In my years at the Molecule in NYC, first as a freelancer and then as a perma-lancer, I had lots of time to observe how a mid-sized studio manages the sometimes huge number of shots that need to be kept track of on a daily basis. When I started, the studio was using Ftrack to manage its shot pipeline, and while poking around online I saw that ftrack had a python API, and a lightbulb went off –
Nuke + Python + Ftrack = ? Awesomeness, anyway.
So I went to work on building a nuke-based shot tracking system, first for artists but then expanding to include supervisors as well. I called it “the dashboard”, and though it started small it quickly became essential to the Molecule’s pipeline. When the studio switched tracking packages to Shotgun, a lot more functionality was exposed and the whole thing just got 50% better. You can catch a quick glimpse of it in this promotional video from Autodesk – at around 0:55 in this video, the awesome Rick Shick talks about how he uses it instead of the web-based interface almost exclusively in his role as comp supervisor:
https://vimeo.com/211000897
Alas, time has taken away Rick’s kind words. Trust me that they were very flattering!
Gone were the days of manually creating contact sheets for each project; now every artist and supervisor had access to dynamic contact sheets, through which they could see and change statuses, read and post notes and images, and quickly open any shot.
