Production Pipelines

It was chaired by Beth Parker (Senior Manager of Animation Production at Disney UK), Sian Judge (Production Manager at Brown Bag Films) and Iraz Sanders (Animation Producer at Jellyfish Pictures)

They started with the simple question of, what is a production pipeline?

"Step by step process, to make an animation. Script to

delivery. And the process inbetween." (Beth Parker, 2018)

This was the most interesting talk for me, but they also gave out so much advice that I have decided to go through and bullet point things I took away from the talk. Which are going to make me a better producer.

· Immerse yourself in the pipeline

· Understand others. Spend some time shadowing art team. Knowing what others do makes you a better producer

· You have to be adaptable ( u need to know your people, who can do what?)

· Be honest. Don't try and hide things. The best producers are the ones that are honest to the client, and come up with solutions.

· You need to know what you need. Expectations need to be set very early on

· Go back to your purpose. Predict as early on if something is going to derail

· Compromises and solutions. Best thing is to tell production team the truth, be collaborative. As soon as theres an issue

· Keep the flow of communication. Might be that the whole production needs a whole review. Expectations way too high. We've often had to re-look the way we do things. Don't be afraid to ask your Production team for help. Usually more than one person is struggling.

· The happiness of your team, is showing the good or bad producer.

· Production team is there to support each member

· Incentives. Food works wonders, happy hours. Whiskey fridays. Screenings- get everyone together.. really good motivator. Positive comments from clients. Keep everyone in the loop. Jellyfisher of the month - vote for people. Dedicated to extra work- talks.

· Update your team with deliveries. - gratitude. Give people insight.

· Communication skills. - not all clients will be english speaking.

· Don't be afraid to ask questions- not constantly, but intelligently

· Punctuality

· Humour. Take it in your stride. If you treat it small you'll get further.

· Don't take things personally. You need a Thickskin to be in management.

Adaptability was a big one as well, software will change, your skills need to be transferable every production is different. Therefore I need to get my understanding pipeline down and I was be able to go anywhere. Also problem solving was mentioned multiple times and said to be a constant thing without their jobs, which I can even relate to now. My schedule is always changing, people get ill, timeframes become smaller, everything has an impact on the production.

After the talk I got chance to speak with Beth Parker from Disney. I asked What advise would she give for aspiring producers experience wise. Where should I start? She told me to get some experience in the workplace, shadowing a production team etc and to volunteer at the Childrens Media Conference in July 2019.

I am also going to take a production role on the Halle Project. So I have another project under my belt. I really want to keeping learning about production in Animation and as the panel said, it comes with experience as none of them were even in the animation field when they started their careers.