We recently spoke with Todd while he was in line at Starbucks, checking out Shotgun Review on his iPhone while waiting for his coffee. He is currently using Shotgun to manage two simultaneous projects at Workhouse, a company owned by director Keith Rivers with 10 full-time staff, four of whom are VFX artists. One of the projects is an indie short film directed by Rivers, and the second is a music video for local Seattle artist Allen Stone co-directed by Rivers and Daniel Brown featuring over 65 VFX shots.
Less than a month after its official release, Perry
is already benefitting from having access to Shotgun via his iOS devices. “As a VFX Supervisor you’re often tethered to an office, working long days and nights waiting to receive shots to review. While it’s still essential to work in a screening room for director-assisted review sessions, or evaluating fine details and color work, with Shotgun Review I can deliver almost immediate feedback on most aspects of a sequence from anywhere while the artist is still in the mindset of that same shot. Often when artists don’t get feedback for one or two days, they have to retrace their steps to recall what stage of the project they were in. More immediate feedback makes the process more efficient and usually delivers an overall better final product.”Perry also observed that the ROI of deploying Shotgun, even at a boutique shop like Workhouse Creative, outweighs the incremental spend of adding licenses for artists as needed. “You have to assess the costs of lost notes or making mistakes or missed shots. I’ve talked to many producers about this, and as long as you set everything up correctly from the get go in Shotgun, it just works. It’s so much easier for artists, supervisors and producers to have a bird’s eye view of statuses on all aspects of a production. In the long run, Shotgun saves artists time and lets them focus on making better art, and saves supervisors the time that can get lost when fine details on a project get lost in a broken communication chain.”
Shotgun Review for iPhone is available for free for all current Shotgun subscribers. Download it for free on the Apple App Store today.
