Hasta La Motion!

Hello,
I had a question for you guys before I start to travel down one path or the other. I wanted to get actual fx artists opinions because obviously you guys know what goes into your work better than I.

I am in the early stages of pre production for a feature film I’ll be co-producing, co-directing. This film will have a decent amount of fx shots (about 85) ranging from many simple to a number that are complex in nature. Budget for fx is going to fall around $150,000. We did get a quote from one indie fx house for that amount after showing them the shot list.

Obviously our budget doesn’t allow for an A list fx company to do the work for us but of course we are looking for as high end quality as possible, and quite honestly with enough research and effort in finding the right solution we hope for nothing but fantastic results.

My question is this..
In your guys opinion does it make more sense to hire an indie company with a staff to do the work, or try to find one amazing visual effects artist, pay them a 6 figure income for xx months of work.

I realize this might sound like a silly question, but it’s one with a good amount of thought behind. Hiring a mid level fx house would ensure the professionalism, a staff to bounce ideas off of each other, to solve each others problems, quicker turnaround etc. Negatives would be that $150G isn’t a huge amount of money so would quality suffer, would passion for the project suffer, would we be paying their overhead costs instead of putting the money direct to fx, etc.

Working with a single person (who might decide to farm out some of the work) would be making a very good wage, would most likely be much more passionate about the work, etc. Negatives would be that the work takes longer, they are not able to concentrate on particular elements of a shot, etc. Worst would be finding someone who represents themselves as one thing only to find out months into the project they can’t deliver what was expected of them.

We were completely ready to go the mid size company route until
reading about the director for Monsters and how on his own he spent 5 months creating the fx for his film.
This made us think about how finding the right person and creating a partnership with them might possibly be a better route to go.

In your guys opinions how rare would it be to find an effects artist at the top of his game that wasn’t already working for a company and would be interested in something like that?

Thoughts?