The idea grew out of a loose collective of freelance senior FX guys that formed in 2012. We operate as a freelance-hybrid "virtual vendor", offering some of the benefits of a traditional vendor, while maintaining the flexibility of freelance... And without having to bill more than our day rates. It looks a lot like typical freelance, in that you're dealing directly with individual artists, but it lets us add some vendor-y type things:

A single point of contact for booking, consolidated/standardized billing through a single vendor corp, scalability for crunch time, replacements if someone gets sick / etc., seamless handoffs between artists when necessary, guys in multiple time zones, and a trusted face (mine, assuming you trust me) to keep tabs on the job. Plus the ability to jump in and help each other if someone gets stuck - in real time.  In short, we're a team.

But you'll still interface directly with the artists, so there's no added drag on the creative pipeline. If the individual artists aren't people you've worked with before, we'll provide reels & a chat before anyone needs to commit. So basically, the same freelancer experience, but without the drawbacks of hiring random individuals (especially for remote jobs). On top of which, everyone on the crew is senior, and a heavy hitter.

We typically digest the project details (dates, shot count, boards, edit, etc.) to generate a breakdown on our side, then offer a suggested roster / plan of attack. It's a bit more up-front work for us, but we've found that pre-applying a bunch of FX-centric brains to the work lets us deliver better results.

We've been operating since late 2020, and in that time, have worked with vfx shops both large and small: MPC/Mill, Method, Blacksmith, Zero VFX, Carbon, Break+Enter, Preymaker, Framestore...

Sound interesting? You can get in touch by mailing me (Mitch Deoudes) directly, or through the contact page.

Oh yeah - and we're also trialing a new service: FX bidding assistance for jobs that are in their early stages. Give us a shout if that sounds like something useful.