Virtually inclusive: The promises and experiences of women and gender diverse people in virtual production workplaces

Abstract

The virtual production industry has grown recently, driven by advancements in software capabilities, new mechanisms for special effects, editing and production in the screen sector, as well as the need to adapt to pandemic conditions. Although these changes are seen as an opportunity to promote inclusion for women, the industry still faces challenges in gender equity and career pathways. While there is much research about the screen sector more broadly, limited research exists on gender equality in the virtual production sector, particularly in Australia. This article presents findings on the experiences of female and gender diverse workers in the Australian virtual production sector, to understand how the sector might perpetuate or challenge these patterns. We interviewed 13 people in virtual production or screen education, exploring the influence of gender on workplace experiences and whether these experiences in virtual production environments align with or deviate from those in traditional screen industries. We found that the industry faces continued challenges in terms of women's inclusion and career pathways in this sector

Keywords

virtual production creative industries gender equity workplaces screen sector

Introduction

The experience of women and gender diverse people in the screen sector around the world has been a topic of concern and research for decades: attempts have been made to understand why women and gender diverse people are so poorly represented. This comes within broader critiques of access and equality in the creative industries. Virtual production (VP) offers a promise of new ways of working and, by extension, new opportunities for equality, access and diverse workforces, but is this living up to the promise?

VP is a relatively new approach to creating screen media that uses game engine technology in the generation of screen content within a hybrid physical and digital realm. VP harnesses new technologies like LED volumes (large screens utilised to display background imagery in studio settings), motion capture and game engine-powered real-time rendering, which allow for filmed material to be combined with digital assets. These technologies reshape conventional screen production workflows and shooting practices by enabling the previsualisation of visual effects (VFX), rather than doing that work in postproduction.

The VP industry has grown significantly in recent years, driven in part by the need to adapt to pandemic conditions as well as in response to advancements in software capabilities generating new mechanisms for special effects, editing, production and design in the screen sector. These changes and advancements have created the demand for screen practitioners with new skills and, as Jobin observes following interviews with key industry figures, ‘there seems to exist a consensus that the need for new talent with new knowledge bases to operate virtual production technologies represents an extraordinary opportunity for diversity and democratization—an opportunity on par with virtual production's technological advantages’ (2022, 111).

Although it has been suggested that VP is an opportunity to promote new inclusivities for women and gender diverse people (Willment & Brereton, 2023), this article contends that the industry faces continued challenges in terms of women's inclusion and career pathways in this sector. Limited research exists on gender equality in the VP sector, particularly in Australia where the industry has been expanding over recent years. Decades of research in the film and television sector has shown the challenges experienced by women in entering the workforce, staying in the workforce and accessing promotion and healthy work environments (Cobb & Williams, 2020a; Eikhof, 2017; French, 2014; Screen Australia, 2015; Verhoeven et al., 2019).This article presents findings on the experiences of female and gender diverse workers in the Australian VP sector, to understand how changes brought about by new ways of working in the sector intersect with hopes that these ways of working may break cycles of discrimination. To discover this, we conducted a series of interviews with people currently working in the sector to explore the influence of gender on workplace experiences and career paths and whether these experiences in the ‘new’ VP environments align with or deviate from those in traditional screen industries, such as outlined in Screen Australia's Gender Matters report (2017).

Background

VP, broadly defined, is a relatively new, and hotly contested, set of tools and practices with complex interactions with the more enduring parts of the sector; therefore, data about the diversity of its workforce and the experience of particular groups of people in its workforce are yet to be produced. There is, however, a lot of research demonstrating women's experience in the pipeline industries of film, games, animation and digital media and in the broader creative industries (Luckman et al., 2020; Oakley & O’Brien, 2016).

