Call Sheets

The humble “call sheet” is one such solution. Issued the evening before each shoot day (typically printed and handed out or emailed to everyone), it provides a high-level glimpse of who’s needed where and at what time, and other pertinent information, such as contact information for key people and a risk assessment evaluation.

Though useful, this traditional approach is by no means ideal—for one thing, it doesn’t update according to changing circumstances (instead, a new sheet must be issued and redistributed whenever there are significant changes), for another, there’s no way to verify if the recipients receive (or even read) it. Furthermore, because call sheets are intended for mass distribution to many people across different departments, the amount of information it contains that is actually relevant to each recipient is very small, and the recipients have to scan through a lot of information to find the important parts.

In the connected, mobile domain of the Cloud, this needn’t be the case. Individuals can instead receive the same information directly to their phones, with changes pushed out as soon as they happen. This micromanagement can be done through software rather than requiring coordinators to tailor individual call sheets for each person. Instead they might simply allocate people to specific groups and then document what’s needed for each group. When the time comes to send out the call sheet, the software sends out the information to each person in the group, with the most relevant parts for each person highlighted in some way.

Indeed, the information provided by call sheets can be enriched by the power of the Cloud, with maps and directions relayed as well as simple destination addresses, up-to-date weather forecasts, and links to other pertinent information.

Services like Studio Binder (studiobinder.com) also provide a way for recipients to acknowledge receipt of the call sheet, relaying this back to coordinators, so they can tell if anyone may not have received theirs, and then follow-up with them separately.

Calendars in the Cloud

The simplest form of scheduling is to simply block out time in a calendar— something that can be done easily just on paper. But several Cloud-enabled calendar applications exist, many of which are free (both Google and Apple provide free Cloud-based calendars). Using a Cloud-based calendar allows it to be shared with others. Whilst trying to come up with a schedule, this can allow multiple people to collaborate to work out which dates and times are most suitable and will work for all concerned. Once a schedule is agreed upon, the sharing feature becomes useful in a different way, as it can be made available to an entire crew, for example (this is also referred to as creating a calendar “subscription”).

Moreover, it’s possible to have multiple calendars, each shared with a different set of people. So there might be a “main unit” calendar and a “second unit” calendar, or perhaps “pre-production”, “shoot”, and “post-production” calendars, of which certain people might subscribe to just one, and others subscribed to all of them. Any changes that are made to any of these calendars are syndicated automatically to all subscribers, so there’s no need to worry that anyone might have out-of-date information. Finally, it’s usually possible to “invite” individuals to a specific calendar event, regardless of whether the entire calendar is shared or not. Invitations are normally just sent out as emails (further emails are sent if the event is modified in some way), but some email applications recognise these emails automatically and will just update the user’s calendar accordingly.

Box 8.1 Smarter Calendars

It’s one thing to make everyone aware of events once they’ve been scheduled, but the challenge still remains: how do you pick the correct date and time to best suit everyone involved? Sadly this tends to involve lots of coordination and communication for everyone involved (or at least their assistants), and this results in lots of time wasted. But with Cloud-enabled calendars, this need not be the case. With access to everyone’s calendars, it is much easier to determine the best available date and time for an event. The problem, of course, is that participants may not want the organiser to have access to their entire schedule. However, if this is done without the organiser personally having access to individual calendars, as in the case of a third-party scheduling software, this becomes a much more viable possibility.

Indeed, software such as Meekan (meekan.com) uses sophisticated algorithms to identify free time based on not only participants’ calendars (or via a poll where direct access to the calendar is unavailable) but also on the intent of the event. So, for example, if the organiser requests a “lunch meeting”, then the software will aim to pick an appropriate time slot.

Project Planning

Project planning is about taking a complex project and working out how best to get it done in a given timeframe with a particular set of resources. How accurate and reflective of reality this ultimately ends up being is based on a few things, with prior experience factoring pretty heavily into it. In essence, planning a project involves splitting it into smaller, more manageable tasks, each of which has an estimated duration and can be assigned to different people (thus maximising efficiency by allowing them to be run in parallel with each other), and where needed, with associated costs. For projects that are individual episodes of a television show, there’s the advantage of being able to analyse previous episodes, with the planning of each subsequent episode becoming (one would hope) easier and more accurate. Regardless, each project will likely have its own unique quirks and challenges, and as such must be planned individually to some degree.

