Producing Audio-Visual Content can often be scary, chaotic and challenging. This is why most productions make use of project management tools – like Trello, Asana, Notion etc. to help them track the work and be on top of milestones and deadlines.  

With the production of the Disney+ Series, “The Mandalorian” in 2019, a new method of filmmaking emerged – Virtual Production In-Camera Visual Effects (VP ICVFX for short). It blends the real and the digital world. An example of what is does is that now instead of shooting in front of a green screen and seeing the final result only during the post-production phase of your project, you see the final scene already in the pre-production and production stages. It uses real-time camera tracking and LED walls. 

This method requires a lot of the work to be executed during the pre-production of the project rather then during the post production.

As this is such a new technology and method of working there is still a lot to explore and figure out –  this includes project management. 

I focused my work on investigating the work process of VP (ICVFX) and different project management tools and created an Advisory report. The report was constructed by conducting three VP (ICVFX) projects (“Live Puppeteering”, “Greenhouse Insanity”, “Grey is fine but..”)  and qualitative research. 

Producing three VP projects, me and my team got to experience firsthand the complexity of this new approach of content capture. We focused on figuring out what is the best way to structure the work and to start highlighting which factors needed to be tracked and recorded.  With this information and the additional input I got from experts in the industry during the execution of my qualitative research I focused on project management tools that could potentially help VP projects. 
Majority of the tools in the report are also industry standard for project management, game development, VFX productions and the likes. 
Asana, Notion, Monday.com, Jira, Shotgrid, Ftrack, Kitsu, Ayon and Openpype. 

To establish a way to properly compare them I used three criteria: Functionality, Budget and Feasibility. Do they meet the factors me and my crew highlighted? Are they suitable for the Educational Institutions budget? Are they user friendly?

Read the report and the findings here: