Many VFX studios try to tell clients they can do everything in an effort to attract as much work as possible. This fails to give clients a compelling reason to call them for anything.
A sales team from a mid-size VFX studio went to meet the Head of Post Production at HBO. She asked them what their studio’s specialties were. Anxious not to be pigeonholed into a specific kind of VFX work, they said something along the lines of, “we do a bit of everything. Call us anytime, we’d love to work with you!”
I imagine the Head of Post shaking her head. “Look, I can call any VFX studio in the world to work on my projects. How do I know when to call you?” And then the long, painful silence as the sales team looked at each other and tried to come up with a good answer on the spot.
Laundry List Marketing
I find myself telling this anecdote about the visit to HBO a lot. Many ambitious young VFX studios don’t want to limit the type of VFX work that clients think they can perform. If you look at their websites, their marketing language is peppered with vague, aspirational phrases (“move audiences”, “create the future”, “build worlds”). They’re not just VFX studios, they create content. Their home pages open to a laundry list of VFX services, each linked to a showreel that proves they can do environments, creatures and so forth. (Even so, you can be sure that less confident clients will ask to see a shot you’ve done previously of a dinosaur eating a mermaid, to reassure themselves that you’ll do a fine job with their shot of a dinosaur eating a mermaid. Have fun searching your shot archive for something to satisfy them.)
And maybe these studios really are moving audiences and creating the future on screen. But this doesn’t give potential clients much of a clue about when to call them over competing studios. VFX Executives don’t finish reading a script and think, “hmm, this feature involves moving an audience. I should introduce the director to VFX studio X.” They put down the script and think, “there’s about two hundred shots of CG creature work, a ton of complex digimatte, and I’m going to need all of it done in Montreal for the tax rebate. Better get this in front of Rodeo FX and MPC.”
Successful Specialists
A few VFX studios are built around excelling at just one of the laundry list of VFX services on everyone else’s website. Whiskytree, for example, is known for matte painting and digital environment work (but you won’t be able to guess that by looking at their website’s home page). Likewise, VFX Producers all over the world think immediately of Yannix for their tracking and match-moving support needs.
Others have successfully leveraged distinction in a specific type of work alongside a fully comprehensive VFX offering. Rhythm and Hues (now defunct) was famed for their CG creature work in movies like Babe, The Golden Compass and Life of Pi. Scanline developed proprietary fluid simulation tools during the early days of digital VFX, which made them the natural choice if you couldn’t justify the cost of going to one of the biggest VFX studios at the time. A movie like City of Ember (2008) with a $55 million production budget and one big scene requiring large scale fluid simulation would end up at Scanline, for the fluid sim shots at least. Both R&H and Scanline offered a full range of VFX services; they were celebrated for their specialties, but not limited to them.
Over the years, I've found Image Engine’s marketing to be on-point. Their website home page currently lists four areas of expertise: Creatures, Environments, Simulation and Invisible VFX. That last one is an astute catchall for several laundry list items that don’t add much value to client perception for an established firm like Image Engine. Yes, we can infer from the CG-heavy specialties that they do also know compositing; a client who doesn’t recognize this will probably find whatever they’re looking for in the Invisible VFX section. Nicely done.
At the end of the day, high rates or poor quality are much more likely to limit the type of work a studio gets than telling clients you’re especially good at something. Having a specialty is particularly effective for attracting new clients, and making sure they’re going to be happy with you during that crucial first project together. Once they've built trust with your team, they’ll quickly start to ask whether you can do other types of VFX work. Just give them a reason to call you.
