Animation and VFX business, insurance, finance: Learn from the Life Coach – Rob Morgenroth.
Students that I taught in Media colleges and University courses have often asked me, “Did you go to film school to get into the industry”? And I say “No, I went the circuitous route, finished the race, took a while on the way back and stopped at a couple churches, and now I coach people through the maze.” From Emmy Award to internal awards, it’s been quite a ride.
The ‘Rob Morgenroth‘ never speaks bookish language. This exclusive interview showcase all his analysis of realities, facts and figures, practical experience in the Animation and Visual Effects industry, personal and professional success tips, self evaluation parameters and much more.
This entire read is surely going to change your artistic and analytical perspective towards your job and life. Feel free to get connected to him on LinkedIn. Without further ado, check out interview of Rob Morgenroth – the life coach of Animation and VFX artists.
The Virtual Assist thanks and welcomes Rob. Please share your academic background.
My academic background was always being shortened – I was always pushing it. I completed high school in two years instead of three, by taking my junior and senior years together. It’s certainly not that I was a genius, I just took all the required classes in one year and didn’t take any study halls, just to get out early. I was in a hurry (laughs).
Then, I went to college at the University of South Carolina, where my father was a professor, the chairman of the Marketing Department in the School of Business Administration. Which I thought would be cool – but it was anything but cool. First off, the classes were enormous, like 250 students in a class, and I hated that. I came from schools where there were 30 students in a class, and I participated. With 250, no one participated. Then, since my Dad was a popular professor, when I would meet someone around campus, I would say my name and they would say, “Oh you’re Professor Morgenroth’s son! He’s so great/funny/smart.” So that became my identity, which was in his shadow. That was something new to me, being more of a rugged individualist, and not fun. So I transferred to a small college nestled in a small town in the hills of West Virginia, I went from a university of 45,000 to a college of 3,000, and I completely loved it.
I excelled in my business and communications classes, and graduated in 2 ½ years, even though I didn’t get credit for that first semester at USC. The other USC (laughs).
What led you to study Business Management and Marketing?
I thought I would study music and arts, like drama, but I didn’t have the talent that other students had, nor the “drama”. They were a little more dramatic in their personalities than me, and it was uncomfortable. I was very comfortable in the business environment ever since I was about 13, when I formed my first business, which was a recreational vehicle consultant.
I wanted to get a motorhome for our family, and was told we couldn’t afford one, so I was determined. I read everything available in the known world on motorhomes and wrote a small book on motorhome buying, and sold it. I went to a state and national RV show to sell the book, and named a manufacturer Motorhome of the Year, all in pursuit of getting a motorhome.
How did you land your first job?
When I turned 16, I went to our local motorhome dealer to get a job in the service department. When he asked if I knew anything about motorhomes, I handed him my book. He looked at it, read a bit, looked at me and asked, “Did you write this?” I nodded, and got my first job. It really is about passion.
How has been your experience of working with VES?
The VES (Visual Effects Society) has been run by an executive director that has experience as a head of non profits, and little experience with the film industry. So he hired someone with non-profit fundraising experience to get corporate sponsors. The person was big in non profits, had worked with big names, but they were charitable, not honor film societies and organizations where skill and abilities are involved; so this woman failed miserably.
Jeff Okun asked if I would help because I had run a VFX company called E=mc2 Digital for 14 years and had sold it, and knew VFX people, knew relationship marketing. When I interviewed with the executive director, he said he didn’t want to hire me because I didn’t have any non profit experience. I kept quiet. He hired me, and I increased the social media and corporate membership over 300% in the year that I was there. I loved helping the industry, creating events, and being a relationship guy. But the director and I didn’t really get along all that well, since he felt that my humor was snarky, and I felt that it was wrong that he was taking roughly $250,000 a year in a combination of salary and hidden bonuses from members in an industry he didn’t really know intimately or have passion for. Year after year, he performed the mechanics of running a non profit society (which he did well). So we parted ways amicably and I took an offer from a VFX and Animation company that was based in Beijing but had an office in Sherman Oaks.
How did you get associated with churches?
My wife had wanted to leave Los Angeles when the children were both out of high school, and so we moved to Texas when that happened. I had been a committed Christian all the time I had been in Hollywood, but that was like being a candle under a basket, as the Biblical verse goes. Texas is completely different—prayer is open and accepted, churches are common, and I thought it would be a good career pivot since there was no viable film industry incentives in Texas like there were in Louisiana at the time, which were then followed by Georgia. So there were no real opportunities in Dallas to stay gainfully employed.
