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Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Tradition Studios, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 9 of 9
1. Oops: Family Moves Cross-Country For Non-Existent Digital Domain Job

Evidence has emerged that even as Digital Domain was running on fumes and had no cash to operate its Florida studio, they continued hiring people from around the United States. That leads us to the tragic story of the Alberts family, who arrived in Florida from New Hampshire on the day DD shuttered its Port St. Lucie, Florida-based Tradition Studios. Now, the family of five is homeless with no job and just $200.


Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: , ,

Related posts:

  1. Commentary: Digital Domain May Be On The Brink Of Disaster
  2. Comment of the Day: Digital Domain Should Avoid Missteps of Others
  3. Digital Domain Sets Up Florida Shop, Aims To Be Next Pixar

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2. Oops: Family Moves Cross-Country For Non-Existent Digital Domain Job

Evidence has emerged that even as Digital Domain was running on fumes and had no cash to operate its Florida studio, they continued hiring people from around the United States. That leads us to the tragic story of the Alberts family, who arrived in Florida from New Hampshire on the day DD shuttered its Port St. Lucie-based Tradition Studios. Now, the family of five is homeless with no job and just $200.

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3. Read The Resignation Letter Of Digital Domain’s John Textor

You can read the resignation letter of former Digital Domain CEO John Textor below. In his final glorious act of assholery, Textor refused to accept any responsibility for his gross mismanagement that led to the closing of Digital Domain’s Tradition Studios. In his parting shot, he describes the company’s board of directors (who are tasked with the thankless job of cleaning up the mess Textor created) as uncompassionate and unwise.


To the Directors of Digital Domain Media Group:

I hereby resign as a director of Digital Domain Media Group, Inc. (the “Company”) effective as of the close of business on September 6, 2012.

As you are aware, I am in profound disagreement with the decision to close our animation and visual effects studio in the wonderful community of Port St. Lucie, Florida. The people of Florida welcomed us with open arms and we certainly owed them greater consideration. We were able to hire and train local residents and have them mentored by the very best of our industry. Our incredibly talented artists and filmmakers were building something truly special in Port St. Lucie, not just our favorite first film, The Legend of Tembo, but also our first home, Tradition Studios. I am deeply saddened and heartbroken by this decision.

I believe that each of you as directors, and specifically those on the Strategic Alternatives Committee, have tried to do your very best to deal with the unfortunate consequences of our life as a public company. I also know that, in making your decision, you relied on the counsel of highly qualified advisors and legal representatives. That said, I think the outcome was not only unwise, but also without compassion. While I understand and support the effort to streamline costs, I believe this to be the wrong path. It is never a bad time to reconsider a bad decision. This can be reversed immediately.

Although I will no longer be a member of the Board, I intend to stay actively involved as a shareholder of the Company, and a believer in Florida. This decision will hopefully give me greater flexibility to independently consider other strategic alternatives for the Company, the Port St. Lucie studio and the people affected.

God bless you and thank you for your service.

Sincerely,

/s/ John C. Textor

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4. Read The Resignation Letter Of Digital Domain’s John Textor

You can read the resignation letter of former Digital Domain CEO John Textor below. In his final glorious act of assholery, Textor refused to accept any responsibility for his gross mismanagement that led to the closing of Digital Domain’s Tradition Studios. In his parting shot, he describes the company’s board of directors (who are tasked with the thankless job of cleaning up the mess Textor created) as uncompassionate and unwise.


To the Directors of Digital Domain Media Group:

I hereby resign as a director of Digital Domain Media Group, Inc. (the “Company”) effective as of the close of business on September 6, 2012.

As you are aware, I am in profound disagreement with the decision to close our animation and visual effects studio in the wonderful community of Port St. Lucie, Florida. The people of Florida welcomed us with open arms and we certainly owed them greater consideration. We were able to hire and train local residents and have them mentored by the very best of our industry. Our incredibly talented artists and filmmakers were building something truly special in Port St. Lucie, not just our favorite first film, The Legend of Tembo, but also our first home, Tradition Studios. I am deeply saddened and heartbroken by this decision.

