From Big Shop To One Man Show – A Workflow To Minimize Downtime

I’m sure most of you know that I have moved on from working at Smoke and Mirrors in a big team with assistants and multiple colonists to working on my own.

I’m sure many of you are in the same position as me so I thought I’d share my thoughts and workflow and would love to hear your thoughts on how myself or others could improve it.

The Goal

My goal when trying to figure out my workflow was simple.

Earn back some personal time!

As a commercial colorist, it is very likely that I will be attended from 9:30 in the morning till 6:30 in the evening.

This is firstly exhausting and secondly would mean that I only start prepping my jobs for the next day around 6:30 in the evening.

Easy jobs can only take 10-15 mins to prepare but complex ones can take hours to both prepare and copying.

Another factor was keeping an eye on renders.

A job I rendered recently took 4 hours and was needed by the flame artists for 9:30 the next day so I had to keep an eye on it.

Workflow So Far

So far the key to getting a little time back in my day is earning back my commuting time.

By kicking off transcodes or renders or media management when I wake up first thing in the morning I can have an hours work done before I even get into the office.

I do the same thing in the evening and leave a list of work that can be started as I leave and then finished when I get home.

I use a very simple Google Docs set up to keep track of what I have done and what still needs to be completed.

I use TeamViewer to then keep an eye on both my machines from home.

I have the latest tricked out 27″ iMac attached over 10G ethernet to our central storage.

This is my workstation for ingesting, transcoding and general prep.

My main grading machine is a Resolve Linux system.

Check out my video below to see how I am working currently.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I’m doing wrong and what I could be doing better as I’m very new to the Lone Wolf style of running a grading department!

-Dan