Camera, Set, Action: Process Innovation for Film and TV Production

David Court,Chun Ouyang,Arthur ter Hofstede,Katherine Shortland,Marcello La Rosa,Kenneth Wang,Michael Rosemann

doi:10.5334/csci.16

Abstract

Abstract Film and TV productions, a key area in production screen business, comprise of processes with high demand for creativity and flexibility. However, despite the era of fast developing technology, film production processes are carried out in an old fashioned way. This is reflected, for example, by the fact that document processing accompanied by daily shooting activities is still primarily paper-based and coordinating geographically distributed cast and crew is purely manual or at best through emails. There is an opportunity to bring process innovation into this industry, which can streamline and optimise film production processes and thus reduce production costs. Business Process Management (BPM) is the mainstream contemporary technology-enabled business improvement method. It has proven to provide significant benefits to an organisation in terms of cost savings and responsiveness to changes. In this paper, we apply BPM technology to process innovation for film production. We also share experiences in how to deal with innovation barriers in the film industry. Over the course of the investigation, a prototype called YAWL4Film was developed on top of a state-of-the-art BPM system. YAWL4Film supports collection and entering of production related data and automatic generation of reports required during film production. The system was deployed in two student productions at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), as well as in a feature film production by Porchlight, an independent film production company.

Highlights

In recent years the field of Business Process Management (BPM) has risen to prominence in terms of its perceived importance by the IT industry
While BPM technology has reached a certain level of maturity in recent years and has great potential to deliver benefits in a wide range of application areas, it is typically applied by organisations with a high adoption level of information technology
We demonstrate how film production can benefit from the application of BPM technology and discuss how we overcame innovation barriers that exist in the industry

Summary

Introduction

In recent years the field of Business Process Management (BPM) has risen to prominence in terms of its perceived importance by the IT industry. The Camera Assistant is responsible for filling in the camera sheet with details of each shot recorded while the Sound Recordist will complete a corresponding sound sheet of all dialogue or effects recorded on set This information is later gathered and collated by the production offer to generate the daily progress report. This paper discusses the functionalities offered by YAWL4Film and evaluates the system based on its trial application during two student productions at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) in 2007 and its deployment in the production of a medium-budget feature film by Porchlight, an independent film production company, in 2008 It adds to our work reported in (Ouyang, ter Hofstede, La Rosa, Rosemann, Shortland, and Court, 2008) with significant system extensions for deployment in real film productions

Research Methodology

Dealing with Innovation Barriers

System

Interacting with Users

AFTRS Deployment: “Rope Burn” and “Family Man”

Porchlight Deployment: “Prime Mover”

Findings

Conclusions and Outlook