The problem was that I had my armor on in Hollywood; that is, I expected people to be less than honest, and ready to screw me, and I had my guard up at all times. When I took positions in churches, I took the armor off and put my guard down, naively forgetting that people are people, sin is sin, people are not angelic just because they work at churches. I was naïve about that.
How do you use social media marketing for Animation and VFX?
Primarily, I use LinkedIn.
Over the years, I’ve accumulated 25,000 connections, and I post content about the industry that people enjoy reading about. Most are video bits of other peoples work, a few are my own written, and almost none are self promoting. That’s a key rule. When you want to connect or do content, do NOT ask people for work. See what you can offer them, and not in the way of your abilities or “your work”, that’s self promotion and trying to get work. Think about it, you don’t like those, right? But when you get people that compliment you authentically, not flattery, and give you a genuine compliment about a piece of work you did and they’re familiar with the project or offer something whenever you need it, that’s the kind of thing you do like because it’s genuine and that’s unusual in our industry.
Many people who connect with me immediately send me their demo reel and their resume and tell me how they can ‘help’ me, etc. and I am polite, but there are, well, 24,500 others. But there are those 500 who I will turn to, and so I work at being one of those. And it has worked out well for me. I have gotten jobs that way. And I have certainly helped others get jobs that way.
During your entire professional career, you worked in multi disciplinary: marketing, sales, trainer, BDM, finance and now VFX Producer. How you managed to give full justice to such diverse job roles?
This industry, in the area of producing especially, is like that. Producing by its very nature, means bringing together all sorts of experience and external resources, and being a jack of all trades and master of none, but delivering excellence in execution: delivery on time and on budget. So whether I am asked to take on a marketing project, or a training project, or be the director of media for a seminary, I am being asked essentially to bring together various resources that are the most talented that I can, and if they aren’t talented enough, to support them into being talented enough or worst case, replace them with more talented temporarily, and match them with the money resources and time resources that are available to get to the finish line with excellence. That is, at the very least, expected; but hopefully, those expectations are exceeded. And the best way to do that is by servant leadership.
That’s something that is very lacking in Hollywood, because, as a rule, Jesus is not used as a role model, his name instead is used in vain. Strangely, servant leadership is more common in software development, when agile models are applied because SCRUM is servant leadership, without the heart. Heart is a huge plus, but not a critical necessity in American business, obviously. Scrum theory has enough of an advantage to be applied in business and production pipeline models in Hollywood. When I say ‘servant leadership’, I’m specifically talking about leading from behind; instead of being a leader that is always right, always being the center of ‘power’, the expert and the one that you make sure everyone knows that the team would die on the vine without, it is the member of the team that empowers the team, and assures them that they are there because they are the best you could assemble, and therefore they should make the best decision for their domain of authority, not you.
You are there for their support, not the other way around. First, they agree to what exactly needs to be accomplished as a team, to get done, and what needs to get done is generally set by the executive producer or the overall VFX producer for a project outside the team. A schedule is set as a roadmap to accomplish it in the time allotted, so that they each know what they each need to do to get to that finish line, and who is specifically doing what. You are the one running interference for them. They are a team of quarterbacks, all playing on their own fields, and you are called in to block when someone causes them a problem, ensnaring them and keeping them from performing as required. It develops ownership, responsibility, loyalty, and maturity that Hollywood knows little about. It has little to do with ping pong tables and massages and yoga as team benefits. It does, however, require a serious discussion with each team member when they are new to this type of leadership because it will be unlike what they have experienced before. It also requires that each member be mature enough to take that responsibility. If not, that may also become a snare that the producer (scrum master) has to untangle.
Please explain in detail regarding what is Visual Effects Producer? What are the roles and responsibilities?
Pretty much answered that in the last question, only you apply that to the disciplines of each art form of visual effects: project coordination, set supervision, roto department, modelling, animation, lighting, shading, coloring, VFX editing and post production, stop motion, coding, rendering.
And then as a producer, you have to be a translator. By that I mean you have to keep your artists safe from the show producers and director, who want to say only what they don’t want and tell the artists directly things that artists get offended by, because their creative spirits are in different languages. The VFX producer speaks, or should speak by necessity, both languages, plus the language of cost, which is executive producer language. That translation ability will determine how successful you will be as a VFX producer. If you don’t shield your artists, they will not be loyal to you, since they will work more and end up doing needless iterations for the director. If you don’t speak the cost language, you won’t be hired again by that exec producer.
