About the role
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.