Frantic Films added animated background and foreground vines in CG for this scene from The Ruins. 

Malhotra addresses what he believes are the challenges and benefits that result from this type of acquisition. "The greatest challenges are always around integration of corporate cultures and workflows, though we are working through those at a rapid pace. In fact, Frantic's teams and our teams across the UK and India are already standardized on many similar tools so it looks like we'll be benefiting from cross facility collaborations sooner rather than later."

Any other benefits regarding integrated services?

"Integrated services have always been central to our business model. Prime Focus' offering to filmmakers in Hollywood provides end-to-end post-production services beginning with dailies through to editorial, digital intermediate and final project deliverables via Post Logic, along with high-end visual effects capabilities under the same roof with Frantic Films VFX.

"Multi-locational support provides unparalleled scalability, along with the ability to tap top post and visual effects talent where it best suits your project and budget. The visual effects process is a highly collaborative one, where large vfx shows often split work across multiple facilities to keep a project on track. With our business approach, and highly capable facilities around the globe, we are positioned to offer Hollywood studios and filmmakers an ideal scenario for facilitating their vfx and post-production needs."

Bond elaborates on some of the issues inherent in the integration of diverse corporate cultures. "When you have five or six different companies and cultures meshing together, you always get in the situation where everybody has their own idea of what makes sense. They have their own process, their own pipeline. Not everybody uses the same software, for example. There's always the debate of do we change from this 3D application to this one or do we move from this to that. There are all sorts of issues. I have my sales rep for a product, and they have theirs. Which one do we use?"

In dealing with these issues, Bond has high praise for Malhotra's leadership. "The benefit that I found in Namit's leadership is that he listens to everybody. He doesn't just make brash decisions or go off half-cocked. He makes a really consistent effort to listen to everybody and take all those ideas into account before he makes a decision on something."

Bond also believes that integrating the various companies is Malhotra's strong point. "In other companies that I've seen that have been acquired, they kind of just ran as 15 different companies. They do things the way they've done them for 10 years. In this company, it seems like everybody is ready for change, and everybody is ready for integration, and everybody seems to benefit and (Prime Focus) didn't acquire companies that they didn't see how they could work together. They acquired us when we were already working across different cultures and different time zones and so forth. So, we're very open to that. We see the necessity and the benefits."

Of course, the successful integration of the various companies will depend heavily on the infrastructure and logistics that are employed and how well the various companies can talk to one another. Malhotra has already taken to task both of these aspects.

"We are in process of connecting all of our locations around the world via secured high-speed fiber networks. The work processes and communication structures across locations are also getting standardized. Looking forward, we will continue to focus on streamlining various processes in our production pipelines to facilitate more efficient collaboration."

Production pipelines are one area where Frantic Films' involvement will be extremely beneficial to the Prime Focus community, Bond believes. "We created a pipeline department to work on a worldwide integrated pipeline for data movement to simply process how to do certain tasks.

"Essentially, our pipeline department looks at processes, and we break them down in an analytical way. Then we allow the creatives to fit within that process. For example, on a movie that we're currently working on, we discuss with the different companies, who's got the capacity to do certain kinds of work. And then we do the work where it makes the most sense. So, if the client requires certain tax credits or certain cost benefits or certain talent that work is done with those people."

Naturally, the analysis of all these processes must generate a great deal of data that needs to be handled as efficiently as possible. "Frantic Films has an I.O. department," Bond explains, "and the film I.O. department moves film back and forth in the background for projects we have. So, if we need to do some shots in India for something that needs to be done tomorrow morning or out of London, that data gets moved."

But as Bond points out, everything begins and ends with the pipeline department. "There's a lot of different technology and a lot of different processes, but it's the pipeline department that looks at those things and decides what needs to happen. Do we need to teleconference? Do we need to fly somebody to an office because that would make the most sense or be the most efficient? There's a constant evaluation on a per project basis."