Clearly, all of this involves a great deal of collaboration between different people, and possibly across different departments, and that’s where the Cloud comes in. While many of the collaboration and communication tools discussed in chapter 6, as well as the scheduling services covered throughout this chapter, can be invaluable as part of the project planning process, there are several systems that are designed to specifically address the needs of planning projects.

Wrike (wrike.com), for example, allows project planners to create a series of tasks for a project and then set assignees, dates, and dependencies for each. Though these are all actions that can be taken in the majority of desktop-based project management software, the fact that it’s in the Cloud provides some very powerful features. First of all, it’s easy to invite others to collaborate on a plan. This allows multiple planners to work together on a single project, but it also allows assignees to be involved at an earlier stage. If someone is unavailable on a specific date, they can log in to the system and notify the planner early on. Conversely, this also allows assignees to be aware of potential dates they’re involved with early on.

Naturally this also gives rise to the possibility of notifications, so if someone completes a task, relevant people can be notified of this. Likewise, when any dates on a task change, the task’s assignees can be notified immediately and automatically. For executives and other stakeholders, there’s the possibility to share reports as well as a high-level overview of a project’s timeline. Finally, as with many Cloud-based services, there’s the possibility to attach files to tasks and add comments.

Box 8.2 Gantt Charts

One of the most popular ways to visualise the schedule of a project is the Gantt chart (named after its inventor, Henry Gantt), which became very popular once they became available on computer systems. In a Gantt chart, each task is represented by a horizontal bar along a time-line, with tasks that can be done in parallel stacked above one another. Typically there will be arrows between bars to indicate dependencies, diamonds to indicate milestones, and the bars themselves might be partially shaded to indicate progress through a task.

One particularly interesting development of having Gantt charts available within computer software was that they could be interactive, that is to say that project managers could drag them around on the timeline and have the respective dates update to match, providing an intuitive approach to planning tasks. Such interactive Gantt charts are a feature of most Cloud-based planning applications, so you can expect to see them a lot if you’re involved with project planning in some way.

Figure 8.1 A Typical Gantt Chart

Resource Planning

A related, but slightly different, approach to project planning is “resource planning”. Whereas project planning centers on the tasks that need to be done, resource planning instead focuses on managing a finite set of resources in order to complete tasks. This approach means it’s easier to make sure that available resources are being used efficiently across multiple projects, as opposed to making sure individual tasks are scheduled efficiently within a single project (which approach is more suitable will, of course, depend on the specific production—for feature film production it’s preferable to ensure everything that needs doing gets done as quickly as possible, even where this means there are resources effectively going unused).

With this approach, anything that can be considered a resource, such as a particular camera or a member of the cast or crew, can be allocated to specific tasks or projects. This makes it easy to see at a glance what everyone is doing (or will need to be doing) on a specific day. Ganttic (ganttic.com), for example, provides a strictly resource planning–oriented approach to project management, allowing planners to schedule individual resources and assign them to tasks without fear of having them overlap.

Project Management

Planning a production is one thing, but actually keeping track of work that needs to be done is a different matter. On a given shoot day, numerous individual tasks contribute to the overall aim of getting certain things filmed, with each department having to independently track their own areas of responsibility. For some, it may not seem appropriate or necessary to use computing technology to do this, let alone the Cloud. For example, the catering department on a shoot is primarily concerned with ensuring that food and drinks are ready as needed, and it seems unlikely they’d need to be connected to the Internet to get that done. But on the other hand, at least part of that process is highly dependent on other departments. If the shoot’s timing changes at short notice, this affects their schedule of preparing meals. Similarly, other departments might like to know what the menu is for the day ahead of time, so that they can place orders and guarantee there’s enough of everything for everyone. If at least some of this information is available in the Cloud, there’s less need for long communication chains to keep everyone in sync on each other’s needs.

Other departments, or other phases of a production (post-production for example), might more closely resemble a more traditional office environment, with people desk bound and working with desktop computers. In these environments, people might encounter the same types of issues that people in other industries have, such as needing to know about the progress of work that’s being done by others, the whereabouts of particular documents, or to otherwise get information about processes and procedures. Each of these problems has, to some extent, been solved by various services based in the Cloud.

