Example of tv-series with simple workflow

Here is an example of saving 4 years salary on a simple TV-series production. The simple workflow is convenient for explanation purposes.

Feature films are basically budgeted the same way only are the calculations more complex in order to describe the much more complex workflows.

On the diagram to the right is shown a workflow breakdown of a TV series production with a very simple work split:

This example production has:

The various task types are listed in the spread sheet including the estimated number of minutes it takes to do the work of one task. The estimates include retakes. So if a task is estimated to be executed 2 times, of 5 minutes each, we have listed 10 minutes.

It takes patience to make animation. We must optimize the working processes wherever possible. On the picture is shown the talented artists in LightStar Studios, Brasil who has worked with HoBSoft on several productions.

Summary

The total amount of time to be saved by automation is 1,003 days or 4 man-years. The savings in money obviously depends on the salaries of those who are replaced but remember to consider the total cost of an employee.

If your cost is €50K per assistant per year the savings are €200K in this case.

Feature film savings in producing studios

In comparison to the simple TV-series shown in the example above an animated feature film is very complex. The number of scenes in a feature film may be only one third (usually 1100 – 1600) of what is in the TV-series, but this is by far outmatched by the much higher number of tasks per scene necessary to track the more complex workflows.

It is not unusual to have 100,000+ tasks in the HoBSoft database for a feature film production of which 60%+ usually are automatic.

Consider that if one worker can deliver approximately 10,000 working minutes a month it will take him 10 months to work 1 minute on every task on the production or one person can in 10 years work 12 minutes per task.

1 minute = 1 month

HoBSoft automates many processes. In particular we save many minutes per approval of scenes whenever they reach a certain milestone level.

Typical milestones are: animatic, layout, rough, key, in-between, lighting, shading, rendering or compositing.

These savings per milestone accumulates to several man years during a feature film production.

Production optimization put short: 1 minute of approval procedure cost 1 month salary.

Here are some typical figures:

The point is that every minute your crew spend more on each of those 9,800 approvals on tasks such as rendering, upload, send e-mail, receive e-mail, find files on FTP

server, download, looking for recent audio etc. will accumulate to one month of salary.

Example

So how many minutes or months can HoBSoft automate?

Here is an example of a typical approval process on a 2D production with fast renders:

In the above example you would save 54 minutes per milestone which equals 54 months of working time or a little more than 5 years of 10,5 working months a year.

As a rule of thumb you can save 1-2 full time assistants per studio in optimized production procedures.

Feature film savings in managing studio

HoBSoft typically saves 2-5 man years in the production managing department.

The savings can be divided in three areas:

1. Semiautomatic breakdown

2-6 months

HoBSoft work of assisting in breaking down the movie in to the database in to sequences, scenes, storyboard panels, characters etc. can usually replace 1-3 assistants for a couple of months.

2. Automatic tracking

1-3 years

HoBSoft automatic gathering of status on all tasks in all studios is a tremendous time saver that replaces several assistants.

3. Automatic reporting

1-2 years

We have seen examples where the production manager and her assistant would spent every entire Friday during the entire production period of 18 months on making a fresh status report which can be made in HoBSoft by refreshing a webpage.

So 150 working days are saved on this status report alone.

Also remember that all the time the production manager is on the phone there is also somebody in the other end of the line spending time.

It is not easy to estimate the time saved due to automatic reporting in HoBSoft but considering the many HoBSoft reports that we know are used frequently it is fair to say 1-2 man years in total as conservative estimate.

Feature film savings in editing studio

HoBSoft typically saves 1-3 man years in the editing department. The savings can be divided in two main areas:

1. Automatic updates

1-3 years

HoBSoft establish a link between the footage, which constantly arrives from the producing studios, and your editing system. You may be able to do without an editing assistant at all. The director himself will be fully capable of starting the

editing system and instruct it to update scenes that may have changed with just a few clicks.

On the production of Chico & Rita HoBSoft automatically maintained several Final Cut Pro workstations. Read more in editing.

2. Production proven procedures

3-6 months

Based on your animatic, HoBSoft establishes an editing project which is prepared for final mastering in terms of frame rates, audio organizing and most importantly the link to the frames in the production file tree. Based on experience from several feature films we estimate the savings to 3-6 months in saved R&D and assistant work.