4 posts tagged with "workflow"

This post is an update on the work on Dailies Notes Assistant, and a reflection on my brother's article: Quality in the Age of Slop.

My brother Sinclair recently wrote an article that's been getting some traction on the internet. Yes, he blogs too, or rather, I blog too, he was very much first. If you're familiar with Hank and John Green from the vlog brothers, well, we've turned into the blog brothers! In his post, he explores the idea of 'Quality' from the book Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) and how it relates to programming in the age of AI. Robert Pirsig, in his book, refuses to really define what he means by Quality, but eventually distinguishes between:

Romantic Quality — the immediate, felt, aesthetic surface of things. The beauty you see at a glance. How something feels.

Classic Quality — the underlying structure, function, and reason. How something works.

Reading Sinclair's article, I couldn't help but think about my work with the Academy Software Foundation sandbox project Dailies Notes Assistant, and specifically, what Classic Quality looks like in dailies note taking.

This post covers show-side production tracking in the visual effects industry - looking specifically at tools used to maintain and communicate a database of work on film and television projects. I'm including a simple python script that I set up to quickly A/B dailies against previous versions in Nuke.

I've worked for a studio, I've worked for a vendor, but for the longest time, show-side work has been this big mystery to me. I always figured it was vastly different to anything I'd done before. I've been working show-side on a large project for the last couple months; it's early days but I've learned a few things, so here goes.

In this post, I showcase a fun integration with Pro-Tools and take a look at what makes MASV a great tool for large file sending.

Meet MASV​

MASV is a cloud-native Managed File Transfer service with a long list of multi-industry use-cases. The idea is, rather than trying to manage your own transfer setup, you give that responsibility to MASV who has built out the infrastructure to safely and speedily transfer your files. It's important to note, most MFT companies are not reinventing protocols, they're wrapping them with security and reliability enhancements, a job that would be a headache to do in-house. MASV's specific approach is to provide users with a store and forward model, primarily utilizing Amazon Web Services as their backbone. What this means is users have the flexibility to upload their files, and grab them whenever they want, including while they're still uploading: see MASV Express. With this model, the transfer has a middle man, that for most intents and purposes, is secure and compliant, but that's a consideration some users have to make.

Production Workflow Manager: A liaison who designs, manages, and optimizes production workflows and tool configurations, allowing for fluid collaboration between creative, production, and technical teams.

Introduction​

Most of us accept that the primary role of a VFX vendor-side production team is to facilitate the activities of artists working on a project. The tangible goal-posts then, can be summed up as: keeping an artist's main focus on what's happening between their read and write nodes — not tracking creative look approvals, change orders, linking assets, scheduling, relaying notes, and so on...

A good producer needs to have a set of tools at their disposal to enlist, support, and deliver the work of these artists. These tools should also help make sure producers and coordinators can utilize all available data tracked in whatever production resources available. Enter the Production Workflow Manager. Some put this under Production Manager, others Production Pipeline Lead, at some shops coordinators do this, or TDs, but this person's role is to facilitate the facilitators — and it's my opinion that this should be a dedicated role as the envoy to pipeline from production. Essentially someone who works to build, teach, and support workflows that bolster the work of production professionals.