The experience of women (cisgender and transgender) in the creative and cultural industries is varied. Over the last few decades, research has highlighted the ways that women's experience in the cultural and creative industries labour force has been complicated by precarity and low pay, meaning that ‘the cultural industries workforce is less ethnically diverse, more male and skewed towards those of a higher socio-economic background than most other sectors of the economy’ (Oakley & O’Brien, 2016). In addition, the labour conditions, structure and work patterns ‘clearly favour those younger, without caring responsibilities and able-bodied’ (Oakley & O’Brien, 2016, 480) as an ideal model. This picture is replicated in the screen subsection of the creative and cultural industries. Conor, Gill and Taylor identified the interaction of gender with disadvantage and exclusion at work in the creative industries (2016). With regard to the screen sector specifically, as Verhoeven and colleagues have pointed out,

Statistics describing inequitable conditions for women in global film industries have been gathered and circulated for more than 30 years. These statistics have barely deviated despite the development and application of a range of equity policies. In some key creative roles such as film director, the participation rates for women have become marginally worse over time (Verhoeven et al., 2020).

Industries that predominantly rely on screen-based mediums have a well-documented history of gender inequality that has been extensively examined by scholars globally (Cobb & Williams, 2020a; Liddy, 2020; USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, 2021). Some of these concerns relate to women's experiences accessing and maintaining leadership positions in the sector. As Leung, Gill and Randle remind us, ‘Women do “get in” to film and television, but they still rarely “get on” as well as their male peers, despite superior qualifications and considerable talent’ (2015, 63). In the context of the Australian film industry, extensive research spanning four decades illustrates a persistent underrepresentation of women in off-screen roles (Cox & Laura, 1992; Marsh & Pip, 1987; Ryan et al., 1983; Screen Australia, 2015; Verhoeven et al., 2019). For instance, recent studies have revealed alarming statistics regarding the low participation of women as directors (French, 2015). Only 17% of dramatic feature films produced between 2011 and 2018 were directed by women, with indications of a potential decline in female participation rates (Brooks et al., 2018; French, 2014).

The gender disparity is even more pronounced in technical production roles within the Australian film industry, as highlighted by recent findings (Screen Australia, 2021). A report commissioned by the Australian Cinematographers Society in 2022 reveals that men overwhelmingly dominated director of photography (DOP) roles, holding 91% of such positions in feature films and dramatic television series shot between 2011 and 2019. Moreover, the report underscores a sharp decline in female DOP participation as project budgets increase, with no women serving as DOPs on Australian productions with budgets exceeding AUD $10 million during the specified period (Coles et al., 2022). Jones et al. (2024) argue that this gender disparity within camera departments is perpetuated by exclusionary male networks, prompting questions regarding interventions aimed at facilitating women's entry into the industry.

Similar challenges persist for women in postproduction and VFX roles as documented by Dooley and Erhart (2023). While participation rates for women as editors in Australia are comparatively higher challenges such as caring responsibilities and the nature of freelance work hinder women's career progression in this domain (Erhart & Dooley, 2022). Furthermore factors like harassment inflexibility and the incompatibility of screen production with family life have prompted many skilled female practitioners to exit the industry more broadly (French, 2020; Screen Australia, 2015; Verhoeven et al., 2018).

The gender inequality prevalent in the Australian film and television sector mirrors trends observed in the animation industry, both locally and internationally. In the United States, women accounted for slightly over 25% of workers in the animation sector in 2018 (Animation Guild, 2018). While there is a lack of comprehensive data on the gender dynamics of the Australian animation sector, anecdotal evidence suggests a predominance of male workers in technical and creative leadership roles (Bizzaca, 2019b). Conversely, a survey of the UK animation sector indicates a more balanced gender distribution, with women occupying 51% of animation roles, albeit with a skew towards production roles over artistic or technical positions (UK Screen Alliance, 2019). However, despite equal numbers of male and female students completing screen production, animation or VFX courses, career progression to senior positions in the industry still leans heavily towards males (Bizzaca, 2019b; Screen Australia, 2021).

