough consideration of the idea that many women are
Speaker 1: not self selecting out of the industry. Um. He also
Speaker 1: cites to study that moms are sevent less likely to
Speaker 1: be offered a job than equally qualified candidates. So maybe
Speaker 1: it's not so much of an off ramp but just
Speaker 1: a boot out the door. Yeah, so the same the
Speaker 1: maternal wall bias absolutely ties into that whole in group favoritism,
Speaker 1: unrecognized bias in terms of I'm going to hire and
Speaker 1: promote people who look like me, well, people who look
Speaker 1: like if I'm a hiring manager and I'm a dude,
Speaker 1: people who look like me aren't going to get pregnant,
Speaker 1: and so there could be a bit of that internal
Speaker 1: bias about, well, you know, she might leave soon to
Speaker 1: have a baby. So I need somebody who's going to
Speaker 1: be on this job night and day, sixteen hours a day.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to someone to look up to
Speaker 1: within this industry, at the very tippy top, it seems
Speaker 1: like is Victoria Alonso, who was Marvel's longtime VFX VP,
Speaker 1: who was recently promoted to Executive VP of Physical Production.
Speaker 1: And she was the first woman to hold such a position.
Speaker 1: And not only is she held up as obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: a success story, she's a mentor, but she's also very
Speaker 1: outspoken about the need for more women in VFX. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she served as a visual effects producer on about
Speaker 1: a half a dozen films, and she's not only vocal
Speaker 1: about getting more women into the industry, but she's incredibly
Speaker 1: vocal about wanting to be a visible role model for
Speaker 1: girls and women. She herself cites pioneering producer Kathleen Kennedy
Speaker 1: as her own role model. There's a story that is
Speaker 1: oft repeated about, you know, having grown up seeing Kathleen
Speaker 1: Kennedy's names on movie posters like et and being like,
Speaker 1: that's a lady. I can do that. I'm going to
Speaker 1: do anything I can to get in this industry. And
Speaker 1: you know, she talks about finally meeting Kennedy and crying
Speaker 1: and they're crying together, and she said she dorked out
Speaker 1: all this stuff. Um. And at the October fourteen Visual
Speaker 1: Effects Society summit, Alonso got a lot of press by
Speaker 1: urging VFX companies to work to reduce that gender disparity
Speaker 1: because she says it will improve the work. And she
Speaker 1: told this room, you've got to get the girls in here. Boys,
Speaker 1: it's better when it's fifty fifty. And she says that
Speaker 1: women bring a balance that you need. And she also
Speaker 1: gave advice to would be VFX women. She tells them
Speaker 1: to fill the gap, do any job that gets you there,
Speaker 1: which of course is in direct contradiction to what Mary
Speaker 1: Liz Thompson said, which was like to pay the bills,
Speaker 1: I had to take every job I could, and now
Speaker 1: I can't get full time work because nobody understands what
Speaker 1: my specialty is. It seems like Alonso is a Sheryl
Speaker 1: Sandberg of the VFX industry. Oh absolutely, because she does
Speaker 1: disagree with that author John C. Williams, who we just cited.
Speaker 1: She says the gender disparity does have a lot to
Speaker 1: do with motherhood, and this her ciniment totally echoes lean in.
Speaker 1: And it's worth noting that Alonso herself is a mother.
Speaker 1: She says, this is a tough road for women, not
Speaker 1: because it's a world of men, but because it takes
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time to be in a supervisory position,
Speaker 1: and by that time, you're having to make a decision
Speaker 1: about having children or not, which means you have to
Speaker 1: take a break. If you take a break, you're out
Speaker 1: of the game. And once you're out of the game,
Speaker 1: it's hard to get back in the game. I hate
Speaker 1: this game. It sounds like the worst game. But I
Speaker 1: mean that does that is indirect contradiction also to Williams's
Speaker 1: discussion of the maternal wall bias that like, no, women
Speaker 1: aren't self selecting themselves out of the pool, they're just
Speaker 1: not getting the same opportunities from the get go anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: and so Alonso said that once women decided to have children,
Speaker 1: about half don't come back to the business quote, so
Speaker 1: we're back to trying to fill in the fifty percent
Speaker 1: that left. We're consistently trying to fill that gap of
Speaker 1: women who leave. But Alonso is also like, as much
Speaker 1: as your you might be like fist pumping, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: women lean into orcs uh, Alonso was like she's a
Speaker 1: super controversial figure in the industry because the industry itself,
Speaker 1: like as we've talked about in detail, is experiencing a
Speaker 1: lot of up people. There's a lot of problems. People
Speaker 1: can't spend time with their families, they're traveling all over
Speaker 1: the world, maybe they don't have set benefits or set
Speaker 1: pay maybe they're being abused at work because everybody's saying
Speaker 1: do everything faster and cheaper, and so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are saying not only that it's not
Speaker 1: a gender issue, it's an industry is you, but also
Speaker 1: that Alonso might be part of the problem. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean she is someone who is having to oversee Marvel's
Speaker 1: bottom line, and so she needs things faster and cheaper
Speaker 1: as well because she has people that she has to
Speaker 1: be accountable to as well. So I mean it's she's
Speaker 1: kind of having to straddle both worlds of championing more
Speaker 1: women hopping into this role that ultimately on the other
Speaker 1: side of it isn't terribly supported by people like her.