A huge congrats to win two awards – Emmy and Silver Industrial Film Festival. Please share more details about it.
The reality is that awards are very political and fickle.
The good news is that you get many jobs as a result of having them, because people are in awe of them. The bad news is that you cannot get them as a result of you doing excellent work. You get them serendipitously or whimsically. Sorry, but it’s the truth. Oscars are worse. I wanted to work on a picture that won an Oscar and I did, American Beauty, but didn’t do visual effects, I did 24 frame video effects and we did the dancing bag video. Again, sorry to let the cat out of that bag. And thank you, Geoff Haley for your camera work.
When you get a project, how do you brainstorm regarding which studio should work on it, delivery timeframe, quality benchmark and other such parameters?
I don’t understand.
When we got a project, we did it. We didn’t choose a studio to work on it, we did it. We hired more people when we had to, like other companies would, but we rarely if ever hired other companies to do a project for us or under us. We were one of the first companies to create an overseas outsource model by hiring 14 artists in Taipei and renting office space, and training all of them. We did that by embedding one of our best artists there full time. We would work all day in LA, then at 6 pm or so, it was about 7 am in Taipei, our supervisor would fill him in, in Taipei from Los Angeles, on what was done by our team. Then they would work all day (which was all of our night), and send it back in (our) morning. It was very successful, and the Taipei company bought our company out.
You had wide experience with various production and post production houses. What are the differences between their approaches to project, workflow, production pipelines etc?
There are so many varied approaches.
The funny/sad thing is, everyone wants to think that they have the holy grail pipeline of efficiency developed, and, of course, they don’t want to share it because they put all the work into it. But they have to share it, to work with other entities, but how much they share is always a ridiculous push-pull give-take don’t tell too much-be transparent! kind of psychotic behavior. Like we all want to collaborate, but we all want to keep our competitive advantages; however mutually exclusive those two may be.
In your entire professional career, which have been the most challenging projects and how you successfully finished them?
The first project that comes to my mind is the Steven Soderbergh movie OCEANS ELEVEN. It was one of the best projects, one of my favorite projects, and one of the worst, most challenging irritating projects.
It’s long ago enough that I can share some of the challenges. What always made my projects go exceptionally well was production support. Both from the producer’s corner, and the art department, who drive the director’s creative which often drives the look of everything. What makes work exceptionally difficult are egos, politics, and immaturity. One key to my success in the industry was making certain that we absolutely positively delivered, regardless of what we had to do. Ego and pride was always pushed aside at our company, and the getting the project done was quintessential. That fact got us rehired and rehired show after show with the same producers.
With OCEANS, the producer insisted on hiring us, and despite the enormity of the requirements of an out of town show with astronomical talent, I knew we’d have his support. What I didn’t know was that the production designer wanted someone else, and he was overruled. So he hated us, hated me, and made our lives/my life, a living hell. The spoiled child syndrome that some actors and directors are known for are certainly bad enough; but when it is behind the scenes, it can be completely intolerable. He would demand things that were unavailable. Literally. He would ridicule me on set as we struggled to keep up with his vindictive changes. It was intolerable. If you subscribe to those games, you lose. But we didn’t, we did our job and hated it.
The side of working with the line producer, creating HBO fight commercials and an actual HBO fight in the MGM without HBO, working with those totally fun actors, loved it. It was like fire and ice, love and hate. At the end, the execs found out about the treatment and rewarded us for the mistreatment, and they were highly honorable about it. Totally above board. However, when I was asked to do OCEANS 12, I asked if the same production designer would be on the picture. When I was told yes, I had to pass. 🙂
What is your take on rapidly growing OTT platforms?
It’s an example of how the market changes, adapts to consumer demands, and evolves. In such a short time, we have changed to a culture that almost does not watch television in the living room any more, as a result of OTT (Over The Top) platforms. The thing with this broadcasting medium is that the appetite for content is never sated, and the audience is fickle. Check out various business insights of acquisitions and mergers in the arena of OTT.
- Look at the numbers on Disney+. Sure, those numbers are deceptive because they got such a hockey stick of growth by playing certain marketing aces like giving the platform free to all Verizon customers. The Disney ‘empire’ of content, no pun intended, would draw people in huge numbers anyway.