The games sector, both locally and globally, presents similar challenges for female participation. A 2021 report by the Game Developers Conference found that women constituted only 21% of the surveyed game developers’ workforce (GDC, 2021). Despite increased attention towards gender diversity, structural issues within the industry, such as disproportionate favouritism towards young, male employees, continue to hinder female participation (Keogh, 2021). Similarly, a report by the Game Developers Association of Australia revealed that nearly half of the companies surveyed had exclusively male workforces (GDAA, 2018).

As VP environments inherit practices and cultures from the broader screen industries, questions arise regarding the persistence of low female participation rates and gender inequality. The lack of data on gender equity in VP further complicates these inquiries (Willment & Brereton, 2023). Additionally, the experiences of transwomen and non-binary individuals in this sector remain largely unexplored, reflecting broader gaps in research within the screen industries (Verhoeven et al., 2019).

Methodology/interviewee pool

For this research we created 13 hour-long, semi-structured interviews with screen industry practitioners and educators who had experience working on VP-enabled projects. The interviewees had differing identities and backgrounds and training experiences in the sector. Our qualitative method was intended to record fine-grained aspects about people's experiences that, it has been claimed, may be less well captured in industry surveys (O’Quinn et al., 2024). We interviewed 10 participants who identified as female and three male-identifying participants. The female-identifying interviewees were invited to draw from their range of experience in industrial as well as educational settings; we asked male-identifying interviewees questions about their experiences teaching in, or setting up, training environments. Our tailoring of the question set along these lines was intended to align with our focus on women's sector experiences. Cobb and Williams assert the importance of acknowledging women's screen industry labour and recognising the value of interview testimony as a means to achieve this (Cobb & Williams, 2020b). Their research about women in the contemporary UK screen industry is an exemplar of this approach, providing space for women to ‘interrogate their own practice, and the politics of their ability to work in the contemporary industries’ (Cobb & Williams, 2020b, 895).

In our question set, we asked interviewees about the type of work they did and about their experiences on VP-enabled projects. We invited them to speak about any career decisions that led to them finding work in VP, and their thoughts about future employment in VP. Interviewees talked about the opportunities and pressures faced by workers in the varying pipeline industries that underpin VP projects. Those who were also employed in the university sector spoke about the educational environments where emerging practitioners are taught and trained, where expectations are shaped, and where industry professionals (in the form of guests and mentors) help shape students’ views about the industry. Throughout, we supported participants to articulate gendered dimensions of their experiences in VP workplaces: in centralised, hybridised working environments and on VP volume sets in particular. Out of our larger set of interviews, this article draws upon those interviews that reflected specifically on these experiences.

We carried out all interviews online via Microsoft Teams or Zoom, analysed the audio data transcripts and, when the interview process was concluded, identified recurring themes. As some of the interviewees wished not to have their identities disclosed, we use pseudonyms for all interviewees in this article and have removed any identifying details from the participants’ comments.

Interviewee profiles

We interviewed 13 professionals in the VP sector or in allied roles or education pertaining to VP. Apart from one practitioner who had been in the workforce for only 2 years, one practitioner who had been in the workforce for 5 years, and one who had worked for 40 years in the screen industry, all of the interviewees with whom we spoke were professionals with between 15 and 25 years’ experience in the screen industry, broadly defined. Interviewees were identified and contacted via researchers’ personal networks or via the snowball method. In order to capture a diversity of perspectives, we interviewed practitioners in six locations within four states: five were located in Adelaide, South Australia; three in Melbourne, Victoria; two in Sydney, New South Wales (NSW); one was in Brisbane, Queensland and one in Newcastle, NSW; and one lived in regional NSW. In terms of other identity factors, we invited people to share their LGBTQ + status and cultural background. Regarding LGBTQ + status, two identified with the broad term LGBTQ +, one as lesbian, one as bisexual, and two as queer and trans. In terms of cultural background, all of our interviewees identified as ‘Australian’ or ‘white Australian’ or as ‘having a European background’; none of the interviewees identified as Indigenous. We acknowledge the need, in future work, for a more diverse interviewee cohort to capture the breadth of workers’ experience. We also recognise the necessity for research and reflection, to understand the absence of Indigenous interviewees in our group of participants and the relative ethnic homogeneity, in order to determine whether these have resulted from limitations of our recruitment processes and networks, or whether this is a reflection of sector composition more broadly.