Speaker 1: So this is a big reason why blogger vfx Soldier
Speaker 1: kind of wonders, like Alonso, why are you even encouraging
Speaker 1: more women to get into this job? It's awful out here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: He wrote that studios like Marvel and executives like Alonso
Speaker 1: have made the decision that create an environment that she
Speaker 1: acknowledges is extremely difficult for women to participate in. He writes.
Speaker 1: Anyone can preach platitudes, but it takes real leadership to
Speaker 1: propose a policy that implements those goals and executes it.
Speaker 1: And vfx Soldier goes on to site it's funny, I
Speaker 1: like citing VFX soldiers if it's a name, But vfx
Speaker 1: Soldier cites the example of Walt Disney Animation Studios, which
Speaker 1: continues he says, to make great movies with huge profits
Speaker 1: while offering their workforce union wages with overtime, paid maternity leave,
Speaker 1: and other benefits. Oh, he writes, and they do this
Speaker 1: without subsidy and dues displacement of their workers. And that's
Speaker 1: one thing Kristen that I forgot to mention earlier, which
Speaker 1: is that you've got all of this like crap going
Speaker 1: on in this industry, but there's also no unions or
Speaker 1: guilds two help workers fight for what they need. And
Speaker 1: so how do we get and keep more women in VFX?
Speaker 1: A lot of it ties into how do you take
Speaker 1: care of workers in general? Yeah, I mean one thing
Speaker 1: that de Quatra suggests is getting rid of the disparity
Speaker 1: by prioritizing hiring women in technical fields. I mean it's
Speaker 1: the whole you know, stem fill the gender gap, close
Speaker 1: the gender gap, I should say, just fill it up
Speaker 1: to still laugh with that that insulation foam um, but
Speaker 1: you know, hire more women basically. Yeah, And tech Crunch
Speaker 1: was like, yes, of course hiring practices need to be
Speaker 1: looked at, but also focused on the distribution of responsibilities,
Speaker 1: performance evaluation, and how the current dysfunction of these processes
Speaker 1: breeds an overall bias that colors the view of female competence.
Speaker 1: It's the cycle if you don't believe, if you don't
Speaker 1: see women, then you don't believe they're there, or they're capable,
Speaker 1: or that they want to be there, or that they
Speaker 1: want to be there, and so that the women who
Speaker 1: are there have to work triple hard to prove themselves,
Speaker 1: which is again same with a lot of STEM and
Speaker 1: or male dominated industries, And as you might expect, we
Speaker 1: talked to Kylie about this too, and she totally agrees.
Speaker 1: Here's her take on attracting and keeping women in the industry.
Speaker 1: Merely having at their first staff mixed with minorities and
Speaker 1: genders a great way to attract women in the post
Speaker 1: production industry. A diverse staff worked better together and creates
Speaker 1: better work, and it becomes self correcting in that the
Speaker 1: gender or racial bias that persists falls to the wayside
Speaker 1: when so many of the people you work with have
Speaker 1: their own experiences to share. By changing your culture to
Speaker 1: be inherently more accepting and interesting, you create a more
Speaker 1: friendly environment with fewer institutionalized barriers. Of course, you can
Speaker 1: also add other support systems like flexible work hours, healthcare, childcare,
Speaker 1: but in post production that would be a major endeavor,
Speaker 1: so I stick to the basics. Just hire women, higher minorities,
Speaker 1: lots of them. Consider correcting the numbers. Your own moral
Speaker 1: imperative and the rest will work itself out. And VFX
Speaker 1: soldiers sites Walt Disney Animation Studios as an example of
Speaker 1: doing it right in this regard. Yeah, he says, Listen, guys,
Speaker 1: you've got to mitigate the use of subsidies that constantly
Speaker 1: place VFX families. You've got to initiate a limit on
Speaker 1: those long work hours by making overtime pay a standard
Speaker 1: across the industry. Right now, you might work, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty hours a day. That doesn't mean you're going to
Speaker 1: earn overtime. And he says, you've got a mandate that
Speaker 1: vendors provide proper maternity leave, child care, and healthcare to
Speaker 1: VFX professionals. And how about everybody else while we're at it,
Speaker 1: how about we all get great paternity and maternity leave
Speaker 1: and childcare. So our listeners out there might be wondering
Speaker 1: why and whether we should even care about this. After all,
Speaker 1: it's not like VFX is a huge industry. It's not
Speaker 1: like this effects every one of our listeners. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is a pretty small segment of the population. But
Speaker 1: when we talked to Kylie, she was adamant that the
Speaker 1: gender issues in VFX and post production in general are
Speaker 1: part of a larger issue in the film industry. The
Speaker 1: sexist culture has a major effect on workers and then
Speaker 1: on what viewers the on screen. There's a pattern here.