- Hulu did in collaboration with Sprint, and that was brilliant for both companies. Hulu had its $6 ad-supported service subsidized a bit by Sprint, but in doing the “free” deal, they added 3 million viewers to their 25 million in 2018. And that’s in addition to the 7.5 million paid subscriptions that were added to Hulu’s rolls.
- Smaller companies will have to be brilliant and aggressive, and play outside the box to attract enough customers to pay for their content offerings, and only the strongest will survive. The mediocre will get purchased, and make the strong stronger. An example just announced was that NBCUniversal just purchased VUDU from Walmart through its Fandango subsidiary. The purpose is to give its new streaming service, Peacock, more depth of content. Vudu has 10,000 titles in its library, and started making its own content in 2019. But it could be considered mediocre in financial results, which is why you heard little about it. So NBCU snatched it up to no doubt to bundle it with FandangoNow, for Peacock to have an engaging list of content.
- Fox, you probably know, bought Tubi in March for $440M to give its own streaming service some competitive octane.
All of this will continue, as it did when cable was the new way to consume content in the 1980s. VCRs were the wild card, as no one could really figure out how to deal with consumers having control over their own content, without going to a theatre repeatedly or searching a TV Guide for planned showings. The beat will go on.
Do you think that we got ‘too much content’ on various OTT platforms in small span of time?
The market will take care of itself. It always has.
Thankfully, despite what critics say, no one entity can control enough of it, as long as government continues to keep teeth in antitrust laws. And they do, give or take. They know that for one to gain control is truly egregious, and would take an obvious lack of antitrust monitoring, so they don’t want it happening on their watch. And the appetite for content is really insatiable, so there really isn’t too much. There may be a superfluous amount of dreck, content that everyone makes for themselves on YouTube, FBLive, etc., but the market will work that out.
When no one watches, it will evaporate organically.
What are your suggestions for novice and experienced artists, to excel in our Visual Effects and Animation industry?
I’d say to novices to take a hard look at your reasons and desires. Why do you want to be in the VFX or Animation areas? Match those desires up with prudent choices of places to work.
The most important thing that I can impart to novices is a rule about work ethic. It is NOT about how long or hard you work, that is sometimes a factor, but not the most important thing. It is this: when you are asked if you can or will do something, and you agree to it, DO IT. No matter what it takes. If it means you get stuck and you just can’t figure it out, call the friends that are better than you to help. If they can’t do it, hire someone with your own money to help, so that you get it done WHEN you said it would be done, and for HOW MUCH you said it would cost. You may lose money or time (or friends) over this, but it is your commitment that will be remembered.
In this industry, it is always about getting the next job, not the one you are on; therefore, you must be known for being able TO DELIVER WHAT YOU PROMISE, EVERY TIME. When you are known for that, you will never be seeking projects long. Why? Because the people that hire you are also about their next job, and being judged for how they deliver. When they can count on you, you will be their first call. There are a lot of artists and supervisors out there that are not willing to do that, so you will stand out.
- If you love the fame and glory and glitz of the entertainment industry, work to get an internship at the largest companies, where they do studio movie work and you’ll get to be involved (on a low level, but at least attached) to that. Those companies know that this is a draw for hiring, so initial position conditions and pay are usually lousy, but that’s part of paying your dues for that arena.
- If you love the genuine art, then carefully research the companies that are known for their innovation and independent movie or media work. The industry magazines will make that fairly easy to recognize. For instance, Laika in Oregon would be a pinnacle in that domain (no pun intended). But you would not be in Hollywood, so don’t plan on the red carpet/glitz and glamour at all. It’s Oregon.
- If your love is really just that you don’t know exactly what you love, but you know you love working with graphics software at a computer more than anything else that would be considered a career, then consider attending a top school of broad appeal, like Gnomon, Savannah, D.A.V.E, Art Center in Pasadena, Ringling Bros. You’ll get the chance to work broadly enough to see what roulette slot you fall naturally into. You’ll need to know that, since you may be asked to work weekends, 18 hour days, and give up a lot of other pastime opportunities to be in the VFX and Animation field. If you hear someone really whining about conditions, you’ll know they aren’t in, and haven’t been in, their slot. If you’re experienced, recognize that it is generally prudent to consider early on that it is a nomadic career; that is, it is not likely that you will stay with an employer for five or more years. There are always exceptions, but generally, you will be cycling through a select group of employers that have a large project for you to work on for several months or possibly a year, and then release you.
There are two keys to life success for you.