Among our interviewees, experiences in VP environments and projects varied considerably, meaning there was also variety in terms of what interviewees saw as their career identity and core work or profession. Some saw VP as central to their careers: this included the founder of a VP studio, a VP producer, and one person who was transitioning to VP from VFX and animation. Others we spoke with had found only occasional opportunities to work on VP projects, and maintained career identities in sectors such as cinematography, motion capture, VFX and animation, and writing/directing. More than half of the participants supplemented their creative careers by teaching screen and VP in tertiary education.

While we see the career diversity of our interviewees as a benefit to our study in that it enabled us to gain insights, methodologically it was not without challenges. With a relatively small participant pool, unique perspectives occasionally emerged that sometimes could not be verified with respect to a larger group. To uphold research integrity, we try throughout our analyses to clarify the extent of consensus among the cohort when interpreting participant responses.

Data analysis

Female participation in VP industry and training environments

A central topic consistently addressed in our interviews revolved around the gender dynamics at play within VP work environments. This encompassed issues such as the underrepresentation of women in different positions, the perceived exclusivity of the sector, and the predominance of male-dominated worksites. Despite variations among interviewees in terms of their experience and workplace backgrounds, ranging from cinematography in volume studios to involvement in other on-set roles or virtual asset creation, their collective observations converged on these shared conclusions. A skew towards males in VP workplaces is also observed in the UK sector, with a report by Bennett and colleagues noting the dominance of ‘white men’ (2021, 14). These findings are significant given, as Interviewee 7 put it, in Australia at present ‘there's not a big budget production made without significant work done in the virtual (production) area’. If all big budget productions are made with VP and if VP is dominated by white men then that has significant implications for women's inclusion in big budget filmmaking.

Some female practitioners we interviewed had experienced only one-off or limited opportunities to work with VP technologies and were not particularly optimistic about their opportunity to gain further work. For example, taking this stance, Interviewee 1, a cinematographer, commented that ‘so far, nothing has come along … it's still early days. … I don’t know any other women who have shot in [a volume] apart from students’. Several interviewees offered theories as to why the cited gender imbalance was at play, with some identifying the expensive nature of VP technologies (such as volume screens) as a factor that encouraged sexist and ‘risk averse’ hiring practices. Bennett et al. have noted that ‘the cost of VP is prohibitive for most independent or low-budget television productions or low-budget films’ (2021, 19), and we would suggest that these independent or low-budget productions are where women are most likely to find employment as heads of department. This claim is evidenced by findings from a report by the Australian Cinematographers Society, which revealed that as budgets rise, the probability of female Directors of Photography being involved in a project decreases (Coles et al., 2022, 15). The suggestion that high budget productions privilege male practitioners could be seen to logically inform Interviewee 7's assertion that ‘the vast majority of people employed in [VP] are not women’.

Moreover, interviewees spoke of a ‘bottleneck effect’ (Interviewee 3), where a combination of factors stemming from the novelty of VP methodologies, the limited availability of skilled workers, and the high production costs led to men being chosen over women for key roles. As Interviewee 3 put it,

because it is new tech, people tend to lean on or feel attracted to the people who have done it before and I think that is creating a little bit of a bottleneck at the moment, that no one's really prepared to take the chance on someone who hasn’t done it before.

We note here a compounding effect, whereby men who have experience in VP are called on repeatedly, at the expense of women or non-binary crew who may be seeking a foothold in the industry. Such a phenomenon led Interviewee 1 to declare that conditions are ‘worse now than it's ever been’ for female employment in her field.

