All Good Things…
I started this website about 18 years ago, primarily for myself. The first film I posted was Amélie, so I could study the images wherever I went. I posted them online to my website thinking if other people found them useful, they could use my site too. Then I added another film and another. Today I have an image set for more than 305 different films and TV episodes. It has been a gratifying project that has connected me with some of the most accomplished artists, animators, directors and cinematographers in the world. I have met people who have made amazing films, people I respect very much and I am hugely grateful for all the encouragement and support I have gotten over the years. But, it’s a fairly expensive venture to host a website like this for as long as I have. The site uses several terabytes of bandwidth every month. It adds up, and web hosting is expensive. Which brings me to the state of things today.
I’ve been a visual effects artist for over 15 years. Before that, I studied film-making, cinematography, photography, and motion graphics. I never wanted to do anything else. A lot of people have a difficult time trying to figure out what they want to do in their lives. It was not a difficult decision for me. Since middle-school the only thing I wanted was to work on films, to shoot photos, to film things, to light shots, to model and texture and animate and edit and composite. And over the course of my career I’ve gotten to do exactly that while working with very talented people on some fantastic projects.
And now it’s 2026.
I don’t know exactly what’s happened over the last 10+ years, but it feels like Hollywood said “Hey remember all those amazing movies we’ve made over the years? We’re not going to do that anymore. We’re going to preach at people. We’re going to scold people. We are going to hire unqualified activists to make bad movies and shows”. It seems the industry has shifted focus, prioritizing messaging over craft, often at the expense of experienced artists and writers. Soulless sequels and remakes at the expense of original ideas.
There are still good movies and shows, but the number is vanishingly small. 10 years ago I went to the movies just about every week. Sometimes two or three times a week. I went with groups of friends because we were excited to see the movies that were playing. In 2025 I saw only two movies in the theater. I don’t know if I missed much. Movies have experienced a massive decline in quality and I’m definately not the only one who feels this way.
Unfortunately, making bad movies and shows has ramifications. People will not continue to pay money at the movie theater or to a streaming service to watch poorly conceived, poorly written “content” as it’s come to be called. There are too many better, more interesting alternatives. The movie industry is suffering because of it. In October of 2025 The Wall Street Journal reported that “L.A.’s Entertainment Economy Is Looking Like a Disaster Movie”. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists 142,000 people were employed in Los Angeles’ motion picture industry at the end of 2022. In 2024 the number dropped to 100,000. A loss of about 42,000 jobs.
I am one of the people who has been affected. I can’t afford to be in this industry anymore as much as I may love the work. I can’t afford to work 80 hour shifts on a salary that doesn’t pay me overtime. I can’t afford to wait 7 months in between freelance jobs. I can’t afford to put the well-being of my family on the line to work for studios who couldn’t care less about the quality of the films they are making or the artists who are creating them. It’s heartbreaking. but the time has come to move on.
I have closed down the screenshots section of the site, but I’m hoping I can put them somewhere where people can still download them. I am deeply grateful for the support I’ve received over the years and wish everyone the very best.
I’ve been a visual effects artist for over 15 years. Before that, I studied film-making, cinematography, photography, and motion graphics. I never wanted to do anything else. A lot of people have a difficult time trying to figure out what they want to do in their lives. It was not a difficult decision for me. Since middle-school the only thing I wanted was to work on films, to shoot photos, to film things, to light shots, to model and texture and animate and edit and composite. And over the course of my career I’ve gotten to do exactly that while working with very talented people on some fantastic projects.
And now it’s 2026.
I don’t know exactly what’s happened over the last 10+ years, but it feels like Hollywood said “Hey remember all those amazing movies we’ve made over the years? We’re not going to do that anymore. We’re going to preach at people. We’re going to scold people. We are going to hire unqualified activists to make bad movies and shows”. It seems the industry has shifted focus, prioritizing messaging over craft, often at the expense of experienced artists and writers. Soulless sequels and remakes at the expense of original ideas.
There are still good movies and shows, but the number is vanishingly small. 10 years ago I went to the movies just about every week. Sometimes two or three times a week. I went with groups of friends because we were excited to see the movies that were playing. In 2025 I saw only two movies in the theater. I don’t know if I missed much. Movies have experienced a massive decline in quality and I’m definately not the only one who feels this way.
Unfortunately, making bad movies and shows has ramifications. People will not continue to pay money at the movie theater or to a streaming service to watch poorly conceived, poorly written “content” as it’s come to be called. There are too many better, more interesting alternatives. The movie industry is suffering because of it. In October of 2025 The Wall Street Journal reported that “L.A.’s Entertainment Economy Is Looking Like a Disaster Movie”. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists 142,000 people were employed in Los Angeles’ motion picture industry at the end of 2022. In 2024 the number dropped to 100,000. A loss of about 42,000 jobs.
I am one of the people who has been affected. I can’t afford to be in this industry anymore as much as I may love the work. I can’t afford to work 80 hour shifts on a salary that doesn’t pay me overtime. I can’t afford to wait 7 months in between freelance jobs. I can’t afford to put the well-being of my family on the line to work for studios who couldn’t care less about the quality of the films they are making or the artists who are creating them. It’s heartbreaking. but the time has come to move on.
I have closed down the screenshots section of the site, but I’m hoping I can put them somewhere where people can still download them. I am deeply grateful for the support I’ve received over the years and wish everyone the very best.
6 Responses
I will miss your site as a resource for screenshots of beautiful films. Have always appreciated your taste and curation. Thank you for your work. And good luck on your next endeavour. Wishing you the best, as always.
Thanks Cláudio. I appreciate the kind words.
It’s very sad after all these years to have to take the screenshots offline.
Thank you for your work, your time and your energy Evan.
I’m in the vfx/animation industry since mid 2000 and for few years now, for each new project I had a routine : a coffee and scrolling across your website to find references before starting anything.
I hope brighter days will come soon, take care!
Loïc
Thanks Loïc!
I hope you continue to thrive in your work.
I appreciate your kind words of support.
I will sorely miss your screenshots. In a very real way. I used them for lookbooks, pitches, reference and for PowerPoints to film students. I don’t think there’s been a week where I didn’t browse the images. In fact I only found out that you were closing shop today when I was telling a student DoP about your site. I couldn’t understand where it had gone. But I totally get your decision. As a director/writer I see how the film game is changing – and not just in hollywood (I directed a horror film that had a lot of hollywood folks Input and tbh I really didn’t like them) – but everywhere. I think these days the poster and trailer are more important than the movie itself. And AI is here like it or not. I feel dirty using it – but there’s no way round it. Pretty much everything I learned about film making over the last 25 years is pretty much obsolete. Sad to see you go Evan. Thank you for the great screenshots over the years. Must have been a lot of work. You will be missed. (ps – how do you do the film images thing – just press screenshot every so often?) Bye my friend. Clive
Hey Clive, I’m glad you’ve found the site useful over the years.
I have been using a command line tool called FFMPEG to capture screenshots. Its quite a process though. First you need to rip a bluray into a relatively standard video format, Prores, or high bitrate MP4. Then you can get FFMPEG to rip an image out of the video once every 3 seconds (or however often you want). When I’m done, I have a folder of between 1500-3000 images. Then I go in and manually remove all the duplicate frames, motion blurred frames, etc. It generally took me about 3 hours to take a film and turn it into a good collection of screenshots. It wasn’t quick.
The ability to browse the images as galleries was too expensive to continue but I’m trying to find a way to post the screenshots of entire films as downloads somewhere. Still working on the logistics.