Introduction
VFXmarketplace.com brings together the buyers and suppliers of visual effects. Set up by Emmy award winning VFX supervisor Tim Webber and Peter Horne, it offers a radical new approach to providing basic visual effects.
Visual Effects (VFX) has become an increasing element of production in the film industry. VFXMarketplace aims to enable increased specialisation within the industry, allowing buyers to focus on more complex VFX, knowing that they can call on responsive capacity when they need it.
Website
Problem
Visual effects (VFX) has become an increasing element of production in the film industry. Each new film requires more complex VFX techniques more often which loads more work onto the already busy VFX companies. Outsourcing the less complex VFX work such as wire removal, paint and roto is commonplace in large VFX companies but this can sometimes be expensive, cumbersome and lead to poor quality or even worse, delays on client deadlines.
Peter and Tim realised that a Visual Effects procurement application could solve this problem and enable production companies to reliably outsource VFX work on a global scale.
There are many skilled individuals across the globe that can't get into the VFX market because they aren’t well known, or don't live in the right location. There are many Buyers who wish to outsource some of their basic Visual Effects work for a competitive price to reliable and accredited suppliers in return for work of excellent quality.
The aim of VFXmarketplace.com is to cater for these individuals and buyers, providing the most skilled and reliable artists with work at the best price, and a database of suppliers who meet the Buyers requirements.
Solution
Peter and Tim came to Solid State Group with the concept and after carefully analysing the requirements; Solid State Group proposed a Sugar Cube powered solution with bespoke Dutch auction and profile functionality.
The solution used Sugar Cubes Media Management capabilities to allow the buyer to upload VFX work in lots, with each lot having requirements, instructions and most importantly the digital assets in varying formats. For a supplier to bid on a piece of work, it was important that they could view a sample of the work required (on video) with more information (in the form of text and/or images) associated with the video, to give them a clear idea of what they were bidding on.
A Dutch type auction engine was required to allow the supplier to competitively bid on work they are interested in with the buyer having the final say on which supplier to select based on final price and supplier rating.
The system also allows the Buyers to manage their users and projects, to give them full control over the work they’re outsourcing and the workflow once they accept a bid. The flexibility of the Sugar Cube platform allowed Solid State Group to easily integrate these bespoke requirements into the application.
The application has two core areas; management of digital assets (mainly video) and an auction engine. Leveraging the Sugar Cube Digital Asset Management system, a large proportion of the asset management requirements were solved without an additional line of code being written. Aspects such as user management, fine-grained security, content ingestion and the serving of large video files were provided out of the box.
The auction engine was then written as a bespoke component to complement the Sugar Cube platform.
There are 4 areas of the site: Public, Admin, Buyer and Supplier
Public
The public area of the site is accessible to all users informing them of how the site works and allowing them to register as a Buyer or Supplier.
Admin
The Admin area is only accessible to the VFXmarketplace administrators, where they are able to content manage parts of the site, administer Buyers and Suppliers, and export data.
Supplier
Once registered and accredited, the supplier can find Visual Effects work they are accredited for and bid on these. The site allows them to keep track of their bids and notifies them when they have been outbid by another Supplier, allowing them to change their bid. They can also watch items and track items they have worked on.
Buyer
The Buyer can add projects, upload their requirements and set parameters for the supplier’s bids to be restricted to. They can then manage their items that are in the bidding stage, work in progress stage and completed stage.
Projects and Users can be created and managed in the respective areas. Allowing buyers to tag and assign users of different levels of access to the projects. Users can also be removed from projects and set different roles.
Results
VFXmarketplace.com has been able to introduce Visual Effects artists from around the globe to the market through its unique auction functionality. Suppliers now have their own quality ratings from multiple Buyers based on the quality of the work for all the completed jobs.
Suppliers and freelance artists love the site – as they can access work on a flexible basis. Buyers enjoy great quality work at low prices – with tailored security.
The Sugar Cube powered solution has enabled VFX Marketplace to launch quickly and on a low budget which is crucial for any start-up company looking to capture market share.
Solid State group worked with the VFXmarketplace team, to ensure that the working site was up and running within 3 months of it being commissioned.
As VFXmarketplace has grown, Solid State group have supported the business through strategy, consultancy, design and development of additional functionality.
“I enjoy working with the team at Solid Stage Group - they are not only great at delivering on time to budget, but bring a creative approach to making it happen. They take the time to understand the business goals, and build the technology solution to match those needs.”
Peter Horne, Managing Director VFXMarketplace.com
About Solid State Group
Solid State Group is a web platform software vendor and technical agency. The company specialises in solutions for managing web content and digital assets as well as social networking. Our products enable the rapid development of web sites and applications on proven and stable architecture. We also develop bespoke web applications from scratch and offer a full service solution including strategy, design, usability, SEO, and integration into third party systems.
The company has developed over 100 web projects since 2002 and complexity ranges from simple brochure websites to complex social networks, intranets, payment processing portals and eBay style ecommerce sites.
Our client list consists of blue-chip, public sector, SME and not for profit organisations. Blue chip clients include Shell, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Sony, Yahoo! and Ericsson. Other clients include NHS, Amnesty International, Brit Awards, Odeon and i-level. For more information please visit www.solidstategroup.com or call +44 (0) 207 613 7220.