Some of our female interviewees had been consistently securing employment in VP environments, but expressed concerns about advancement opportunities as they climbed the career ladder. On this subject, Interviewee 3 commented that she felt ‘slightly concerned about opportunities at a more senior level, where I’m going to go to next, and what kind of roles there might be’. This interviewee's concerns are well-founded when considering research that reveals a thinning out of women as they progress towards high levels of seniority within the film, television and radio industries (Leung et al., 2015; Luckman et al., 2020). Further research is needed to understand female participation in leadership or gatekeeping positions within the VP sector, as well as the way that this participation has flow-on effects for women at lower levels of employment.

Another factor impacting women's roles in VP is the way stereotypes relating to technology and gender are affecting women's employment and progression in VP. We heard from a senior practitioner who felt that some potential clients bypassed her VP company due to its female leadership. She commented that ‘to date, (we are) still not taken seriously as technologists by a lot of people in Australia … that's still a real, current problem’ (Interviewee 4). This comment points to widespread cultural stereotypes concerning women's capacity to master technologies, which have been noted in gaming (Behnke, 2012) and IT contexts (Thomas & Allen, 2006), and to the existence of high levels of unconscious bias in the way that work happens in the screen sector. Existing research has noted a skew towards males occupying so-called technical roles (i.e. cinematography, sound or postproduction) in the film industry (Coles et al., 2022; Screen Australia, 2021) or training contexts (Bizzaca, 2019a; Dooley et al., 2020), a pattern that would also seem to be manifesting in VP.

The ‘convenience’ offered by VP

Our interviewees were generally enthusiastic about the opportunities for innovation that VP offers as a new filmmaking methodology, but gave mixed responses to the question of whether VP had improved working conditions for female and non-binary crew. Some interviewees suggested that the volume studio, being a centralised production environment with the potential for remote collaboration, enabled a greater pool of practitioners to participate. For example, Interviewee 1 (a head of department), commented that ‘I try wherever possible to have […] women and non-binary and transgender […] crew. And so for all of them, it was also good. I was able to get quite a few different people to come and work with me’. On a related note, Interviewee 8 reflected on the remote collaboration that took place during the era of Covid-19 lockdowns and suggested that this had ‘open(ed) up opportunities’ for participation by diverse workers.

A point of focus within several of our interviews concerned how VP might benefit practitioners’ balancing of work and caring responsibilities. Interviewee 1 noted that the inner city location of a such studio had enabled her to more easily balance work with childcare obligations:

It was convenient for me, shooting in the (studio), because I have children that I’m trying to juggle. So shoots where I go to the same place each day, and I can do it during normal business hours, are convenient. The shoots I did in the (studio) were during the day, near to home, […] that was something I could manage.

This suggestion that the metropolitan location of volume studios provided benefits to parents was shared by Interviewee 3 who commented that,

instead of having to drag crews off on week long shoots on different locations and all the rest of it, you can shoot all of it in those locations in a studio. […] I come into work every day but I’m not having to get on a plane or go do reccies … . You’re not dragging people away from family.

This potential for VP to offer a more accessible and equitable production model has been noted in early studies (Bennett et al., 2021; Jobin, 2022). Several of our interviewees touched on this point and suggested that the centralised working environment might enable shorter shooting days, allowing work time to more closely match traditional work hours of 9 am to 5 pm. While such a phenomenon had been experienced by Interviewee 1 in an industry-aligned training environment, where normal working hours were at least aimed for in production schedules, Interviewee 3 suggested that within the industry more broadly, this was not the reality, stressing that ‘it's still long days’. Taking an even more negative attitude, Interviewee 2 commented, ‘I had great hopes that VP would be more of a leveller because […] it's (potentially) more of a nine to five type of environment, maybe not so much travel, and you can stay with your family. But I haven’t seen any evidence of that yet’. This indicates that those hopes for VP work to be more accessible to workers with caring commitments might not be eventuating in practice. These working patterns may continue to be exclusionary for practitioners with caring responsibilities.

