Short answer: A VFX pull is the job of extracting the frames for each effects shot from the original camera files, using the frame ranges in the edit plus a few extra frames either side. The frames are converted to the format and colour space the show has agreed, named by shot, and sent to the vendor. The vendor builds the shot on exactly those frames, so an error in the pull carries into everything after it.
Editorial works with lightweight copies of the footage. Visual effects cannot. A vendor needs the full-quality original frames, and only the frames it needs, because camera originals for a whole show are enormous. The pull is the bridge between the two.
For a production, the pull is usually invisible until a shot comes back the wrong length or the wrong colour. For a vendor, it's the first thing to check on every shot.
What a pull contains
A pull is driven by a pull list, one line per shot. Each line usually carries:
- The shot ID, the name the shot will carry for the rest of its life.
- The source clip and its timecode in and out, read from the edit.
- Handles, extra frames at the head and tail beyond what the cut uses.
- Any changes the editor made, such as a speed change or a reframe.
- The output spec: the file format and the colour space.
The frame ranges come out of the edit as an edit decision list, which Wikipedia describes as "an ordered list of reel and timecode data representing where each video clip can be obtained" in order to rebuild the final cut. The pull uses the same data to go back to the camera originals for just those frames.
The frames are then rendered out, usually as an image sequence such as OpenEXR files, one per frame, and delivered with a reference movie of the shot as it plays in the cut. That package, plates plus reference plus notes, is what most people mean by a turnover.
Who does it
On the production side, a visual effects editor or an assistant editor usually prepares the pull list, and a post facility, a lab or the editorial team itself renders the frames. On larger shows a dedicated visual effects editorial department runs the whole loop.
At the vendor, someone usually receives each pull and checks it before an artist touches it. Chris Kowal, then a visual effects editor at Method Studios in Montreal, told befores & afters in 2019 that the job covers data transfer, cut management and ingesting everything the client sends. He also named the reason it never settles: clients are usually "still cutting the film or episode" while the effects are being made, so frame ranges and scope can change from day to day.
Naming, and why it matters more than it looks
Every shot gets a name built from the same parts, typically a show code, an episode or reel, a sequence and a shot number. Each plate inside the shot gets a number too, and each re-pull of the same plate gets a new version.
A common convention is simple. A new plate for the same shot gets a new plate number. The same plate pulled again, because the cut got longer or a frame was wrong, gets a new version number. And nothing is ever overwritten.
When this slips, the damage is quiet. An artist paints on version one while editorial has sent version two with four more frames at the tail. The shot comes back looking finished and doesn't fit the cut.
What goes wrong between the edit and the vendor
The same faults account for most bad pulls.
- The cut moved. The shot was pulled from an older edit.
- Too few handles. The editor extends the shot and there is nothing to extend into.
- A speed change nobody flagged. The vendor needs the original frames and the speed curve, not the change baked in.
- A reframe nobody flagged. The work gets framed for a picture the audience never sees.
- The wrong colour. Frames pulled in a colour space the show did not agree, covered in why a matte painting has to be graded to a plate it has never seen.
- Pulled from a copy. Frames from a compressed editorial file look fine at review size and fall apart at full resolution.
Every one of these is cheap to catch on arrival and expensive to catch at final.
What should a vendor check when a pull arrives?
A short check on every pull saves most of the trouble above:
1. Count the frames and compare against the reference movie, handles included. 2. Line up the first and last frames of the cut range with the reference. 3. View the plates through the show's own viewing transform and compare the colour. 4. Look at the full-resolution frames, not a thumbnail, for compression damage. 5. Read the notes for retimes and reframes, and ask if there are none on a shot that clearly has one.
Any mismatch goes straight back to editorial, before work starts. A question on day one is a short email. The same question at final is a re-pull and a repaint.
Where environment work picks it up
Painted environments are built on the pulled plate and depend on its frame range and colour as much as any other work. Chumak Studio, in Toronto, paints environments for film and television on plates delivered this way. The work is described on the digital matte painting page. If you are setting up turnover for an environment package, the questions to ask a VFX vendor are a good place to agree the details first.
