is down playing the contribution of digital artists to the production of his motion picture. Of course what he said was scripted to sell a herbal tea & echinacea vibe for the movie not to actually say make a statement that could be parsed by a lawer.
We have a fundamentally different understanding of what he said. I’ve worked on film sets, the reason people praise real sets and practical effects is because it helps every aspect of production from the acting to the directing AND to the VFX department
It’s a lot easier to enhance/add to something that’s already there and make it look realistic than it is to create something from scratch under crunch time. But real sets are expensive and if they don’t translate to better sales, the executives will cut costs at the expense of the art
That’s why he saying this. He’s saying that the art, every level of it, is what matters, not what technically brings in the best revenue. I’m sorry that you feel that he was disrespecting digital artists, but that’s not what he said, it’s the story you’re choosing to tell.