7 TIPS IN TRANSITIONING YOUR PRODUCTION TO REMOTE WORK

Author: Mock Webware | | Categories: 3D Animation , 3D Animation Studio , Corporate Video Production , Video Production Company , Video Production Services

The year 2020 presented itself with a different face. One that most of us never anticipated. The pandemic has forced us into a new reality.

A lot of team leaders are beginning to realize that the answer to surviving in this new world is ‘flexibility’ – a break from the traditional way of doing things. You would want to know how to boost productivity while working remotely, even when you’re in the film/TV production industry.

With the generational shift currently happening, more and more people are beginning to work from home.

While some industries have easily migrated their employees to remote work, we have to admit to the peculiarities of the film/TV production industry, ranging from pre-production and movie shoots to post-production. This becomes more challenging when we consider the employment growth in the industry over the years. According to recent statistics taken on January 1, 2020, the figure has grown from around 388 thousand people in the year 2006 to 456 thousand.

Here are a few tips to help you smoothly transition to remote work.

Plan, Strategize, and Communicate

It’s important to make plans with your team. You can’t do this one alone! You’ll find it difficult to carry out a smooth transition if you don’t try to figure out what possible challenges each employee will face. 

Internet connection is a common problem. You want to ensure everyone has access to a strong, working internet service. You work with large media files and will need to do a lot of transfer and sharing of these files. You don’t want a slow internet connection to be the reason why you have to wait an extra three days just to receive a 900GB file. 

Pre-production and post-production activities can be easily done with adequate planning.

Video Conferencing Apps

We’ve gotten used to converging in meeting rooms with whiteboards. It makes communication efficient and allows us to enjoy the company of our co-workers. 

Video conferencing apps give you this experience in virtual reality. You can share ideas, smiles, and the feeling of being among people you share a common love for TV/film with. This is a great way to plan the next project or discuss the progress of the current project. Check out these top apps and decide which one works best for you:

  • Zoom
  • GoToMeeting
  • Google Meet
  • Webex

Time Tracking Apps

Time control software is a great way to efficiently manage remote teams. You can assess employee productivity, effectively monitor financial operations, and reduce the temptation of postponing work to a later time. Time management apps like Traqq are amazingly helpful in ensuring that everyone puts in their best, while still maintaining the time flexibility that comes with remote work.

To-do List Apps

Adjusting to remote work comes with its challenges. Organizing your thoughts can be one of them. It can get confusing trying to decide which task to do first, especially when you have nowhere to go. Getting a to-do list app will help you to organize yourself and boost productivity. Write down everything you intend to accomplish in an order of priority. Check them off the list as you accomplish each one of them. Here are my top picks of to-do list apps:

  • Todoist
  • TickTick
  • Habatica
  • Any.do

Collaboration Software

The motion picture industry has always been about collaboration. This remains true even when working remotely. These are a few collaboration tools to help in your transition:

Adobe Shared Projects

This is a great tool for editors who are working on the same project. It allows you to remotely share, edit, and lock projects. You can then grant access to other editors, allowing them to make changes to the project from their own devices. This software is perfect for teams that have online shared storage for files.

Frame.io

This is a great tool for rough cuts, reviewing dailies, and final drafts. You can share each step of your production with your collaborators. They can then comment, select frames, and even draw on the video itself. This means that they can easily point out which shot or frame that they want to have fixed.

MASV

Are you concerned about the inconvenience of transferring large media files using cloud storage apps? You’re right to be. Most conventional storage sites are not meant for large-sized files. They can take as long as a whole day to share a 700GB file.

With MASV, you can share raw files with your collaborators at 10 times the speed of a conventional cloud site. Videographers and editors will find this time-saving. At a convenient price of $0.25/GB, you can’t go wrong with this service.

Other collaboration software includes:

  • Ftrack
  • CineSync

Project Management Software

Having a collaboration tool that helps you share and edit projects is great, but when you’re managing a large number of people carrying out different tasks, you need a way to keep tabs and monitor everyone’s progress. Enter project management software! Coordinate projects that require complex time management:

Asana

List projects, add tags, sub-tasks, and notes. With the help of the dashboard feature, everyone can update each other on their respective progress. Set deadlines for projects and monitor how much you’ve accomplished with the graph feature.

Wrike

This software blends the simplicity of a to-do list with the flexibility of a spreadsheet management software. You can list individual tasks and view them on a spreadsheet alongside their due dates. You can also leave comments.

Check off tasks as they’re accomplished. You can even list them as ‘in progress’ or ‘pending’. This is an effective tool for keeping tabs on team projects.

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