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.