Speaker 1: Women hire women, and they put women on screen to
Speaker 1: inspire other women. But for women to get to the
Speaker 1: point where they can hire, they have to make it
Speaker 1: for a really tricky pipeline. That's why diversity efforts are
Speaker 1: so important. An interesting anecdote, the showrunner for The Shield
Speaker 1: found that the female writers weren't speaking up anymore in
Speaker 1: the writer's room, and he found out the reason was
Speaker 1: because they were constantly being interrupted by men. When they
Speaker 1: spoke up, they were being seen as too emotional or aggressive.
Speaker 1: So the showrunner banned interruptions in the writer's room. So
Speaker 1: what's our takeaway for for this women in VFX Hollywood
Speaker 1: Stem conversation? Do you think? Well? I think Alonso's right
Speaker 1: in that if you diversify your team, you're only going
Speaker 1: to get a better product. You know, men aren't the
Speaker 1: only ones who can create massive works of visual effect art.
Speaker 1: Obviously women can do this too. Um, But it's that
Speaker 1: it goes back to that importance of, like I said,
Speaker 1: diversifying the team to get a different and better perspective
Speaker 1: and hopefully like make a better product on screen too,
Speaker 1: because every movie pretty much uses VFX these days. I'm
Speaker 1: really curious to know if there are people in VFX
Speaker 1: or people who hope to get into VFX listening. We
Speaker 1: definitely want to hear from you because it seems like
Speaker 1: there is a lot of conversation within your yes niche
Speaker 1: industry um happening. So fill us in mom Stuff at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot Com is our email address. You
Speaker 1: can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or messages
Speaker 1: on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages to
Speaker 1: share with you right now. Well, I have one here
Speaker 1: from Anne on our Gendered Kitchens episode. She says, Hey, ladies,
Speaker 1: I've been working my way through your pie cast, but
Speaker 1: your most recent one really got me thinking. A friend
Speaker 1: of the family recently opened a restaurant. Shout out to
Speaker 1: Jen at Strange Bird Bistro in Obilin, Ohio, and it's
Speaker 1: been exciting to watch her open. Her significant other, who's
Speaker 1: a guy, is often referred to as the owner, and
Speaker 1: he always politely corrects people that the owner is actually Jen.
Speaker 1: Funny how people assume the owner would be a guy.
Speaker 1: She worked as a waitress for many years, but has
Speaker 1: always been an excellent cook. She had plans to start
Speaker 1: a food truck, but then she was approached by one
Speaker 1: of the restaurants she had previously worked at, and the
Speaker 1: rest is history. It's so nice to see lady round
Speaker 1: businesses and I wish her much success as we do.
Speaker 1: So thanks Ann Well. I've got a letter here from
Speaker 1: j k M about our Gendered Chef episode. She writes,
Speaker 1: I was recently introduced to your podcast and have been
Speaker 1: chain listening while at work ever since and must say
Speaker 1: you guys are awesome. Thanks j k M. It was
Speaker 1: refreshing to hear you'll talk about the lack of women
Speaker 1: in professional kitchens, as it's a sore spot for me
Speaker 1: as a self proclaimed displaced pastry chef. I work on
Speaker 1: the line at a very popular organic bar and restaurant
Speaker 1: that doesn't sell dessert, and I'm not only the only
Speaker 1: woman in the kitchen, I'm also the only one with
Speaker 1: a culinary degree or any professional training for that matter.
Speaker 1: I'm constantly fighting this she can't do it stereotype, not
Speaker 1: only for myself but for new hires as well, since
Speaker 1: my kitchen manager will only hire women for certain stations
Speaker 1: like salad and prep. It chaps me, But what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do? Bills have to be paid and I
Speaker 1: love to cook ps Alex Gorna, Shelley Rocks. So thanks
Speaker 1: for your insight, j k M and keep it up.
Speaker 1: And hey, maybe you should go to Oberlin and try
Speaker 1: to get a job there. I love hearing about women
Speaker 1: starting their own restaurants to entrepreneurialism. Do it, ladies, I
Speaker 1: mean if you like, if you want to do it,
Speaker 1: of course, But now I want to hear from you
Speaker 1: mom stuff at house. Stuffworks dot Com is our email
Speaker 1: address and for links to all of our social media
Speaker 1: as well as all of our black ugs videos and
Speaker 1: podcasts with our sources. So you can learn more about
Speaker 1: women in visual effects. Head on over to stuff Mom
Speaker 1: Never Told You dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
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