A Piece of the Pi

Many people have been complaining about Seth MacFarlane's job hosting the Oscars the other night- a complaint I have found personally exaggerated and overly critical- but hardly anyone has mentioned the much more important topic, the protest movement that occurred Oscar night called "A Piece of the Pi."

Life of Pi, directed by Ang Lee, won four Oscars, including the Oscar for Best Achievement in Visual Effects. Four men went up to accept the award, and to the observant viewer, one might have noticed that the "hurry up and finish" music started playing rather quickly. This may have been intentional, as many believe the Academy was trying to prevent attention being called to the large group of protesters picketing the ceremony outside. The protest was in support of the visual effects studio called "Rhythm and Hues," and the four men accepting the award were likely to give it mention since without Rhythm and Hues, they wouldn't even have had a movie. 

Several weeks ago, the VFX studio Rhythm and Hues filed for bankruptcy and had to lay off around 250 employees. As of February 17th, Life of Pi has made over $111,000,000 at the box office, and won very many awards to boot- yet the very people who created the movie have yet to be paid or recognized for their work.

In fact, when one of the men accepting the Oscar for Best Achievement in Visual Effects, Bill Westenhofer, was unable to make mention of the studio directly responsible for his success, Twitter blew up.

But why has this happened? Well, apparently the poor state of the VFX industry has something to do with it. With overseas competition, domestic VFX houses must survive on less than 5% profit margin, and as a result, bankruptcy is quite common. 

As for why the Academy has chosen to cover up this great injustice rather than provide any sort of solution or publicity, that is a mystery.