Top tools for Photographers
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11 Dec, 20
International experience including undisclosed cinematic trailers for Netflix Games, CW's "Superman & Lois", Skydance "Spellbound" and Netflix Original series “Legend Quest”. My biggest challenge has been delivering a movie as Line Producer and among my projects are included two feature films (3D) three TV series (VFX + 2D), two short films (3D) and a couple of shortfilms with real time pipeline (Unreal Engine).
David Salinas Garfias
35
Querétaro, MX
Starting from a Work Breakdown Structure, I can create budgets and project timelines
Given a deadline and amount of work, validate the tasks are feasible with the current or future crew.
Laying down general and task specific timelines, project ramp up curves and expected production output.
How many assets? How much animation? Can we reuse? All this before lifting any pencil.
What drives our team? What are our purpose and objectives? How can we support them with their work?
Projects, episodes, departments but also shots, assets or specific tasks. Executive level reports in Autodesk Flow or spreadsheets.
Along with the VFX/CG Supervisor, creating and documenting the workflow, IOs, deliverables, dependencies, etc.
Reporting based on data (complexity, bidds vs actuals, duration, internal retakes, client changes, team input, etc.)
Project charter, going through the budget, pipeline design, pitch deck, script doctoring, art, animatic and pitching.
I highly recommend David for the great professionalism he has shown and his deep understanding of both the workflow and the people needed to build a pipeline from scratch. He has excellent attention to detail in both technical and artistic workflows, always balancing team members' time and personal lives. He is always looking to support others and to connect the technical and artistic teams, while adjusting budgets to achieve the project’s goals. He also has a deep knowledge of Autodesk Flow (ShotGrid) and how it can help improve delivery times in production, as well as connect producers with technical teams to enable a fully developed workflow. One of the things I value most about working with David is his versatility in the face of constant changes and his communication with clients—always prioritizing people first. He also plays a key role in helping production coordinators improve their work day by day, by asking the right questions that teams should be asking internally. He breaks down the traditional barrier of a producer who only asks for updates, and instead contributes to developing a complex production workflow between client, studio, production, supervisors, artists, and the development team .
I had the privilege of managing David during our time at Cinética, where we collaborated to professionalize the company's operations, with a primary focus on product. David's expertise in ShotGrid, a management software, was invaluable. Together, we successfully implemented it across all departments, streamlining processes from finance to production. David played a pivotal role in achieving operational excellence at Cinética. His exceptional blend of charisma and discipline makes him an outstanding project manager. He possesses a keen understanding of strategy and a knack for seeing the bigger picture, making him an ideal leader who executes tactics with the company's vision in mind.
I am very lucky to have worked with David. He is a great head of production. I always felt supported by David. He trusted me and helped me to do my best. He was always open to comments and ideas from artists, leads, supervisors, art director and TDs to prepare and organize the production. He is a problem solving person, multitask, very organized with excelent communication skills. He balance the creative expectations with the financial resources and time available. He was always smiling, I can't remember a day without a greeting from David to each artist, asking them how his day was going. He is kind and reliable. Documentation about art and technical issues he prepared side by side with team and planning for this film was very helpful for us because that improved our workflow and allows us to complete schedules without overtime. I can't wait for the day to work with him again. Any employee would be lucky to have David as Line Producer
David is a candid and kind person. He always encourages teamwork and supports people to give their best on a project. Working under his direction was a pleasure. I strongly recommend him
I had the opportunity to work with David as our Production Supervisor, and I can say with complete confidence that he was a key factor in the success of our projects. David stood out for his proactivity, leadership, and exceptional organizational skills, ensuring every project stayed on schedule and within scope, even under the most demanding circumstances. He consistently brought clarity, structure, and positive energy to the team, becoming a constant source of inspiration and motivation. He is a dedicated professional with great vision and the ability to coordinate multiple teams and processes without missing a detail. Without a doubt, any company that has him on their team will gain a reliable and highly efficient leader.
Working with David was an absolute pleasure. During our time together, I was impressed by his ability to bring clarity and structure to our complex project. David combines strong leadership with genuine empathy and ensures that everyone feels valued and aligned with the project’s goals. He has a deep understanding of production workflows and always has a positive attitude and calm presence. I would gladly work with him again on any production.
I actually took a while before picking up this book, I did it mainly to improve my habits around fitness and eating healthy. It surprised me with how simple things can be if you have discipline, routines and willingness to make a change. With many examples and studies, James take you on a journey to improve any aspect of your life.
