DEEP

'A love story to film...not film as in the media, film as in film film, the plastic stuff...'

That was how the DEEP project was launched.

For the past several weeks I've been the Producer on the DEEP project, a big leap from the usual 4-5 people I'm used to managing. This time, I have to try and keep track of about 35 of my peers, their work, and how they're doing.

My answer? Delegation, and a ton of note taking during weekly tutorials.

Because DEEP isn't a conventional animation, we were able to assign people to scenes. Each scene is a different style or animation technique, some 2D, some 3D, bit of live action, even stop motion.

Within the last couple of weeks in particular, I managed to get production schedules out for each group, and began making 'my epic god-like overview of all whom worketh on DEEP'. A.K.A a massive excel chart complete with colours.

No, seriously, its HUGE.

At each weekly and tutorial, I make sure we keep on time, cover all information needed, and arrange the tutorial times. In the tutorials, I make sure everyone in each group has something to do for the next week. Mostly I prefer to simply ask what they expect to have for the next meeting and let them decide, so they can work at their own pace and get the work done.

However, I'll admit it is tough. With a normal paid workforce its simple, they don't deliver, their pay is reduced or they can be fired. With an all student workforce, there are those who go above and beyond, and those that I never see or do hardly any work. I have to consider what other projects are going on at the time on top of all that as well, and I won't lie, its hard to know how much to ask of each person.

Despite having promoted one member of each group to group producers', I still find that work is going at a snails pace and it does admittedly bug me.

Overall, at the projects halfway point, I'm looking forward to going back to producing for a smaller more tight knit group of people that I can help and monitor more closely. While managing a large workforce such as this is highly intimidating, I feel that this experience has made me more confident in conversing with people, and forced me to trust my own judgement whilst not turning into some dictator sort. Maybe in the future as a result of this, I'd be happy to attempt to manage a workforce of motivated animators of up to 15 people.