I believe that each of you as directors, and specifically those on the Strategic Alternatives Committee, have tried to do your very best to deal with the unfortunate consequences of our life as a public company. I also know that, in making your decision, you relied on the counsel of highly qualified advisors and legal representatives. That said, I think the outcome was not only unwise, but also without compassion. While I understand and support the effort to streamline costs, I believe this to be the wrong path. It is never a bad time to reconsider a bad decision. This can be reversed immediately.

Although I will no longer be a member of the Board, I intend to stay actively involved as a shareholder of the Company, and a believer in Florida. This decision will hopefully give me greater flexibility to independently consider other strategic alternatives for the Company, the Port St. Lucie studio and the people affected.

God bless you and thank you for your service.

Sincerely,

/s/ John C. Textor


Cartoon Brew | Permalink | 17 comments | Post tags: , ,

Related posts:

  1. Digital Domain’s John Textor Is A Meme
  2. John Textor Made $16 Million In 2011 While Digital Domain’s Revenue Dropped
  3. Digital Domain’s John Textor Brags to Investors about Exploiting Animation Student Labor

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5. 300 Digital Domain Employees Lose Jobs; “Legend of Tembo” Shuts Down Production; John Textor Ousted

Tembo

Awful news out of Florida this morning. Digital Domain announced today that as part of “a strategic realignment that will enable it to focus its resources on its core business,” it will shut down its new Port St. Lucie, Florida studio Tradition and halt production of its first animated feature The Legend of Tembo. Per the studio’s press release:

As a key part of this strategic realignment, DDMG has begun the cessation of its Port St. Lucie operations by reducing virtually its entire Port St. Lucie workforce, retaining approximately 20 employees who will remain as part of the wind-down.

According to a Cartoon Brew commenter, 300 people lost their jobs this morning. The breakdown: “About 100 on Tembo, 50 or so on VFX, 100 or so doing Stereo Conversion work, and about 50 or so misc. employees.”

One artist who was let go tweeted, “A very sad day for the Digital Domain Tradition studios family. I’ll miss the whole Tembo crew,” and followed up with, “In related news, I’m looking for work! I’ll have an updated portfolio online later today.”

Other Digital Domain studios will remain open according to the same press release: “DDMG’s studios in California and Vancouver intend to continue to operate without interruption, as will the Digital Domain Institute, based in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Further, John Textor is stepping down:

John C. Textor has resigned, effective immediately, from his positions as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors of DDMG, as a member of the Board of Directors of DDMG, and from all positions as an officer and director with all subsidiaries of DDMG.

Digital Domain executive Ed Ulbrich has been promoted to Chief Executive Officer of Digital Domain Productions. Ulbrich has been with the company since its founding in 1993. According to DD’s corporate website, Ulbrich is “the chief architect of its commercials business, including Mothership.” He has exec-produced the vfx for over 500+ commercials, as well as the studio’s Academy Award-winning vfx in Titanic and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

I wrote at the end of August about how Digital Domain was on the brink of disaster due to Textor’s reckless management. What was written then is appropriate to reprint today:

There are already many victims in this situation. I feel awful for the artists who are working on Digital Domain’s first (and potentially last) feature The Legend of Tembo, as well as for all the other Digital Domain employees. I feel bad for Florida citizens who handed $132 million of their taxpayer dollars to a reckless and clueless businessman. I feel outraged for the incoming students of Digital Domain Institute who may have to perform slave labor because Digital Domain doesn’t believe in federal labor laws.

But you know who I don’t feel sorry for?

John Textor.

UPDATE (2:10PM ET): TCPalm.com has spoken to multiple artists who have been let go in Florida:

“Today’s the last day, there wasn’t much to be said. Just everybody apologized and said this is something that’s very hard for everybody,” said Philip Rosado, a digital artist. Rosado said he moved here from Vancouver, Canada, and had been working for Digital Domain for about a year. “Gotta get on the horn and find work,” he said. “I got two babies to feed, a wife to take care of, a roof to put over our heads. It’s not about me. It’s about my family.”

