How To Manage Over 20 Feature Films

In today’s issue of The Friday Filmmaker, I’m going to give you an inside look into how I manage many feature films at one time.

I’ve also made a video taking you through this process step-by-step.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by all the projects you’re trying to make progress on, this is for you. By having a systemised workflow you will feel less anxious about what to do and when. You will work smarter when it comes to moving your projects through production.

Unfortunately, it’s common to fly by the seat of our pants.

Developing this kind of system takes years of trial and error

Not only that, but in my experience these things also held me back:

• Too many project management tool options.
• Too many features within those tools.
• Few film specific management tools.
• Simplicity is hard to achieve.
• It’s hard to get buy-in from collaborators or colleagues.

This workflow has been a game-changer for me. Full credit goes to Brett from DesignJoy for sharing this system.

Here's how, step by step:

Step 1: Trello

Simplicity is key.

Trello lacks so many features that other tools have. Which is why it’s so great. All we need from a tool is:

• What we need to do today.
• What we've already done.
• What is coming up.
• A place to store files.
• A way to communicate.

Trello gives us all these. Here is a snapshot of how I lay it out:

Each board relates to a project. You can have many boards in your account and you can share boards with different teams.

Step 2: Airtable

Next is to have our own internal snapshot of all the projects.

This is where Airtable comes in. Like a spreadsheet but much more dynamic, it gives me an overview of exactly where each project is at. This allows me to know exactly what tasks I need to complete.

Check it out:

Can you feel the stress relieving?

Step 3: Review each morning

Finally, we need to bring these two together.

Each morning, I go through every Trello board to see where each project is at. I then manually update Airtable with the status of each project. This only takes 5-10 minutes but it allows me to know exactly what I need to work on today.

Note: You can’t automate this step, I’ve tried. I've also found that walking through your projects each morning gives me clarity and focus.

So that’s it. That’s how I manage a bunch of projects at one time without my head exploding.

Well that's it for today, I hope you liked this issue.

See you next week.

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