BOT VFX won the Best VFX Feature (International) award at the VAM Awards 2026, held on 15 May 2026 in Mumbai, for our work on Send Help (2026) — the Sam Raimi-directed survival horror-thriller for 20th Century Studios starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien.
"Send Help asked our team to wear many hats - environment work, CG props, atmospherics, character continuity, sometimes all within the same shot. Seeing that range recognised at VAM 2026 means a lot, because it's exactly the kind of versatility we want to be known for." — Sreyans Bardia, Co-founder & Managing Director, BOT VFX.
Across the Board
Send Help follows two colleagues stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash, and the VFX brief for the film touched almost every department we have.
The team handled CG asset creation, building out props like a golf club, diamond ring, and knives, modelled and shaded in Maya to match on-set lighting and lens data. We also tackled more specific builds: a digitally enhanced eye on a severed pig head, and photo real blood augmentation on a dead rat.
Environment work pushed in a different direction. Sparse stretches of forest were thickened through digital foliage and matte-based extensions, rock textures were sharpened with CG overlays and displacement detailing, and monitor screens throughout the film were rebuilt as custom UI composites with accurate reflections and perspective tracking.
Then came continuity and atmosphere: blood augmentation around actors' eyes and faces that had to hold up across different lighting setups and camera angles, plate cleanup and corrections across intercut shots, and multi-layered digital rain passes tuned for wind direction and physical interaction with the live-action plates — all managed through a single ACES colour pipeline from ingest to final DI.
It's the kind of project that keeps a studio's range sharp: equal parts creature work, environment building, and continuity craft, inside one production schedule.
A Shared Win
Send Help's visual effects were delivered under VFX Supervisor Everett Burrell and VFX Producer Korey Cauchon, by a roster of vendors that included Fin Design + Effects, ILM, Kojo, LVL UP, and Vitality Visual Effects alongside BOT VFX. We're grateful for the trust and creative clarity that came with being part of that team.
On BOT’s side, this win belongs to:
- Hetal Jain — Executive Producer
- Swetha Madapuri — VFX Producer
- John J Britto — VFX Supervisor
- Ganesh Karthikeyan — 2D Roto Supervisor
- Sathish Johney — Associate 2D Prep Supervisor
- Balaji Parthiban — 2D Supervisor
- Manojkumar Devarajan — Matchmove/Rotomation Supervisor
- Sivakumar Gunasekar — Matchmove and Rotomation Supervisor
- Somnath Rithe — Comp Supervisor
- Nithin S — Associate Central Production Manager
- Saket Sinha — Line Producer
...and every artist across the team whose name didn't make it onto this list, but whose work absolutely made it on screen.
Send Help asked for a bit of everything, and that's exactly what this win is a nod to.
