Phantom Digital Effects Limited

I tried to understand employee distribution across key job functions, employee skill sets and employee area of study for Phantom VFX and Red Chillies VFX. I analyzed Red Chillies because it seemed very similar in size and have only vfx busines segment similar to Phantom. Prime Focus has other business segments apart from vfx and it wasn’t straightforward to do a like-for-like comparison with Prime Focus.

Conclusion – % Employee distribution across key job functions (Roto/MM/Paint, Compositor, FX, Lighting, Animator) looks to be similar in Phantom and Red Chillies. However, there are more number of Phantom’s employees who are skillful with required set of skills compared to the number of skillful Red Chillies employees. In almost all the required core skills/tools, Phantom has higher % of employees possessing these skills compared to Red Chillies. Similar observations are for the area of study where Phantom has higher % of employees with degree from specific area of study as compared to Red Chillies.

Raw Data – I have used LinkedIn and have manually compiled bucketization of employees across key job functions. All the positions (Jr/sr/lead) are included in the overall number for that job function,
(PS – I have used Google Bard previously for similar purpose and I find it semi-accurate compared to manual analysis. In this case, Google Bard’s accuracy for employee count across job roles was semi-accurate (±10% error) but the overall % distribution of Bard was more or less matching data from manual analysis)

1. Employee distribution across job functions

   

   While I have no knowledge or expertise in this field, as per my understanding, Roto/MM/Paint and Lighting seems to be the low end job functions (mainly post-production activities). The distribution of employees in these low end job roles for both the companies seems to be ~35% and rest ~65%.

2. Skill sets

   

3. Study Area

   

Appendix

1. Org structure of Phantom (As per Google Bard) (click for more details)

2. Org structure of Red Chillies (As per Google Bard) (click for more details)

3. Phantom’s career page to understand job roles and responsibilities – Careers @ PhantomFX