Short answer: A VFX vendor is an outside company hired to deliver a defined block of visual effects shots. The production keeps the cut, the review and the final say. Most larger shows split their shots across several vendors, and those vendors often send part of their own work, such as roto and tracking, to other companies again.
So "outsourcing" in visual effects is rarely one handoff. It's a chain. A production hands shots to vendors, and a vendor may hand pieces of those shots to someone else. Each link in that chain moves a plate, a deadline and a tax question to a new building.
This page maps the system. The detail of what goes into a single package, and how to vet the company that receives it, sits in the articles linked along the way.
What is a VFX vendor?
A vendor is any company outside the production that is contracted to make visual effects shots. It can be a large facility that covers every craft, or a specialist that only does one thing, such as environments or cleanup. The crafts themselves are laid out in what VFX covers and what a VFX studio does.
The contract makes a company a vendor, not its size. It receives plates and a shot list, bids against them, delivers versions for review and is paid for finals. The production, usually through its visual effects supervisor and visual effects producer, decides what is finished.
Some shows also keep a small in-house team. Tyler Cordova, a VFX producer, told VFX Voice that "an in-house team usually comes in closer to the end of post-production", because "it's a cost-effective solution to have a small team do simpler shots after the edit has settled." Everything bigger or earlier tends to go out.
How a show spreads its shots across vendors
The usual pattern is a breakdown sent to a short list, bids back, and work split by sequence or by specialty. Kathy Chasen-Hay, then Senior Vice President of Visual Effects at Skydance Productions, described the first step in the same 2024 VFX Voice piece: "we'll send the breakdown out to four or five trusted visual effects companies." Pieter Luypaert, VFX Producer at Dream Machine FX, gave the reason the work then gets split: "Multiple vendors are often used to mitigate risks."
On big shows the count climbs. In a June 2023 VFX Voice article, Jeanie King, ILM's Vice President of Production, said "Many projects have had 10 to 20 VFX studios involved". In the same piece Christian Manz, Framestore's Creative Director, Film, said: "I have had as many as five companies working on a shot/sequence in the past."
The buyer's own paperwork assumes this too. Netflix's status reporting instructions for visual effects tell productions to set up each vendor in their tracking project, and say that "If a shot is shared between multiple vendors, you may add various vendor names, separated by a comma". One shot, several companies, is treated as a normal case in that template.
Splitting has a cost. Rohan Desai, Managing Director of ReDefine, part of the DNEG group, named it in the 2023 article: "This can create additional work for vendors when they are required to use assets made by other vendors." A creature or a building built by one vendor has to be rebuilt, or at least re-checked, before a second vendor can light it. That work is real and someone pays for it.
How vendors outsource work to other vendors
The second link in the chain is the one producers see least. A vendor that wins a package often sends the labour-heavy prep underneath it to another company.
Hitesh Shah, CEO and Founder of BOT VFX, described his company's position in an April 2026 VFX Voice article on the Indian industry. Of several large facilities, he said "All of these players source their roto, paint and matchmove work to us and others," and he called BOT VFX a subcontractor to them. Roto is drawing mattes around moving objects, paint is frame-by-frame cleanup, and matchmove is recovering the camera's movement from the footage.
The buyer side says the same thing. In another April 2026 VFX Voice piece, Chasen-Hay, by then Head of VFX, Paramount Features & TV at Paramount Skydance, said "Right now, you send all of your non-creative work, like roto, paint or matchmove, to cheaper countries".
Subcontracting also happens higher in the chain, between creative vendors. A large studio can send a whole environment package to a specialist. What it is actually buying there, and where those packages fail, is covered in what a VFX studio buys when it subcontracts environment work.
None of this is a problem in itself. It becomes one when nobody on the production side knows it is happening, because the plates and the security obligations move with the work, and so does the tax position.
What does "Netflix vendor" mean?
People search for "Netflix VFX vendors" expecting a list. On the Netflix partner pages checked for this article, there is no public list of approved visual effects vendors.
There is a list of something else. Netflix's NPAA site is titled "Netflix Non-Branded Product Artwork Agencies". Its United States page names a small group of agencies that make title artwork and logos, says they are "tested and approved by Netflix", and says all of them "are bound by a Do Not Exceed Rate Card." The page does not mention visual effects. It's marketing artwork, a different trade.
On the visual effects side, the partner pages treat a vendor as a record in the production's tracking, not as a badge. The status reporting instructions cover how a production adds each vendor, its name or code and its location. Netflix's VFX glossary lists a cost field, Projected Vendor Cost Detail, defined as "Contracted and Projected Costs on a show grouped by Vendor", and describes a tax incentive name as "Typically the name of the vendor and location".
So a "Netflix vendor", in practice, is a company a Netflix production has contracted and set up in that tracking. Netflix's published pages describe how it is tracked and costed, not a certificate it holds.
Why location decides where the shots go
Location is part of every vendor decision. Luypaert put it plainly in the 2024 article: "The vendor's location also plays a role, as tax incentives can significantly impact cost."
That is a large part of why people search for Vancouver VFX vendors. British Columbia's production services tax credit includes a digital animation, visual effects and post-production credit at 16 percent, calculated on qualified B.C. labour expenditure. Ontario and Quebec run their own credits on different bases, and those are compared in where VFX work happens in Toronto and Canada.
Subcontracting cuts into those credits. Janet Muswell Hamilton, Senior Vice President of VFX at HBO, said in the 2026 VFX Voice piece that her team reviews "which work is assigned to which facility" and "the extent of outsourcing". Her example: if a vendor outsources a tenth of the work, the production receives no incentive on that tenth. A bid priced on one province's credit assumes the labour stays in that province.
What to check before you outsource VFX work
These are system questions, asked before a vendor is chosen. The shot-level questions, about colour, delivery format and note turnaround, are in the questions to ask a VFX vendor.
1. Who will do the work, and where? Ask whether any part of the package will be subcontracted, to whom and in which country.
2. Which company incurs the labour? Labour-based credits follow the labour, and the rules on who claims them differ by province. A local office does not prove local labour.
3. Who else touches these shots? If another vendor shares the sequence, agree who builds each shared asset and who pays for handing it over.
4. Where do the plates go? Every subcontractor in the chain holds your footage. Your security terms need to reach them.
5. Can they commit to a number? Luypaert's test: "Can the vendor commit to delivering a specific number of shots by a set date". A firm count is worth more than a broad reel.
6. Is the vendor named consistently in your tracking? If the vendor appears under two names, its costs and shot status get split across two records and the report stops adding up.
A vendor that answers the first two without hesitating has been asked before. One that has to check is telling you something too.
If you are splitting a show
Chumak Studio paints environments for film and television, in Toronto, on digital matte painting and 3D environment packages. If you are deciding whether a block of environment shots should go out on its own, send the breakdown and you will get a straight answer about whether it separates cleanly.