I think very few people get lucky enough to have someone to teach them the soft skills needed to be a leader, I certainly didn't know exactly what I was doing when I had a team to guide. For all producers, managers, directors or any other people leading teams this is a must so we can better understand and support them. It helps you make better teams, how to deal with change, and all sort of challenges while managing people.
This one is a personal favorite and I revisit it (or my notes) every once in a while when I feel like I'm lacking motivation. It just put a name on something that I've already experience in my life, and made me compare different times in my career when I felt better about a job or a project vs others. The "flow" state is now something I'm constatly looking for.
After working in Cinética with Unreal Engine, first I got really curious about how I could apply some pipeline parts into a traditional animation pipeline, but after that I got intrigued about the video games industry and I realized they were very different. So, I decided to study the industry methodologies and lingo so I can have more tools in my box for either applying for the video game industry or in the animation one.
After my Film Business course I wanted to dive deeper into the topic and decided to read this one. Broadly speaking it explains the "tent pole" strategy (amongst others) that many film studios use/used and how it translates into finantial and marketing stretegies, including distribution. It's a must to better understand how Hollywood operates.
When I was working at Huevocartoon producing my first movie, it was so interesting to see how R&D team was developing all the tools for our project and improving them from one project to the other. I had some programming classes but working along with them I realized I was missing some key concepts. After reading this one I gave a presentation on how we could push tools even further and some of those ideas were actually implemented!
This one is my current reading, specially after all the AI wave I think it's really important to lear how to learn and master new skills. So far this book as touched already some key concepts to master hard skills quickly, how to self-direct and tactics to deep focus on a task. Great complement for "Atomic habits" and "Drive".
I decided to include this one on the list, even though this is a professional website, because Patrick is just a poet. The way he describes things (intangible things!) and takes you by the hand smoothly on a ride that you enjoy all the way. His writting skills is just out of this world and I can't wait for the next book to be published!
How does the film business work and which & how stakeholders are involved
Focused on project management
Graduated from the high performance program with a 95/100 final grade
Working as an Executive Producer my main objectives are driving new clients and business to the studio as well as leading the production department to oversee the progress and completion of all the projects within the studio.
Main responsibilities are:
-Project bidding and timelines for pitching and assessing our clients' projects.
-Assess priorities and bandwidth capacity to receive new projects.
-Establish the communication, tracking, and meeting structure for the studio.
-Expenses reports and projections.
-Attend client meetings and keep them updated with the project status.
-Flag any delays or changes of scope with the CEO.
-Artist prospecting and recruiting.
-Mentor the production team and create guidelines and documentation for the production department.
-Project assessment and pipeline planning.
-Helping create pitch decks.
As an outsourced producer I work seasonally with AXD Interactive, a game and software development company working on AI developments (AI avatars), mobile games & mobile apps. My main objectives are ensuring the successful delivery of our game and software projects, aligning product vision with development execution, and maintaining efficient communication between creative, technical, and business teams.
Main responsibilities are:
-Define product vision, roadmap, and milestones in collaboration with the design, engineering, and publishing teams.
-Prioritize features and tasks based on user impact, technical feasibility, and production timelines.
-Coordinate sprint planning, backlog grooming, and milestone reviews following agile methodologies.
-Track development progress, identify bottlenecks, and proactively resolve risks affecting delivery.
-Align the production schedule with QA
-Work closely with UX/UI and game design teams to translate concepts into actionable development goals.
-Prepare and present status reports and product updates
-Support budgeting and resource allocation with accurate forecasts and expense tracking.
-Facilitate communication across disciplines to ensure clarity, alignment, and accountability.
-Contribute to pitch decks and prototypes for new IPs or project funding opportunities.
Producing real time oriented content in Unreal engine like avatars, level design, moCap and virtual production. Also producing content for metaverses and NFT's for brands.
-Reorganized the studio's pipelines and procedures
-Integrate shotgrid as a production tracking tool
-Asses and report the studio's content quality and seniority for each service
-Structure Shotgrid from scratch to adapt to the studio's multiple projects.
-Decide priority and bandwidth capacity to receive more projects
-Create client's timelines, milestones and deadlines
-Organize, track and structure the information available for artists in Shotgrid
-Attend client meetings and keep them updated with the project status
-Create weekly and daily goals for the team
-Flag any delays or change of scope with Executive production
-Anticipate blockers and solve issues to keep stock for all the departments
-Bid and schedule assets and shots
-Maintain the project scope along with the CEO and COO
-Assess and request artists and resources when required by the client requests or workload
-Create the master schedule based on the client's milestones and deadlines.
