Smooth production workflows do not only depend on putting organized proceedings in place for physical data deliveries and clip processing. It’s equally important to ensure efficient communication and information transfer between the crew on set, the DI facility, and other post-production departments like editing or VFX creation.
The ShotHub Team Plan is specifically designed to support such cross-departmental collaboration: First and foremost, working in a shared ShotHub cloud project gives data management teams on set and facility staff access to the same pool of OCF information, ensuring everyone’s on the same page. In addition, ShotHub’s team-based user management provides a structured framework for connecting people in a purposeful and organized way – on set and beyond.
This article takes a closer look at ShotHub’s user management, including available user roles as well as their respective permissions and restrictions. We also discuss a few exemplary production scenarios to illustrate how those user roles might be assigned in different contexts. Thus, we aim to equip facilities with a better understanding of how to implement ShotHub and connect people across departments. At the same time, this overview provides Digital Imaging Technicians with some examples of how they could be engaged with the ShotHub Team Plan in different scenarios.
USER MANAGEMENT AND USER ROLES
As already mentioned, ShotHub’s user management is based on so-called “teams”. While this holds true for all available ShotHub plans, this article will mainly focus on the extended team management settings available in the new ShotHub Team Plan. Before diving into the details, let’s look at an overview first. The graphic below shows all available user roles (with examples of the people they could get assigned to) and their respective relationships to the ShotHub team and ShotHub projects:
All people added to a ShotHub team are called “team members” and authorized to create, change, or manage the team’s cloud projects. In other words, you have to be part of the team to actively contribute to a project. Hence, all people looking to connect their Silverstack or Livegrade desktop applications with the ShotHub cloud project to upload or sync library information must be added to the team. Besides the default status as a team member, there are a few additional user roles available on team level. Let’s look at a quick overview:
- Team Members: People creating, managing, or actively contributing to the various projects of a team
- Team Admins: People managing not only projects but also people of a team (e.g., inviting/ removing team members)
- Plan Owner: Person managing the purchased ShotHub Team Plan (e.g., upgrades/downgrades the number of included members) and handles billing
On project level, there are similar roles available. All people belonging to a ShotHub team can be added to one or more of a team’s cloud projects in the following roles:
- Project Members: People belonging to the ShotHub team that were assigned to a specific project to actively contribute (upload/sync library information) to it
- Project Admins: People belonging to the ShotHub team that were assigned to a specific project and have additional permission to manage people’s access to it
Beyond that, access to a cloud project can be granted to an unlimited number of people outside the ShotHub team by inviting them to a project as external users. External users are not supposed to contribute to the project from a Pomfort desktop application and therefore have read-only permissions.
- External Users: Users invited to access individual projects from outside the team with web access only
With the user roles split into team roles, project roles, and external users, ShotHub opens up many possibilities for customized setups and workflow constellations. Next, we’ll look at a few exemplary ways of connecting on-set crews, facility staff, and post-production departments with the help of ShotHub’s team management settings.
SAMPLE SCENARIOS
DI Facility With Multiple Projects
Most DI facilities coordinate multiple productions simultaneously and collaborate with various on-set crew units while shooting. They collect the media and respective metadata for further processing as QC and dailies creation. If the DI facility owns the ShotHub Team Plan, DI supervisors or post coordinators can manage the team as admins. They can invite the in-house operators, DITs, and loaders as team members. That way, the responsible DI operators can create and manage one project for each production involving one or more crew units as project members to contribute their on-set library data. Furthermore, they can invite, e.g., the dailies producers as external users, enabling them to coordinate resources according to the expected workload. Again, VFX artists or colorists can retrieve the extended camera and lens metadata as external users with access to the cloud project.
DIT Agency
A DIT agency may have permanent employees and hire freelancers to manage multiple projects simultaneously. If the company owns the ShotHub Team Plan, the employees manage the team as admins and can add freelancers flexibly as team members anytime. Additionally, they can add operators of a collaborating DI or post facility as team members. That way, every project team can be assembled so that one or more people from each “side” are involved. In this constellation, for example, this could mean: There’s one person from the agency to coordinate the project as an admin, plus on-set data managers to contribute their libraries as project members and share them instantly with the DI/post facility. On top, they can invite external users, such as the assistant editor, to foresee how much footage will come up or look up additional clip information.
Collaborating Crew Units
On set, several crew units with DITs and loaders may use multiple Livegrade and Silverstack applications to backup, prepare, and apply looks to the media assets before handing them over to post. The ShotHub Team Plan may be provided by the production company or the responsible DI or post house. As team admin, the DIT can invite the colleagues on set as team members, while the DI supervisor can also add colleagues from the facility to the team. Then, as soon as one of them creates a new project as an admin, they can invite other persons from the set and the post house as admins so that at both “ends”, there are two project admins to manage the project that can represent each other. Additionally, more colleagues can be added as project members so all participants on set and in post can work with one synced clip library. Finally, as the extended clip information is also valuable for other crew members, they can invite anyone as external users, such as the camera assistant or the DoP, to look up camera settings or preview looks in the cloud project.
And let’s not forget to mention…
Even small data management teams on set, let’s say one DIT working with a loader, can benefit from ShotHub’s user roles because a basic set of team management features is also available in the ShotHub Pro Plan. For example, as a DIT owning a Pro Plan, you can add your colleague to your ShotHub team so that you can create and manage new cloud projects to work with one shared clip library. In addition, both of you could be project admins to share tasks equally and invite other crew members as external users.
Conclusion
Of course, there are many other imaginable scenarios that can’t possibly be covered within the scope of this article. Even the presented ones most likely come in different variations since every production has individual and quite specific requirements. However, this article illustrates that ShotHub’s team management settings create powerful possibilities for involving multiple people, crew units, and staff from various companies in one shared cloud project. That way, the valuable information collected on set can be made available to many relevant parties while individual workflow needs get considered and catered for.
More info on how the ShotHub Team Plan connects professionals along the production pipeline can be found here.
Learn more about ShotHub’s general capabilities, features, and plan options here.
