When Nell Lloyd-Malcolm worked on set of dystopian science fiction film Ready Player One, she was in charge of monitoring facial capture data – the result of tracking devices placed on actors’ faces to help create expression in the animated characters. “After one scene, Steven Spielberg said: ‘Yep, that’s the one,’ and I had to tell him the camera had slipped during filming and was staring up the actor’s nose. We couldn’t use the data. Terrifying.”
Happily it hasn’t held her back and her credits include Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Bohemian Rhapsody, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and more. But although Lloyd-Malcolm’s work might be par for the course in visual effects – an intriguing sector that mixes logistics and technical wizardry with painstaking detail – she herself is unusual.
Lloyd-Malcolm did not go to university, instead beginning in film as many do, making coffee and working her way up. But most visual effects (VFX) professionals have been to university, more than average (17%) were privately educated, and most are men. Women make up just 27% of the visual effects workforce (UK Screen Alliance’s 2018 Workforce Survey), with most of them to be found in an administration role. Senior women are few and far between and, historically, it’s been as male as the gaming industry. It’s still a bit of a “boy’s club” at the top, say women who work in the sector.
This is in part due to the old school “tecchie” origins of visual effects, says Louise Hussey, who’s worked in the industry for more than two decades. Back in the 1970s and 80s, it was the preserve of pioneering computer scientists with few women among them, she says. Now it’s more a blend of art and tech.
“But I can honestly count senior women VFX supervisors around the world on both hands,” she says. As executive producer for Industrial Light & Magic TV, she’s also VFX co-chair of industry group Animated Women UK, and is on a mission to inspire more women.
“The tech has moved on – it’s more user friendly. We have people coming in from fine arts degrees as much as from technology. We’re definitely attracting people from different backgrounds.”
Visual effects inserts the virtual magic into historical dramas, the dragons into fantasy and merges real life and computer generated imagery. It’s less flashy than special effects – with none of the on-set pyrotechnics, prosthetics or animatronics – the work is done digitally before and after shooting. Working on the episode of The Crown that recreated the Aberfan disaster of 1966 still stands out for Lloyd-Malcolm. “No matter how many times I watched the sequence of a coal mine slipping, there was never a moment I felt I wasn’t watching something tragic. The VFX always felt very, very real.”
Without formal education in visual effects, MetFilm School graduate José Nieuwstad is pleasantly surprised where she’s ended up. She’s now head of facial capture and 3D scanning at performance capture specialists The Imaginarium Studios, which was co-founded by actor and director Andy Serkis. “I like researching how things work – I’m a ‘read the manual’ sort of person.”
While she’s never worked with a female visual effects supervisor or director, the lower rungs of the industry have felt meritocratic, friendly and less hierarchical than elsewhere in film. “It’s not glamorous – no one knows why you are there on set. We make ourselves invisible and that creates a bond. It’s fun – you get to hide and see what’s going on.”
And the reasons why you won’t find many senior women in visual effects are tiresomely familiar, says Hussey. “Traditionally hours are long and antisocial, including weekends and evenings. You could be away from home for months. And there’s a lack of role models – men have got the glory jobs and big titles.” While men and women graduate in visual effects and animation in equal numbers, not as many women are applying for entry-level roles, she says. “Our best guess is a complex picture of [job vacancy] language, interview processes, lack of role models and unconscious bias on all sides.”
But there’s hope, say industry insiders. Universities such as MetFilm School and Bournemouth University, which both offer visual effects and postproduction courses, are now seeing more women apply. “It’s a great niche – pretty much every film now has a VFX budget. It’s hyper creative and demanding,” says Lloyd-Malcolm.
“There are now far more jobs and they won’t go away anytime soon – VFX has transformed how stories are told,” says Rachel Wood, deputy school director at MetFilm School. And the London-centric visual effects industry in the UK punches above its weight internationally. “You can set films in any period and it helps studios create these grand epics. But you have to learn the skills, you can’t just walk in.”
Last year, MetFilm School recruited more women than men to its master’s in postproduction. At Bournemouth University’s National Centre for Computer Animation, women currently outnumber men by 249 to 208 overall – although just a quarter of visual effects undergrads and postgrads there are women. “I do think female students are becoming more confident,” says Susan Sloan, lecturer in computer animation at Bournemouth University.
But without action, the status quo will only shift at a glacial pace, says Wood. Figures collated by the UK Screen Alliance show the sector has a pay gap of between 24% and 33%, while another Animated Women UK survey shows nearly three quarters (74%) of women over 30 in animation and VFX feel they face career barriers because of their gender. “Mentoring is very successful,” says Wood, “as are scholarships and placements.” Animated Women UK runs mentoring and an acclaimed leadership scheme, and regular (now virtual) networking events.
“There’s an energy and a will, in spite of the pandemic, for change to happen now,” says Hussey. “Which gives me hope for the next generation of young women.”
