Tools Developer / Pipeline TD (Shots)

POSITION PURPOSE

Responsible for the overall shots review pipeline development. Support creative leadership (director, department supervisors) and production through the review pipeline development and implementation.

The Pipeline TD (Shots Review) provides a line of support for users involved in the review, validation, and feedback processes, namely: the director, the department supervisors, and the production and editorial teams. Your primary focus is to push image representations of our data through the different validation steps, and you'll work mostly with review (RV, Syncsketch, Avid, Blender, Nuke, Photoshop) and tracking software (ShotGrid).

The mission has a horizontal scope, spanning all the different stages of film production. Some of the processes and tools you conceive may help with:

• Checking the artists’ work within context and allowing versions comparisons

• Preparing dailies or deliveries to the editorial department

• Feeding director’s annotations, or editorial changes back into production

• Ensuring color consistency of these reviews throughout the facility

Close collaborations with the other TDs will be key to ensuring seamless integration with the rest of our pipeline and the facilitation of data exchange cross-departmentally. As such the Pipeline TD (Shots Review) is an integral member of the core Pipeline Team.

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

• Provide support for artists in learning and using the Review pipeline

• Create facility-based or show-based scripts and tools around this Review pipeline

• Provide support to the Departments and to the Productions in the smooth running of review and validation tasks through our pipeline.

• Determine the broad technical and creative approaches, in conjunction with the Head of Pipeline, the Pipeline Team, and the CTO

• Communicate successes and challenges faced by the team to the Head of Pipeline and CTO

• Act as a liaison for communicating technical issues to IT or Pipeline

• Use time management skills to schedule tasks effectively

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

• A degree or equivalent in Computer Graphics, Computer Science, or other related courses

• A solid interest and understanding in multiple areas within animation software development, animation studios production management, or digital filmmaking support (e.g. storyboarding, animation, layout, lighting, rendering, compositing, asset management, color science, user support, etc)

• A strong interest in color science, OCIO, color space or display transformations a plus

• Prior experience as a Pipeline TD preferred

SKILLS AND ABILITIES

Technical skills

• Experience of Python and shell scripting is required

• Prior knowledge of a production tracker (FTrack, Kitsu, preferably ShotGrid) and a review software (RV, Syncsketch) would be strongly advised

• Prior knowledge of web development (HTTP requests, REST APIs, HTML/CSS/JS) is a plus

• Experience with common animation or editing software a plus (Photoshop, Harmony, Maya/Blender, Nuke, Premiere, Avid, etc)

• Solid and clean coding practices to understand and expand on our existing code base

• Not intimidated by peer reviews while code-developing

• A knack for UI/UX (design methodology and frameworks as Qt) is plus and we might ask you to use that skill

Core skills

• Big picture problem solver

• Interest for facilitating communication between departments by providing dedicated tools, processes and guidance

  • Ability to troubleshoot and deal with competing priorities and projects

  • Good at anticipating the downstream impacts (on other departments, on future projects)

  • Finding the sweet spot between simplicity of usage and traceability of information

• Team-oriented with good communication skills

  • Have a knack for helping others and taking pleasure in making artists’ life easier

  • Ability to take direction and feedback from a supervisor or a peer

  • Ability to give constructive feedback and guidance to peers

• Good handling pressure

  • Ability to work in a sometimes tight-deadline environment.

  • Ability to derive the path to take for implementation given a particular time constraint is always a plus