A 2024 SCAD Capstone film about two unlikely heroes trapped in a Hollywood-esque teaser trailer that’s out to kill them.
As co-producer for this project, I took what I learned from my time running House of Rejects and applied it to a more intense production. Instead of three years coordinating a team of 30+ to complete 5-6 minutes of film, I had to coordinate a team of 10 to complete a 3-minute film in one year. Alongside my co-producer, Ila MacLean, and my director, JJ Gibson, I built and administered a full production pipeline.
Shot List and Schedule
At the beginning of Summer 2023, the crew got a head start on Pre-Production. That called for a comprehensive document to guide the crew through all the necessary information on the project. As production continued and questions arose, this document was updated and refined.
The first sheet in the workbook was the Naming Convention table. This naming convention was based off of what worked and did not work in projects JJ, Ila, and I had been a part of in the past.
This naming convention was established at the very beginning of production so that all files could be easily searchable and linked across working files.
Naming Convention
This sheet acted as both a source of information for the crew (shot descriptions, timecode, frame counts), but also a means of tracking shot progress.
The percentages at the top automatically update as the shots are marked as “Complete,” and they translate to the color-coded progress bars.
On the far left side is the “Heads-Up Bar.” This element allows the crew to see, at a glance, whether a shot is due in the coming week or overdue.
Shot List
Layout Sheet and Composite Sheet
We created similar sheets for our Layouts and our Final Composites.
The Year Schedule was created at the beginning of the Fall Quarter and adjusted periodically according to Professor recommendations. However, the overall structure of the schedule (deadlines, start times, etc.) stayed the same. This Gantt Chart acted as the central hub for all planning — if we were on track, ahead of schedule, or behind.
Year Schedule - Gantt Chart
ShotGrid Assignments
Since our class did not receive access to ShotGrid until partway through the first quarter, ShotGrid was mainly used for assigning tasks and reviews for Dailies, and shot progress tracking and bird’s-eye production scheduling was kept on the Google Sheet.
Since the Year Schedule in Google Drive acted as the main overview for the production, the Schedule tab in ShotGrid acted more as an Agile project management workspace, akin to a Kanban board.
Crew members can use this section to get an idea of their individual tasks and due dates.
Schedule
For Dailies sessions, I would create a playlist in the ShotGrid’s Review panel with all the most recent submissions.