VFX Consultant-Vendor Management & Delivery (Feature Films)

VFX Consultant-Vendor Management & Delivery (Feature Films)

Vendor Costing, Pipeline & Delivery

Location -  Kochi / remote, with vendor-site and review attendance as required

Duration - 3-6 months, renewable

The role

We commission feature VFX from external studios. This role independently vets what those studios quote — scope, effort, rates, schedule — and then owns the client-side relationship through production: pipeline and turnover standards, day-to-day vendor communication, and holding vendors to schedule, spec and quality until final delivery.

Costing and delivery sit with one person deliberately: whoever challenges a bid should be accountable for whether it was achievable. The consultant advises us as a client and must hold no commercial ties to bidding vendors.

Responsibilities

Bid vetting and award

•   Review quotes at shot, sequence and asset level: man-days by discipline, seniority mix, iteration allowance, supervision overheads, render and licence costs.

•   Identify padding, missing scope, unrealistic schedules and unpriced dependencies — plates, on-set data, delivery specs.

•   Maintain internal rate cards and cost-per-shot benchmarks; flag deviation in both directions.

•   Test vendor capability against claims — headcount, render capacity, security readiness, subcontracting — and treat an under-priced bid as a risk, not a win.

•   Produce comparison matrices and a written award recommendation; support negotiation with technical arguments and viable de-scopes.

•   Review SOWs, assumptions and exclusions, change-order and overage terms with legal and procurement.

Pipeline and turnover

•   Set hand-off standards in both directions: plates, resolutions, colour space and LUTs, naming conventions, EDL/XML turnover packages, camera and on-set data.

•   Ensure vendor pipelines interoperate — essential where sequences split across studios or assets are reused between them.

•   Own cross-vendor asset and version control, so nothing is built, or paid for, twice.

•   Manage the VFX-to-DI interface: conform, final pulls, deliverable formats, handover schedule.

Vendor communication and delivery

•   Single point of contact between production, the VFX Supervisor, editorial, DI and every vendor.

•   Run weekly vendor calls, shot reviews and note transmission — most overage traces back to late or ambiguous notes.

•   Own the master cross-vendor shot schedule and status tracker; catch slippage early and drive recovery rather than post-mortems.

•   Manage cross-vendor dependencies so no studio idles waiting on another.

•   Enforce delivery: technical QC on receipt, retake tracking, final sign-off, source-file turnover.

Cost control

•   Track actuals against approved bids; validate every change order and overage claim.

•   Escalate variance early, with a recommended course of action.

•   Post-show cost debrief and vendor performance review, feeding back into benchmarks.

Requirements

•   Feature films, mandatory — credits on 3–4+ released features, turnover through to final delivery. Episodic and advertising credits are welcome additions but not substitutes.

•   8–12+ years in VFX with direct ownership of bidding and budgeting: VFX Producer, Line Producer, Head of Production, or VFX Supervisor with commercial exposure.

•   Proven multi-vendor delivery — 8+ vendors and 3000+ shots concurrently on a single feature at ₹15-50 Cr scale, delivered on schedule.

•   Command of feature turnover mechanics: colour pipeline and ACES, conform, EDL/XML, deliverable specs, DI handover.

•   Working knowledge of Nuke, Houdini, Maya, Flame/Resolve, and fluent daily use of ShotGrid/Flow or ftrack as the delivery backbone.

•   Strong Excel/Sheets modelling — auditable cost models and schedules.

•   Firm but constructive with vendors; exceptional written communication; assumes nothing is understood until it is confirmed in writing.

•   Preferred: experience on both vendor and client side; familiarity with RFP and tender processes; vendors across [India, SEA, EU] and multiple time zones.

Deliverables

Cost vetting report and comparison matrix per bid · rate-card and cost-per-shot benchmark database · turnover specification issued to all vendors · master shot schedule and weekly status report · QC and retake log with delivery sign-off · post-show cost and vendor review.

Success measures

Validated savings against original quotes · reduced change orders and budget variance · on-time final delivery · first-pass technical QC acceptance rate · fewer avoidable retakes traceable to notes or turnover errors · no delivery-blocking surprise reaching leadership unwarned.

Terms

Signed NDA before access to bid data. Written declaration of interests — no financial or employment relationship with bidding vendors during the engagement or for 3 months either side, and no commissions or referral fees. All benchmarks, templates and reports created remain our intellectual property.