They also have a statement from Scott Ross, who started Digital Domain in 1993 with James Cameron and Stan Winston:

“It really breaks my heart when a company is started, and a company moves employees 3,000 miles away to a new home with a promise of a great future with the knowledge that there’s a strong possibility that the company would be out of business or that it would shutter its doors. It’s unconscionable to me that you can upset a human being’s life and a family’s life in the way that this company has.”

This photo taken by TCPalm photographer Will Greenlee is captioned: “A Port St. Lucie Police Department officer is stationed Friday at the gates of Digital Domain Media Group Tradition Studio as workers leave the building with their possessions.”

UPDATE (3:40PM ET): Watch local news coverage from WPTV:


UPDATE (4:05PM ET): Read the resignation letter of CEO John Textor.


Cartoon Brew | Permalink | 44 comments | Post tags: , , , , ,

Related posts:

  1. Douchey Digital Domain CEO John Textor: “Free Labor is Much Better Than Cheap Labor”
  2. Digital Domain’s “The Legend of Tembo”
  3. Digital Domain’s John Textor Is A Meme

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6. 300 Digital Domain Employees Lose Jobs; “Legend of Tembo” Shuts Down Production; John Textor Ousted

Tembo

Awful news out of Florida this morning. Digital Domain announced today that as part of “a strategic realignment that will enable it to focus its resources on its core business,” it will shut down its new Port St. Lucie, Florida studio Tradition and halt production of its first animated feature The Legend of Tembo. Per the studio’s press release:

As a key part of this strategic realignment, DDMG has begun the cessation of its Port St. Lucie operations by reducing virtually its entire Port St. Lucie workforce, retaining approximately 20 employees who will remain as part of the wind-down.

According to a Cartoon Brew commenter, 300 people lost their jobs this morning. The breakdown: “About 100 on Tembo, 50 or so on VFX, 100 or so doing Stereo Conversion work, and about 50 or so misc. employees.”

One artist who was let go tweeted, “A very sad day for the Digital Domain Tradition studios family. I’ll miss the whole Tembo crew,” and followed up with, “In related news, I’m looking for work! I’ll have an updated portfolio online later today.”

Other Digital Domain studios will remain open according to the same press release: “DDMG’s studios in California and Vancouver intend to continue to operate without interruption, as will the Digital Domain Institute, based in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Further, John Textor is stepping down:

John C. Textor has resigned, effective immediately, from his positions as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors of DDMG, as a member of the Board of Directors of DDMG, and from all positions as an officer and director with all subsidiaries of DDMG.

Digital Domain executive Ed Ulbrich has been promoted to Chief Executive Officer of Digital Domain Productions. Ulbrich has been with the company since its founding in 1993. According to DD’s corporate website, Ulbrich is “the chief architect of its commercials business, including Mothership.” He has exec-produced the vfx for over 500+ commercials, as well as the studio’s Academy Award-winning vfx in Titanic and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

I wrote at the end of August about how Digital Domain was on the brink of disaster due to Textor’s reckless management. What was written then is appropriate to reprint today:

There are already many victims in this situation. I feel awful for the artists who are working on Digital Domain’s first (and potentially last) feature The Legend of Tembo, as well as for all the other Digital Domain employees. I feel bad for Florida citizens who handed $132 million of their taxpayer dollars to a reckless and clueless businessman. I feel outraged for the incoming students of Digital Domain Institute who may have to perform slave labor because Digital Domain doesn’t believe in federal labor laws.

But you know who I don’t feel sorry for?

John Textor.

UPDATE (2:10PM ET): TCPalm.com has spoken to multiple artists who have been let go in Florida:

“Today’s the last day, there wasn’t much to be said. Just everybody apologized and said this is something that’s very hard for everybody,” said Philip Rosado, a digital artist. Rosado said he moved here from Vancouver, Canada, and had been working for Digital Domain for about a year. “Gotta get on the horn and find work,” he said. “I got two babies to feed, a wife to take care of, a roof to put over our heads. It’s not about me. It’s about my family.”

