Thanks for the Acknowledgment

  
When you work in movie post-production and visual effects, sometimes you feel very little appreciation... and in recent years, a lot of that appreciation has to be fought for.  In recent weeks, I personally felt the sting of lacking acknowledgment when, along with several of my colleagues, I was omitted from the screen credits of the Marvel film Thor: The Dark World. 
  
Now to be clear, this was far from the first time I felt this particular sting. No matter how long the credits are, it seems some/several VFX artists always get omitted, and this wasn't the first time for me. However, the first Thor film was the first really big blockbuster I worked on, and my name is in those end credits, as well as the end credits of The Avengers. That being said, the on-screen version of Thor's little section of the Marvel Universe has a rather special place in my heart. After several frustration-filled, hard-fought 40 to 85 hour work weeks of making the Dark World look cool, I honestly don't know for certain why this omission was made in the Thor 2 credits.

...And this blog is probably not the best place to speculate on the matter. 
  
Besides, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and rather than ever beat myself in the head with a metaphoric Mjolnir, it's better to stay grateful and positive. Now, most people say what I should be grateful for is to have a job these days, professional acknowledgment or not... but instead, I'll take peace and rest of this long weekend to be thankful for two other things: 

1) I'm thankful for the people who sent messages congratulating me and my colleagues on the great work we did on Thor 2, even if our names aren't on the big screen... and more importantly...

2) I'm thankful that most of those people are not only in good health, but by simple coincidence, the most important of them made it known to me earlier this year just how important I am in their lives... and I assure that the feeling is mutual.

Sure it does suck when you work hard on something and from time to time without being properly and respectfully acknowledged... but like I just said, on this holiday weekend, I'm going to focus on the positive, and probably hope things will improve for the better along with endeavors to come.
  
  

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