New Tech & Market Trends Are Driving the Growth of Small Scale VFX operations

Let's all meet up in the year 2000

When I arrived, 2001, the Soho model was thriving on client attendance with a small army of support staff. Specialised hardware was the cost of entry. It had a village feel, with visible ‘shop fronts’ and an air of exclusivity, it was friendly, but fiercely contested. Soho was alive with multi-million pound campaigns that we could watch on TV when we went home. A single campaign could reach a mass audience of millions in a single viewing and a Soho presence was the defining factor for that VFX generation.

The Youtube Generation has Swept Away Old Viewing Habits

Today, brands run multiple campaigns distributed across diverse channels reaching fragmented audiences. The Youtube generation does not converge in clusters around the TV. Whilst the internet is perhaps the most outwardly obvious driver of change, a more subtle convenience is that it applies both ways; to audience and industry. As campaigns stretch further, pushing deeper & smaller, articulating a more informed message to a more specific audience, there were more campaigns to make. The industry matured, normalised and dispersed. Measured budgets replaced the boom or bust campaigns which helped Soho to thrive & they matched the expanding capabilities of the flexible new workforce.

Consumer Tech Mirrored then Outstripped Elite Hardware

Computers & OS systems got leaner, smarter and cheaper. Apps developed smarter tools that were were easier to come by and faster to learn. Freelancers could more easily break out of the single app career. Engineering facility workflows were becoming available off the shelf. The convenience of online review was enough & busy creatives attended less. Production was moving out of suites as iPhones & Go Pros were arriving in everyone’s pockets. All of this was a revolution itself without any mention of the new powers of Ai.

The New Leaner High End Separates Itself With Talent

We could all do more with less at a time when the advertising market was requiring us to do so, and this triggered a shift away from the supercharged facility that is pretty much complete. The talent has regrouped in smaller creative studios that have spread further across London. They are primed for the new high end with cheaper tech & greater flexibility but with years of experience to draw on. New creative studios are where you would go to build stunningly realistic CGI environments or to scale up for the critical campaigns that still hit the growing new format list of small screens.

Amidst all of the newsworthy VFX developments of the bigger & mid-sized players, the solo offer has transformed too. More than ever before, every experienced operator now has the choice to go it alone, and that’s what has meant the most to me.

Freelance Commercials VFX Editors Can Offer More Than Low Overheads

A freelancer used to need a facility. Today, we are independent and vital in an unsettled market. If you have a few edits and some VFX shots to get out the door you will likely turn direct to a freelancer, skipping an overhead so large it bears no relation to the normal budget. One person can output a campaign, handling everything from artwork to mastering & versioning. The Soho suite has been miniaturised, and is re-offered by freelancers, who now routinely consider the bigger picture. With a chain of command of one, communication can be direct and effective, it’s one-to-one like the highly prized suites of before.