They also have a statement from Scott Ross, who started Digital Domain in 1993 with James Cameron and Stan Winston:

“It really breaks my heart when a company is started, and a company moves employees 3,000 miles away to a new home with a promise of a great future with the knowledge that there’s a strong possibility that the company would be out of business or that it would shutter its doors. It’s unconscionable to me that you can upset a human being’s life and a family’s life in the way that this company has.”

This photo taken by TCPalm photographer Will Greenlee is captioned: “A Port St. Lucie Police Department officer is stationed Friday at the gates of Digital Domain Media Group Tradition Studio as workers leave the building with their possessions.”

UPDATE (3:40PM ET): Watch local news coverage from WPTV:


UPDATE (4:05PM ET): Read the resignation letter of CEO John Textor.

Add a Comment
7. Commentary: Digital Domain May Be On The Brink Of Disaster

Remember the CGI 2Pac “hologram” that Digital Domain created for Coachella earlier this year. The gimmick was well received, but Digital Domain CEO John Textor (above, right), who we’ve already established isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, somehow convinced himself that animating CG versions of dead celebrities was an actual business model.

A couple weeks ago, Textor boasted to investors that he was trying to “tie up the real estate” of virtual humans. How could anyone miss with such an obviously sure-fire business, Textor claimed, “as long as we’re the only people in the world that can do this work.” It was just a matter of “getting the contracts, securing the rights, negotiating with the families, making sure that the likeness rights line up with the music rights and the venue rights and that’s what we should be doing.”

What Textor didn’t tell investors is that there are literally hundreds of other high-end VFX/CG companies that can create computer-animated human characters nowadays. Textor’s scam unfolded when rumors began floating around of a Ronald Reagan hologram that would appear at the Republican National Convention. Textor quickly told the Wall Street Journal “that rumor isn’t true.” Except it is true. Today, businessman Tony Reynolds, confirmed to Yahoo! News that he is indeed working on a Ronald Reagan hologram, and he’s not using Digital Domain to make it.

Holograms of dead people are the least of Textor’s worries though. Since DD’s stock peaked on May 1st, the company has been in freefall. Today, Digital Domain’s stock plunged 21% to a 52-week low of $2.31. In the past four months, the company has lost $300 million in value.

It gets worse. Textor owns 24 percent of Digital Domain. He took out a $12.5 milion loan to buy the shares in the company, and now he can’t pay back the loan. But here’s where it gets Lehman Brothers-style sketchy—and downright insane, if you ask me: Textor got the loan from Digital Domain’s largest shareholder, Palm Beach Capital. The Palm Beach Post has the sordid story:

Corporate governance experts said it’s rare for a shareholder to lend money to a CEO to buy shares. “It’s just not a smart idea,” said Charles Elson, a finance professor at the University of Delaware. “If you can’t pay it back, what happens?” If Textor were to default on the loan from Palm Beach Capital, his annual interest rate would go from 12 percent to 19 percent, Digital Domain said this week. Collateral for the loan includes 8.5 million shares of Digital Domain stock owned by Textor and mansions in Stuart and Mountain Village, Colo.

Executive compensation expert Paul Hodgson of GMI Research said such arrangements are “not very usual. It’s kind of generally been frowned upon because it tends to complicate relationships and undermine situations from a governance point of view. That would raise a red flag with us.”

There are already many victims in this situation. I feel awful for the artists who are working on Digital Domain’s first (and potentially last) feature The Legend of Tembo, as well as for all the other Digital Domain employees. I feel bad for Florida citizens who handed $132 million of their taxpayer dollars to a reckless and clueless businessman. I feel outraged for the incoming students of Digital Domain Institute who may have to perform slave labor because Digital Domain doesn’t believe in federal labor laws.

But you know who I don’t feel sorry for?

John Textor.


Cartoon Brew | Permalink | 3 comments | Post tags: , , , , , ,

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8. John Textor’s “Free Student Labor” Comments Have Staying Power

Outrage over comments by Digital Domain CEO John Textor continues to grow and has now spread across all corners of the animation community, from Motionographer to Canadian Animation Resources.

Textor’s comments, which were made last November but leaked online last week, center around Textor telling investors that 30% of Digital Domain’s workforce would be comprised of “student labor that’s actually paying us for the privilege of working on our films.” Artist Scott Benson dubbed it the Reverse Paid Internship. Today the story gained renewed momentum when the LA Times published a story about the controversy surrounding Digital Domain’s plans.