The on-set environment

In the interviews, we noticed a difference in how people from two different pipeline sectors experienced the on-set volume studio environments of VP. Those who came from cinematography backgrounds communicated different experiences to those with VFX or gaming backgrounds who were accustomed to an office or desktop work environment. One interviewee, whose background was an office-based workplace and who was entering on-set environments for the first time, highlighted the complications of both moving between spaces and encountering new workplace expectations and cultures. This concern around ‘changed’ conditions related to the flexibility afforded by office-based working environments. Interviewee 3 noted that the need to be on a physical set offered less flexibility for parents than working in the office environment. They suggested that,

Gaming and visual effects can all be done from a desk and therefore there is more accessibility to hybrid working. Whereas a lot of virtual production roles require you to have a physical presence on the stage. […] If people are making content then they might be able to do that remotely but in terms of testing that content, optimising it, interacting with the vocab, doing pre lights and drill, you know, you have to be here physically.

According to Interviewee 3, these changed production requirements led to a lack of flexibility that ‘disproportionately affects women’. This comment points to the need for further research into the adaptations required of workers who had previously trained in office environments (including in the VFX and animation sectors), who subsequently sought to obtain work on VP-enabled projects, where roles had been broadened and ‘expanded’ and workers were expected to be ‘flexible’ (i.e. to have knowledge in skilled areas other than where they had initially trained) (Maddock, 2021, 52).

In their report about VP in the UK, James Bennett et al. identify that one of the radical changes brought about by VP entails the movement of postproduction processes into preproduction and production, or on-set, locations (2021, 6). In these new environments, preproduction and postproduction activities and personnel are frequently co-present on set, with ‘roles, functions, and tasks overlapping and merging’ (Bennett et al., 2021, 10). As one practitioner interviewed within Bennett et al.'s study described it, ‘the workflow … is not linear … it's all about being able to jump between tasks … . The workflow is more like a jumble or bundle of jobs in the centre, all squashed together, and we have to find a way to handle each project most efficiently’ (quoted in Bennett et al., 2021, 10). The new developments, in Maddock's words, ‘no longer demarcate along lines of tools (computer or camera) and expertise (cinematographer and VFX artist) … but are now coming together as one practice of visualization for cinema’ (Maddock, 2021, 56).

With the co-presence of industry processes that once were kept separate and carried out sequentially, volume studio on-set environments are clearly busier and possibly more chaotic than film industry sets prior to VP. Some of our interviewees had strong opinions regarding these changes. In addition to their thoughts about VP's potentially positive effects on worker obligations discussed above (including reduced time spent commuting and obligations to be available for work in more remote locations), interviewees noted some downsides to these new environments, where varying cohorts of workers could be expected to be present on set at a given moment, in addition to (sometimes instead of) the regular pattern of employees with which our interviewees were already familiar. These potential disruptions in the worker cohort led in some instances to heightened feelings of exposure and vulnerability on the part of female-identifying workers. One interviewee shared their feeling that on VP sets, female trainees in particular could feel hyper visible, noting that female-identifying camera operators working in the VP space felt that ‘it's a very exposing thing to do to be the camera operator and everyone sees your mistakes … . We know it's just not a safe zone’ (Interviewee 2). Interviewee 7 concurred: ‘it's very confronting, standing in front of a whole group of your peers and going, “oh God, that's not right or that's terrible, what does everybody think of me”. It is very confronting.’ This interviewee continued: ‘the on-set environment is a particularly masculine and testosterone driven environment, and anybody who doesn’t fit a pretty straight heterosexual masculine identity tends to be one way or another sidelined or ostracised’.

