Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse was a beautifully animated masterpiece that took five years to complete, but some animators who worked on the film say it was grueling work.
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have worked on many projects together and co-wrote Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse. The film has been a huge success with audiences, earning over $500 million globally despite being banned in some countries. Additionally, the film has been critically acclaimed for its beautiful animation style, like Spider-Punks animation which reportedly took three years to finish. However, it sounds like that beautiful animation came at a cost for some of the animators.
Four animators anonymously reported to Vulture about what they call “unsustainable working conditions” involved in the production of the film. Most animated projects will take a long time to produce and have many changes and overhauls. What makes this film different is that those changes were much later in the production process and included scrapping approved and fully finished segments of the film. It is hard to imagine what they cut from the film as it is very long for an animated movie at 2 hours and 16 minutes long with two different versions in theaters. The animators claimed that they had to work up to 11 hours a day, 7 days a week for over a year to make up for time lost.
The four animators seem to place most of the blame on Phil Lord, saying that Lord overshadowed the three directors’ work and that Miller was MIA for most of the production. The directors, Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson, and Kemp Powers along with Lorn and Miller didn’t comment on the subject. However, executive vice-president and general manager of Sony Pictures Imageworks, Michelle Grady told Vulture that Lord was not to blame as he simply was relaying decisions from the co-directors, Miller, the executive producers, and the studio.
This issue highlights many problems currently in the film industry. Without much job security, animators will stay on to a project even if the pay and hours are bad because they might not be able to find another project to work on. The work on their past projects also helps them work on new ones so they need to see them through to make sure their work is good and they get rehired. Additionally, some of these animators are on work visas and if they quit they may have to leave the country.
Not all of the animators who worked on Across the Spider-Verse share these same feelings as many have been sharing their behind-the-scenes work for months on social media saying how much they enjoyed working on the film. This included a 14-year-old who animated a scene over his spring break. Amy Pascal, executive producer for the film said that it was unsurprising that out of 1000 animators and techs 100 left the project and that it is just part of the industry.
Source: Vulture