A number of so-called project management systems are available in the Cloud, though many of them have different philosophies in their approach. Basecamp (basecamp.com) emphasises six key areas (discussion threads, real-time chat, scheduled information gathering, to-do lists, document storage, and scheduling) for project management, whilst Asana (asana.com) promotes a more formalised, primarily task-oriented approach, with discussions and document storage all happening within the context of particular tasks.

Regardless of the specific approaches, what the Cloud-enabled systems all seem to agree on is that having the means to communicate in a structured way (and have conversations available for posterity) is as important as the process of tracking individual elements of work. Tellingly, this plays well to the strengths of using the Cloud, as with more traditional, desktop-based approaches, these conversations might otherwise be locked away in private emails or other, unshared documents.

Knowledge Management

With any significantly involved process, it can become necessary to keep track of different processes or additional information provided by others. There might be strict policies or compliances to adhere to when doing certain things, or complicated workflows with multiple steps that need to be noted somewhere for people to follow. People undoubtedly have their own way of keeping track of such things, but on any collaborative project, much of this knowledge needs to be shared with others.

In the Cloud there are a number of ways for people to track information and share it, with the simplest being to record information in a document that is shared online, such as Google Docs (docs.google.com), all the way through virtual shareable scrapbooks like Evernote (evernote.com) or Microsoft OneNote (onenote.com), up to bespoke “wikis”.

First popularised by the community-driven encyclopedia Wikipedia (wikipedia.org), wikis are sites that share information by allowing users to freely edit and create individual pages. Although wikis tend to be associated with sites that have lots of different articles and information, they can be just as suitable as a means to hold even a handful of pages—the key things are that they can evolve over time as more information is added and that multiple people have access to them.

As such, it can be useful for productions, or even individual departments, to make use of a wiki to track pertinent information, for example, having pages for each location on a shoot with relevant information, or step-by-step procedures for different things. Everyone can access the information, and anyone can add or clarify anything they feel is appropriate. It’s certainly possible to accomplish these goals with something like Google Docs, but the advantage of a wiki is that it’s easier to collect different pages into a single site, with links between pages that don’t need to be updated regularly.

For example, Google Sites (sites.google.com) provides a straightforward way to build wiki-like sites, each with a searchable set of pages. Microsoft’s Sharepoint Online (sharepoint.microsoft.com) might be seen as the ultimate realisation of a wiki, with the ability to create and share entire sites of pages and with several high-end analysis features also available to those interested in knowing how all the information is being used.

Project Portfolio Management

For people who need to manage a large number of projects, but also be concerned about higher-level business strategy, a “project portfolio management” system might be needed. Typically these will comprise many of the benefits of project planning and resource planning applications, but also the means to analyse risks and zero in on potential issues with projects. Ideally, this means that there’s one person or more looking at the big overview of all the projects, with other project planners concerned with the details of specific projects, but that ultimately all the data are in one centralised place. Again, the Cloud provides an ideal foundation for this process.

Microsoft’s Project Online (products.office.com/en-us/Project/project-online-portfolio-management) is one example of such a system. Project planners can establish proposed schedules for work to be done, workers can provide updates on their progress, and executives can see an up-to-date overview of all projects at any time, in a way that would be much more complicated with traditional desktop-based software.

Production Planning

There are also systems that specifically cater to planning film and video productions, providing both a framework to capture and store information within them and the potential to streamline various tasks. Celtx (celtx.com) is one such example and includes script editing, storyboarding, breakdown, scheduling, and budgeting capabilities in a single place, along with a carefully designed process to allow the information to flow easily from one process to the next.

The benefits of such a system are that everything fits together in a familiar way and there’s less need to “reinvent the wheel” to, for example, work out how to break down a script in a suitable way. Everything is in one place, so there’s less switching between different systems to perform a set of tasks. However, the issue with systems like this that are “opinionated” (that emphasise or enforce a particular way of doing things), is that they can be less flexible than other approaches or combination of systems. If, for example, you don’t like Celtx’s approach to storyboarding or scheduling, you’d have to use a separate system anyway.

Studio Binder (studiobinder.com)

Studio Binder takes some of the tedium out of generating call sheets by automatically adding pertinent data based on the shoot location, such as weather and map links, and ensures everyone receives call sheets that are personalised, with just the information that’s relevant to them. It also allows recipients to confirm they’ve received the information, so that coordinators don’t need to spend time contacting each person individually.