Some interviewees expressed a clear preference for working in the physical office space (where VFX work was located) versus working on set; in their experience, the latter environment was, in their words, less ‘comfortable’, which we understood to mean more chaotic, with increased feelings of vulnerability. Interviewee 5 commented that,

having done a little bit of on set and now doing stuff in a studio in front of your computer, you cannot overstate how much more comfortable it is going to an office to work on a film as opposed to going to a set that’s like a hot set with hundreds of people all in their own little worlds running around doing whatever they’re doing.

Trans-identifying interviewees voiced unique challenges regarding these environments. In Interviewee 5's description, new workers arriving on set would not necessarily be as well informed or privy to the same standard of training or culture that this interviewee had come to expect from the regular cohort of workers. These on-set experiences and encounters with various workers from outside their company potentially exposed trans workers to ignorance and micro-aggressions that were not typically experienced from teammates, raising concerns about worker safety. Interviewee 5 offered an illustration of this:

Part of it is [that] I’m going to the same place every day and I’m working with the same people … . So they know who I am … . To plunge in[to] an anecdote, I was just going to the bathroom one day and the safety officer was like ‘oh, the men's room's down there’ and at [company name redacted] … that won’t happen at all.

While we heard from many of our interviewees that the companies they work with are attempting to be inclusive and gender affirming – and that these are factors for VP workers in choosing which companies to work for – this was more difficult for workplaces to achieve in on-set work environments. That is, when working on set, the company's capacity to bring that gender-affirming, inclusive and positive work environment in hybrid spaces where employees and contractors from different companies and disciplines working together, attenuates.

Physical affordances

Filmmaking has traditionally been a physical activity beset with recurring stereotypes, where perceptions of creative capacity are aligned with assumptions about physical ability. As a filmmaking role, cinematography has especially been plagued with these stereotypes, including the perception that to succeed in the role requires strength to carry large and heavy equipment (Shimkus, 2006). Margolis et al. (2015) detail the stigmas with which women working as camera people have been identified up until very recently; these include ‘being able to literally carry the weight, being able to take the pressure, being in a dangerous situation, and being able to cope’ (2015, 48). While testimony from female-identifying cinematographers indicates that such work indeed is, and has been, manageable (Margolis et al., 2015, 60; Shimkus, 2006, 75), these preconceptions about women's physical in/capacities have meant oftentimes women have had to work doubly hard to gain a foothold in the sector.

Industry figures surveyed in existing research on VP have prompted optimism about the technology's ability to generate opportunities for a greater diversity of individuals to participate in roles that have in the past required specific physical capacities (Jobin, 2022). For example, US Producer Brillhart has suggested that in VP ‘you could have somebody in a wheelchair who's operating lighting’, and further notes that the new on-set environment allows women and other minorities to participate in a way ‘that's not just all about physical performance and who you know’ (quoted in Jobin, 2022, 102).

Interviewees expressed awareness of these stereotypes associated with traditional filmmaking roles and were optimistic that VP, with its virtual affordances, might chip away at some of these harmful preconceptions. As Interviewee 1 said:

I did really enjoy working in there, and because I love lighting, that's one of my favourite parts of my job, so to have a chance to just be in a controlled environment and light days on end, was great. To not have to lug everything everywhere, it was just all there. I could say to [the operators of Unreal Engine], ‘could you move the light source over here?’, and there’d be a light on the wall that was behind someone's head. They would just move it for me. Or, if I wanted it less bright or less orange, they would just work with me and do whatever I wanted. So, it was such an exciting experience. … Ironically, because the stuff that's on the screen is not heavy, anyone can do it. All you have to do is talk to the operator and say, can you change this or move it or whatever. I don’t have to actually move anything.