In the LA Times, Textor claims that his earlier comments were taken out of context and says, “Find me another visual effects company that is as committed to growing jobs in North America as Digital Domain. If this is taking advantage of kids, I wish somebody would have taken advantage of me when I was in school…. For $28,000 a year, you get an FSU degree and get to work at one of the leading visual effects companies in the world.”

The anonymous blogger at VFX Soldier rebutted those statements, pointing out that plenty of other vfx houses are building jobs in North America: “Sony, Rhythm & Hues, Zoic Studios, Image Engine, and many other companies have opened shop in Vancouver where there has been a huge growth in VFX jobs.” Furthermore, even with $132 million in cash, land, tax credits and financing from the state and the cities of Port St. Lucie and West Palm Beach, Digital Domain is still aggressively pushing forward on building studios in India and China. So much for North America.

Textor is clearly on the defensive, going so far as posting a comment on VFX Soldier, the site that initially broke the news about his comments. His rambling and combative commentary (“I was probably a 3D programmer before you were born.”) doesn’t address the ethical and legal issues raised by his pay-to-work idea. Instead, Textor claims that, “The VFX business model, as a pure services model, is broken,” and somehow that justifies students paying him to work at Digital Domain. Textor also states, “I cannot fix the VFX industry. I am definitely not smart enough for that.” That is something becoming increasingly clear to anybody who’s been following the story.

(Photo of Debbie and John Trextor via TCPalm.com)


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9. Digital Domain’s John Textor Brags to Investors about Exploiting Animation Student Labor

Digital Domain CEO John Textor (pictured above with his wife) envisions big things for his company’s new feature animation studio in Port St. Lucie, Florida called Tradition Studios. While we’ve written about the studio’s ambitious feature film plans, what wasn’t known until recently is how Textor intends to create the films. His plan is to convince students to pay Digital Domain to work on its films for free.

The blog VFX Soldier has obtained a speech that Textor gave last November to investors in which he revealed how the company’s new animation school Digital Domain Institute will be integrated with the Tradition studio. Textor told the audience:

Classes starting in the education space, what’s interesting is the relationship between the digital studio and the college.  Not only is this a first in a number of ways that we’ve talked about, but 30% of the workforce at our digital studio down in Florida, is not only going to be free, with student labor, it’s going to be labor that’s actually paying us for the privilege of working on our films.

Now this was the controversial element of this and the first discussions with the Department of Education, ’cause it sounds like you’re taking advantage of the students.  But we were able to persuade even the academic community, if we don’t do something to dramatically reduce costs in our industry, not only ours but many other industries in this country, then we’re going to lose these industries .. we’re going to lose these jobs.  And our industry was going very quickly to India and China.

Students, in other words, will pay up to $105,000 for the “privilege” of working on Digital Domain’s features, the first of which will be The Legend of Tembo. As VFX Soldier points out, “It’s one thing to work for low pay, it’s another thing to work for free, but it’s unfathomable to be expected to pay to work for free.

If all of this sounds a little fishy, that’s because it is. The Animation Guild in Los Angeles is exploring whether Digital Domain might be in violation of state and federal labor laws. They’ve tried to communicate with multiple Florida government agencies, including the state’s Department of Education, with no luck yet. Federal labor laws, however, would appear to be in favor of artists as they clearly stipulate that interns cannot “perform productive work” (i.e. work on the production of a film) without being compensated with at least minimum wage and overtime pay. (Minimum wage, by the way, is $7.67 per hour in Florida.)

As animation education programs proliferate around the United States and competition intensifies for a finite number of jobs, studios find themselves in a position to exploit young artists more aggressively than ever before. Whether it’s Titmouse relocating its studio nearly 3,000 miles away to avoid paying its employees union wages or Digital Domain making people pay to work on its films, there are plenty of legal loopholes that studios can exploit to save a buck on the backs of their production crews. And some studio CEOs are so proud of themselves that they’ll publicly boast about how they’re getting away with

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