Google Calendar (calendar.google.com)

Google Calendar has all the features you’d expect from a Cloud-based calendar, with the added benefit that lots of third-party systems provide their own integrations with it. The sharing functionality is very fine-grained, allowing specific permissions to be set for each person the calendar is shared with.

Apple iCloud Calendar (icloud.com)

Apple’s calendar offering is robust, with the caveat that you need Apple hardware to make the most of it (though there is a functional browser-based version). It doesn’t have the same level of control over sharing calendars that Google provides, allowing others only to either make changes to the calendar or not.

Doodle (doodle.com)

Doodle allows the creation of polls for scheduling meetings amongst invitees. Based on the responses to those polls, it calculates the most suitable date and time for the meeting.

Meekan (meekan.com)

Meekan builds upon the feature set of Doodle, using information from participants’ calendars directly to schedule meetings where possible, and then falling back to creating polls for those whose calendars are not available. It also supports scheduling via natural language, for example, “Set up a meeting with the production team ASAP”. Integration with Slack is also available.

Wrike (wrike.com)

Wrike offers a full-featured project planning system, with all the features you might expect in a desktop application like Microsoft Project (and supports the “Critical Path Method” model), but also enriched by the Cloud, with features like easy collaboration, notifications, and integrations with other systems.

Ganttic (ganttic.com)

Ganttic provides a way to plan projects through resource planning rather than task-based planning. The service allows users to specify individual resources that are available across projects and then allocate them to projects and tasks on a timeline.

Basecamp (basecamp.com)

Basecamp has been available for over a decade in different forms, but the latest incarnation focuses on a few key areas, in particular the importance of real-time and threaded communication between people on a project. There are some other unique features to the service, such as being able to schedule an automated email to request information from participants, but the idiosyncratic design of the system might not be to everyone’s taste.

Asana (asana.com)

Asana offers a task-centric workflow for teams working on projects. As with a typical project planning system, projects can be set up with scheduled tasks, although here only the due dates for tasks are tracked. Each task can then have assignees, subtasks, conversation threads, and associated file attachments and are essentially presented in user-defined lists until checked complete.

Evernote (evernote.com)

Evernote is one of the most popular Cloud-based note-taking systems available. Individual pages, or “notes”, may be created (with file attachments) and individually shared with others. The service is integrated with many other services, so it is possible to automatically create new notes from a number of different sources.

Microsoft OneNote (onenote.com)

OneNote is comparable to Evernote in many ways, but it does have the advantage of being free (Microsoft OneDrive is used for storage). It also leverages Microsoft’s word processing technology, so actually formatting individual notes is arguably more powerful than Evernote. However, it does lack some of the more high-end features and integrations that Evernote offers.

Google Sites (sites.google.com)

Google’s take on wikis is available for free (though file storage is limited based on the type of Google account used), with everyone able to set up individual sites with their own set of pages and then invite others to view or contribute to them. It’s unsophisticated but easily accessible and more than adequate for all but the most demanding requirements.

Wikispaces (wikispaces.com)

Wikispaces provides a Cloud-based, full-featured wiki for capturing and sharing information. It’s perhaps losing relevancy in an era where similar features can be found in other systems, but it offers a “true” wiki experience and might represent better value for money for larger groups.

Microsoft Sharepoint Online (products.office.com/en-us/SharePoint/sharepoint-online-collaboration-software)

With Sharepoint Online, Microsoft brings the feature set of its Sharepoint system to the Cloud. Put simply, Sharepoint allows users to create and manage sites of pages and documents in much the same way that Google Sites does but brings with it a lot of enterprise-level features for controlling access and performing analysis.

Microsoft Project Online (products.office.com/en-us/Project/project-online-portfolio-management)

Perhaps the most fully-featured of Cloud-based project management systems, Project Online supports scheduling, resource management, task management, risk management, and a whole host of other options. It might be considered overkill for all but the most complicated and involved productions, but for those wanting to manage a lot of productions running concurrently, it will likely have everything executives and managers need.

Celtx (celtx.com)

Celtx offers a production management and planning system specifically designed for film and video productions. As such, it has many features that aren’t available through other systems, such as script editing and breakdown, and the various sections of the system work together in a coherent way. However, this does mean that users are effectively “locked in” to the system and provides maximum value only if you want to use it in its entirety, which might not be the case across different departments.