Bejoy Arputharaj – Senior VFX Supervisor at Phantom-FX

Phantom-FX conjures hyperreal worlds for Hollywood’s fantasy and sci-fi blockbusters – delivering work on the far-flung universes of Avengers, Transformers and Oz from its headquarters in India and creative satellite office in Los Angeles.

Offering services such as rotoscopy, wire removal, and clean plate extraction, Phantom-FX helps directors to fulfil their full creative vision down to the tiniest detail. And, with its offices straddling opposite ends of the globe, it is able to offer a full 24-hour service – the lights never turn off at Phantom-FX.

Frankie is a major solution in making this approach viable. We caught up with senior VFX supervisor Bejoy Arputharai to learn how Frankie integrates into Phantom-FX’s global pipeline, enabling the team to collaboratively create with clients across oceans and continents.

What is your company’s speciality?

As Phantom-FX is located in India, we are able to serve clients across the globe, meeting high quality expectations and at the same time communicating constantly on shot updates stage by stage. Our whole operation is dependent on remote collaboration. We collaborate through our online project management system and then use Frankie for review, which completely serves our requirements.

What has been the most exciting and unique Frankie project of your career?

We have just started using Frankie recently and it has proven productive in our pipeline. Currently, we are using it in a project called The Little Mermaid – we’re interacting with the Director and the production VFX Supervisor in LA as we operate out of India.

Was there a specific feature of Frankie that you immediately responded to?

Yes, the live feedback feature is simply awesome. It cuts down on so much time compared to typical back and forth messaging. Also, just seeing someone move the cursor move across my screen – from halfway around the world – makes me smile.

What is the best way to identify and meet a client’s vision?

Having clients on a video conference call is definitely the best method, especially as Frankie allows us to interactively see client annotations right on top of a video. Plus working on browser with Frankie is much better than downloading an application –  clients can have immediate access – we can just finish jobs on the go.

How do you meet the challenges of tight deadlines? Do you have any methods to help stay on track?

Our main resource for keeping on schedule is Phantom-FX’s project management system, which is accessible online to our clients and connected to our internal servers. We can get live feeds of artists’ progress and log each approval review stage, so the team stays on the same page without any confusion or setbacks.