Asset management
14.6.2 Asset management
Most productions acquire a range of materials and resources, digital, analogue and physical in nature. These could exist in a physical form as
Production project management in practice
location master tapes, pre-edits, alpha and beta copies of CD ROMs, word documents, voice-over tapes, DAT recordings, logos and graphics. Other resources will only exist in an electronic form. In addition, script and project documents will have several versions throughout the life of the project. A means of tagging and organising the assets is vital to the smooth running of
a project. Whether the resources are physical or electronic, the first task is to build
some form of spreadsheet that identifies the asset by: 䊉 what it is
䊉 when and who generated it 䊉 the version number 䊉 the current location (if physical) 䊉 the current user (if electronic).
After this, whether you apply the technique of the ‘job bag’ used in the print and publishing industry or whether it is just in a box somewhere is not significant; the important aspect is to be able to track the materials. On even the simplest of video shoots, it is possible to misplace one of 10 Betacam tapes. Tapes are often in transit – between off-line and on-line editors, on their way back to directors for reviewing or turning into burnt-in time code (BIT), or for copying to a VHS tape. With electronic documents, the problem is not owning a copy, but rather maintaining control of the version being edited.
Let us deal with version control first. Start by giving the file a name that is meaningful to the project, for example b_adder v1.doc. This becomes the first script version for this particular programme. As the script goes through edit cycles, each individual who is performing the edit can do so in whatever way they wish but must change the file name by putting their initials within the file name – for example, b_adder(BE)v2.doc means that one of the scriptwriters has edited the script and it is now in its second version. Some agreement as to how the team tracks document changes must be applied. Effective use of editing techniques in word processors helps to identify those parts of the script that have been changed from previous versions.
Where a production group all works within one company, they can share either the email system or hard disk space for resource management. This becomes more complicated when people are working not only in different companies but also across the world. Many organisations can now use the Internet or an Extrant as a means to store shared data. Project files, asset databases and spreadsheets on a password-protected website can provide an
Managing in the Media
Figure 14.5
A project team tool (PG Studio Copyright 2000, Pepper’s Ghost Productions Limited).
effective resource management tool. In this way individuals share project communication and work lists (Figure 14.5), and they can download project files. Depending on the configuration of the website access rights, team members can upload revised documents. Alternatively, they may have to send them to the site web master to co-ordinate new versions being uploaded.