PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT

My organizational skills are top-notch, my spreadsheets are fire, and my teammates hate (love) to see me coming with my Regular Production Updates (tm). So, if you will, let’s take a gander at some of the projects I’ve worked on and how I’ve kept them on track!

Popped or Alive

3D Animated Short Film

Role: Producer and Animator (May 2024 - June 2025)

Popped or Alive was a capstone film meant to serve as the final project for our program at Savannah College of Art and Design. We had a team of 10 crew members, 30 weeks, and a 3-minute time limit. I was asked by my friend, the director, if I would take on the role of producer; and I gladly accepted, excited to face the challenge of the biggest project i’d worked on yet!

Flow (Formerly Shotgrid)

  • Flow was our primary production tracking website. I was responsible for managing the entire project through the software from start to finish

  • One of my regular tasks was to regularly return to our task lists in Flow, and update assignments and deadlines as needed. I would also double check that the final files for a given task were submitted before marking the task as final

  • I was also responsible for creating and updating reviews that we used for dailies during crew and class meetings (2-3 per week)

  • Once the review was over, I marked each version as wither ‘N/A’ or ‘Viewed’, that way when I went to make a review for the next dailies, I could easily filter all versions by “Pending Review” and see what versions had yet to be looked at.

  • For each dailies, I was also responsible for downloading the newest pass of each shot, plugging them into the master file, and uploading a new version to the master file task

  • Although we usually looked directly at the master file for critique during class, I would also link every shot individually in the review so we could go into more depth if necessary

Discord

  • In addition to Flow, our team also heavily relied on Discord for communication

  • Our discord server has several channels that were used for critique, lists, and crew-wide announcements and updates!

  • This is an example of our assignment lists within Discord. This way, we could list tasks that couldn’t necessarily be linked to Flow, and I could put critique directly next to the assignment itself.

  • One of my tasks that lived inside of Discord was to upload the notes I’d taken during every crew meeting (more on that later!).

  • Each set of notes is labeled and clearly listed for crew members to find if they needed information that we discussed during our meeting, or if they would like further clarification on a piece of critique they received!

  • After each class and meeting I provided an update in our announcements channel!

  • These updates always had a link to where the assignments list can be found (In the assignments channel)

  • They contained reminders regarding decisions we made, general updates on our progress, and upcoming due dates and/or meetings!

Google Suite - Google Slides

  • Occasionally there are things that even Flow and Discord can’t handle, and for those I turn to the ever-reliable Google Suite. Our team used many of Google’s free features to help create calendars, guides, documents, and spreadsheets!

  • Here are a few slides from our tech guide, which we used to establish procedures for various aspects of production.

  • Naming conventions, submission instructions, tutorials, and animation guides can all be found here.

Google Suite - Google Calendar

  • This calendar contains external deadlines from our university, as well as crew meeting and broader due dates.

  • For example, for the second half of our second quarter the due dates for our animation passes aligned, so all spline passes were due on February 26th.

Google Suite - Google Docs

  • Here is an example of what my meeting notes might look like

  • All notes have a label, attendance, and and agenda. Following that is usually a “General Information” section, followed by individual critique.

  • If necessary I also included shorter task lists that I could go back and simplify or add into our main task lists later.

  • During our meetings my goal is to be efficient and clear, so I didn’t waste time asking my team to wait for me to do administrative tasks.

Google Suite - Google Sheets

  • Finally, we have a few important spreadsheets that I created and manage:

  • Our most important is our shot list! This spreadsheet contains data for each shot that I have calculated into a graph on a second page.

  • This gave us a better view of our overall progress and is generally easier to read.

  • I’ve spent quite a bit of time creating a set of charts that will automatically update as I change dropdown menus, such as what pipeline step a certain shot is on or how difficult the shot is.