From Shotgun Software:

Global entertainment services company Prime Focus World provides award-winning visual effects and stereo 3D conversion services to major studios around the world. Its visual effects artists have created breathtaking shots for top films such as Avatar, Tron: Legacy, and the Harry Potter, Twilight and X-Men franchises, and its stereo 3D technicians have converted blockbusters including Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and Transformers: Dark of the Moon using its proprietary 2D-to-3D process, View-D.

With facilities in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and India, Prime Focus' Global Digital Pipeline seamlessly connects 3,000 artists and technicians worldwide and allows for around-the-clock service. In addition to adopting a more collaborative global VFX model, the company recently shifted from a Windows/3ds Max pipeline to standardizing on Maya and Nuke on Linux, and turned to infrastructure platforms like Shotgun and Revolver to evolve into the future.

“We were set to do both VFX and stereo 3D conversion on Men in Black 3,” explains Prime Focus Vancouver VFX Supervisor Jon Cowley. “We already had a consistent production pipeline in place but my main concern was effective project management. When I’m supervising from Vancouver and there’s a whole team in Mumbai that’s working while I’m at home, or asleep – what would be the best way to manage their progress? That’s when we decided to implement Shotgun.”

Jon Cowley, VFX Supervisor at Prime Focus Vancouver, working on VFX shots in Shotgun

“Once we chose Shotgun, it was extremely easy to integrate into our pipeline – it was literally all set up over one weekend and immediately began impacting our workflow,” said Cowley. Prime Focus also tapped in-house developers to spend an extra six weeks to integrate Shotgun into their pipeline, tailoring the software with Prime Focus-specific delivery tools and a new dailies logging system.

“We are also using the beta version of Revolver every single day and it is absolutely changing the way we work globally and will definitely become part of our standard pipeline,” continued Cowley. “We’re using it as a dailies review system, to give shots and annotations firsthand to all of the artists around the world.”

Improved Project Management and Communication
Shotgun significantly streamlined Prime Focus’ production tracking, management and overall collaboration across multiple facilities in LA, Vancouver, India and London as they delivered 319 VFX shots for MIB3. “Plates would come into Vancouver, then go to London for tracking, then to Mumbai for roto and prep, and then to LA for stereo work – so at any given time there were hundreds of versions of each shot around the world that all needed to be tracked. Shotgun allowed us to log and track everything very easily,” explained Cowley.

“Shotgun was great for me as a VFX supervisor because whether I’m at work or at home, any time of day, I can always log in to review a shot and make the creative decisions I need to make based on the latest iterations,” continued Cowley.