VFXhack

The life of a VFX Supe/Artist/Producer is a busy (and often thankless) one. There are many details to keep track of and when something falls through the cracks you seldom never hear your boss say “That’s O.K., you remembered the 99 other things you were supposed to do. Great Job!” So, in my quest to become more organized, I’ve adapted a GTD-like approach to storing and retrieving all the little bits of info that fly at me throughout the day. For those of you who have been living without an Internet connection for the last few years, GTD stands for “Getting Things Done,” a book by David Allen. The book lays out a detailed system for increasing productivity that I am much too lazy to follow. Besides, I would be laughed off any self-respecting film set for toting around forty-three folders of crap in a portable file cabinet.

One of the basic tenets of GTD is to collect everything. Focal lengths, camera heights, bid requests, lighting diagrams, notes from editorial, notes from the writers, notes from the craft service guy, the amount of information that needs to be logged and followed up on is staggering.

Enter my VFX Moleskines.

I’ve tried pdas, smartphones, laptops and none of them compare to good old pen and paper. Wanna draw a diagram? No problem. Use different colors for emphasis? Go ahead. How about a double underline? Hey pal, knock yourself out. My Moleskines are mostly reporter style. It gives me more writing area and they stay open on the desk while I’m transferring my notes to a computer. I’ve posted a Flickr set that details the inner working of these life-saving little gems HERE. I’ve added notes to the images to get into some of the details.

Remember, information is King. Often times, a well-placed nugget of information can mean the difference between being the conquering hero and being cast out into permanent visual effects exile.

Note: My notebooks are essentially PigPogPDAs, a Moleskine hack with instructions posted HERE.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 4:03 am and is filed under GTD, filmmaking, techniques, tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.