Interviewee 2 likewise expressed optimism that VP's virtuality would provide opportunities for people with varying physical capacities, making the sector potentially more accessible for people with disabilities. This person said that they ‘hope one day it would head that way, and [would provide opportunity for] people with mobility issues, give them … options’. We include these comments of optimism for careers in the sector for women, gender diverse people and other underserved communities to do justice to our interviewees’ perspectives and to present what we see as collective hope in the sector; we also note that such comments are isolated, promissory in nature and express hope for a change yet to arrive.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we remind the reader of the high hopes held by some of our interviewees about the ways these new technologies and the new work patterns they enable might ‘solve’ entrenched problems of access, exclusion, long working hours and workplace environments requiring travel and time spent away from families that have been experienced in (and researched in) the screen industry for decades. Many of our interviewees expressed a suspension of disbelief: on the one hand they held onto aspirations for VP to bring solutions to long-standing sector problems, and they did this alongside resolute knowledge of familiar and compounding challenges of working in VP-enabled work environments. At the same time, comments like ‘the situation is getting worse’ prompt us to question whether the techno-optimism encountered more broadly across the sector may be occluding the possibilities of acknowledging problems of sexism and inequities in VP as in other parts of the creative industries, which in themselves are not new but which are spotlighted in new ways or finding new expression in changing industries. Some of our interviewees expressed a kind of exhaustion with the suite of gender problems we have detailed in our study, a common response to the continued struggle for bare minimum rights and access (Akwugo & Bassel, 2020). As Interviewee 4 put it, ‘the whole response to gender and how it's impacted the way people do things in Australia, it's an incredible distraction to just getting on and doing work. And that's, I think, probably the main thing I would love to help change’. In this we wonder whether the male domination of VP has also been made possible due to a kind of fatigue experienced by female-identifying workers, who have seen suites of initiatives brought in over time, but little concrete change on the ground or circumstances even deteriorating (Brooks et al., 2018).

We return to the components of VP where problems were highlighted. We note these are not necessarily new, but that changed circumstances have brought attention to them. These include the significant role played by workplace environments in ensuring, or failing to ensure, safety for women and especially trans women; the challenges and vulnerabilities brought about by on-set work for emerging practitioners and those coming from domains where campaigns for inclusion have been more effective; and the male dominance of the sector in workplace cultures more broadly. As we have found, a VP employer may develop, over a sustained period of time, strong practices of inclusion, of gender-affirming and family friendly ways of working, but when an on-set workplace includes employees from different companies and contractors this can all be for nought. More work, both research and practice, needs to be undertaken to ensure that women, both cis and trans, are safe in on-set working environments.

We hope that the work that we are doing can spotlight the circumstances and experiences that may go hidden beneath the rhetoric of inclusive possibilities in the VP sector. Many of the observations made by our interviewees reiterated similar experiences that prior research has highlighted about the film industry over decades (Verhoeven et al., 2020). That these experiences and problems continue into the VP space, despite the many optimistic voices who identified the many ways they felt VP was going to become the part of the sector with more gender equity, is disappointing. There was an opportunity for the sector to learn from the #MeToo movement, from the academic and industry research, and from the toolkits and practical supports to create new realities for workers in VP and the creative industries more broadly, but as yet, that has not eventuated.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Tully Barnett

Author biographies

Tully Barnett is Associate Professor in Creative Industries at Flinders University and Director of Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts. Her research examines cultural policy, cultural value and the digitisation of arts and culture. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming Virtual Production in Theory and Practice (Routledge).

Julia Erhart is Associate Professor in Screen at Flinders University. Her research examines feminist and LGBTQ media and gender equity and the Australian screen industry. Her books include Gendering History on Screen: Women Filmmakers and Historical Films (2018); Gillian Armstrong: Popular, Sensual and Ethical Cinema (2020) and The Children's Hour (2024).

Associate Professor Kath Dooley is a practitioner/scholar at University of South Australia. Her work as writer/director has screened at events such the Busan International Short Film Festival and FIVARS, Toronto. Kath is author of Cinematic Virtual Reality – A Critical Study of 21st Century Approaches and Practices (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

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