1. Prepare for this and budget your finances and life goals accordingly. If you end up living paycheck to paycheck, because you spend what you deserve and you live “very well because you work hard and you’re entitled to”, then you will put yourself under enormous stress and anxiety when you hit a dry spell. Unemployment doesn’t cut that lifestyle. Work it out the moment you get a project, to budget 70% to live on; 20% to save/invest, and 10% to tithe to church and charities.
Two weeks before the last day of your project, think about life goals: do you want to see Italy? Then look into using the time coming up to go on a trip, low budget if necessary, but start applying for projects that start when you would get back. That will prevent burnout. On your last day of the project, sit down with your budget, and scale back wherever possible, putting in your unemployment estimate as income, and using the same 70/20/10.
2. Save the 20% correctly in a coordination of minimizing your risks and maximizing your growth, according to each individual’s goals.
By doing this two-step process, you will assure yourself financial security more than 75% of your colleagues. And do feel free to reach out to me if you want additional coaching on this, as that’s what I do now. There is way too much of a glut of information to process with things like insurance products and opportunities for places to put money, than people have time to give proper attention to. That’s how I help people.
So by putting these recommendations into practice, VFX practitioners will, overall, be more satisfied and live healthier, longer lives. And by slotting themselves into the right field, they will stoke their own flames of passion, which will always always always lead people to excel, even if they aren’t recognized for it. If you live for recognition, you will almost always be disappointed, because the best doesn’t always win. That is a very common complaint about awards – yet we tend to forget that when we win or don’t win a particular award. Don’t pin any part of your self esteem on awards and recognition. Instead, for a happy life, pick a spouse that loves your work almost as much as you do. And then take very good care of him or her…
What is your take on immersive technologies of AR/VR/MR/XR?
My take is relatively simple, and hasn’t changed much since I started pursuing them in 2011.
VR is for gamers, and will be an exciting platform that will grow, but will not change lives. For those that thought VR was the next big thing, they will be considered wrong. AR and MR, on the other hand, will begin to be the backseat to the rocket called AI that is now on the launchpad, awaiting launch. AR will absolutely change lives, and we have seen a glimpse of it as it will be, comically, in the IRON MAN movies. Tony Stark sees his surroundings as his visual displays and AI work together to analyse things, provide his computing, his communications, his security. How will this be life changing? When laptops, cell phones, and Alexa all disappear and merge into simple light sunglasses, or even contact lenses, life will be changed forever.
Bold prediction, I know; but watch. It will happen without question, I’ll take all bets.
What is your advice to all artists during this Corona outbreak?
This is creating a model for working at home that will force studios to work out security concerns, in software, so that we will see a lot more of it in the future. Since cost cutting is always the key, grinding companies out of business, this will not change, and artists like the trend of being able to work at home if they are expected to work long hours, which I don’t see changing either. Advice to artists: if you have a voice, use it to push for working at home.
You’ll save precious commute time, exhaust emissions, and be able to be with you family and pets more.
What are your next goals?
My next goals? I have accepted a contract with a 175 year old anchor company of the American economy, and have become licensed in California and Texas as an agent to be able to facilitate product purchases.
My thinking is that I have seen artists, producers, coordinators, studio execs, set supervisors and industry professionals worked way too hard to find themselves without the kind of financial security that they should have had, based upon their perceived salaries. The problem is that when you poke a bucket with micro pin holes, it leaks out until there’s nothing left, just as if there were one big hole. The difference is that you don’t notice it leaking with the pin holes. So it is with VFX artists and movie professionals and executives’ take home pay.
If a budget item were something outrageous, like $6500 monthly rent, you could plug that ugly hole and be done, no financial prudence required. But when you work 15 hours days 6 days a week, you might tend to overlook all those restaurant visits because you’re starved, and too exhausted to pack a lunch (and dinner). And because you’re exhausted, you don’t balance your credit card statements to notice your $750 a month lunch charges. There are ways to save, like savings accounts, that pay 1% or less. There are ways to invest, and they usually involve a significant amount of risk. To examine and research those takes time creative people usually don’t have. And so it doesn’t get done, and they wake up after 15 years in the business with a lot of credits on their demo reel, but a miserable financial outlook, and little prospect of retirement.
Those are my next goals. I’m really set on “finishing well”, and that means helping others, having people say that they are grateful that I was there for them in that area.
The Virtual Assist again thanks Rob Morgenroth for sharing such amazing insights of the Visual Effects and Animation industry, and various financial and insurance tips. This will surely help us to survive this COVID-19 situation.