-Organize, track and structure the information available for artists in Shotgrid.
-Attend client meetings and keep them updated with the project status.
-Create weekly and daily goals for the team.
-Flag any delays or change of scope with Executive production.
-Anticipate blockers and solve issues to keep stock for all the departments.
-Client communication.
-Bid and schedule assets and shots along with the PCs and department leads.
-Mentor the production team and create guidelines and documentation for the production department.
-Maintain the project scope along with the Executive producer, Head of production and the VFX Sup.
-Assess and request artists and resources when required by the client's requests or workload.
-Creation and tracking of the main schedule/timeline while defining the general scope with executive production and the client
-Listen and address the client's needs, changes or new requests.-Identify and communicate production risks, stoppers/blockers and any impact that might happen with the project.
-Assessment and communication of any change of scope from the client of executive production regarding the resources during production and the impact of new requests.
-General planning and tracking of all departments, adjusting the resources accordingly to their specific needs.
-Design and generate weekly and monthly reports to executive production.
-Understand the workflow, dependencies, deliverables and processes of all the pipeline to make sure all their inputs are met
-Design and review of the pipeline along with the CG supervisor and the VFX consultant .
-With the director define the scope, project expectations, assumptions and solutions that will let the project achieve its objectives.
-Check and validate department-specific budgets, workloads and quotas.
-Creating of the crew plan.
-Make sure the departments have the proper stock for them to work.
-Guide the Supervisor's meetings and check ins.
-Communicate the plan, strategies, milestones and targets to all the team, including executive production, production crew and supervisors.
-Monitor the production crew through daily production rounds where we discussed status, problems, progress and blockers for each department.
-Mentor and coach the production team with the tools, soft skills and production philosophy for the project.
-Maintain a fun, trustworthy, honest and positive work environment.
-Communication with the brands
-Work with the Production Coordinators and Production Assistants to run the different departments within the assigned area
-Work closely with the Associate Production Manager to budget, schedule and meet the production plan.
-Work closely with the supervisors to bid the work, establish the workflow, steps and dependencies within the area
-Identification and communication of the weekly targets
-Check-in meetings with the different teams
-Manage the vacations
-Accountable for managing the budget and resources including artists, money and schedule while making sure the production objectives are met within the projected time and making the decisions to get it done.
-Workloads estimations
-Scheduling
-Seek talent through the HR department
-Team management and coordination
-Training for the production team
-Documentation of the studio pipeline in collaboration with the department supervisors
-Expenses report and payments to accounting.
-Production reports for executive production
-Budget projections
-Presentation and discussion of budgets with executive production
-Workload estimations-Scheduling
-Seek for talent through the HR department
-Team management and coordination
-Production clearance through the Legal affairs department
-Expenses report and payments to accounting.
-Responsible for coordinating work and communication among Product Placement & Marketing with Production department
-Team coordination, around 40 artists overseas and in-house.
-Coordinate Supervisors and directors.
-Production Management of the following departments: Storyboard, Character design, Props design, Animation and Compositing.
-Tracking of tasks and assets to keep production under schedule
-Day-to-day problem solving
-Fulfilling of tracking formats.
-Task tracking and follow up with artists.
-Asset tracking and organization.
-Coordination of the art and compositing departments.
This is a side work I do with a partner. Mexican Animation Network seeks to connect the mexican animation industry with international partners, creating collaboration, funding projects, giving consulting, offering trusted animation studios to take on services for international studios and selling fresh and different IPs.
-Production planning: starting from the project scope, project charter, WBS, Budget, Routemap, etc.
-Evaluation of projects: filtering them and giving feedback on how they can adapt better to the market, looking commercial hits, but also looking for specific niches.
-Consulting: as soon as the project gets green-lit we offer guidance through the several production steps to ensure a smooth and successful project.
-Prospecting: studying the several publishing strategies and slate of the different distributors, channels or studios.
Production articles
11 Dec, 20
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12 Aug, 20
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Dolore, porro rem quod illo quam, eum alias id, repellendus magni, quas.
4 Feb, 20
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Dolore, porro rem quod illo quam, eum alias id, repellendus magni, quas.
11 Dec, 19
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Dolore, porro rem quod illo quam, eum alias id, repellendus magni, quas.
15 Nov, 19
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8 Aug, 19
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