Every production pays for its VFX decisions either early, with clarity, or later, with money and stress. In every production I've worked on, I've never seen a third option.
The expensive version looks like this. The shot gets designed in the edit, months after the camera wrapped, when the only people who can fix it are in post and the only currency left is budget.
The cheap version is a conversation in pre-production where someone senior asks the boring questions. What's real, what's CG, where's the camera, what can we get on the day. Before a single frame is shot.
None of this is glamorous. It's just the difference between VFX that serves the film and VFX that rescues it.
Three things worth holding onto:
- Decide what's CG before you shoot, not in the edit.
- The cheapest fix almost always happens on set.
- Senior input in pre-production is the highest-leverage VFX spend there is.
This is what a VFX planning session is for.
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