Film crews on top of workflow

AN organisational tool designed to simplify the process of movie production, from Hollywood blockbusters to art-house shorts, could dramatically reduce the time it takes to organise filming.

The YAWL4Film workflow management system had its first run earlier this year in the production of Australian feature film Prime Mover, starring William McInnes, Ben Mendelsohn and Emily Barclay and due for release next year.

The system was designed by researchers at Queensland University of Technology in collaboration with Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

YAWL, which stands for "yet another workflow language", was developed over five years and drew on a decade of research at the university.

YAWL4Film project leader Kenneth Wang said the technology was deployed to support call sheet generation for a Porchlight Films production co-ordinator on the Prime Mover film, on location at Dubbo, NSW.

"The call sheet itself is a document distributed to the crew and cast to let them know what is going on for the next day," Mr Wang said.

"These documents are manually keyed in beforehand and distributed to different assistant directors so they can do planning and discuss what is feasible, but everything is so dynamic it keeps changing every day from a scene to a prop, or when things go wrong.

"If a call sheet has to be manually entered, it is pretty much what the production co-ordinator would be doing for the entire day."

The researchers came up with a module on a web server that delivers an information consolidation and automation process into the call sheet.

YAWL4Film allows a chain of information to be automated so information can be passed between different parties and its progress tracked and directed along the way.

The system was developed in collaboration with the government-backed ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.

The project is also supported by the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.

Mr Wang said commercialisation of the system was expected to begin next year.

"The main thing is that the production co-ordinator, who usually generates the call sheet, will be able, at the click of a button, to select which day they want to generate the call sheet and within seconds receive all the information consolidated from different sources," he said.

The system was adaptable and allowed users, such as production co-ordinators, production managers and assistant directors, to work within their preferred spreadsheet interface to organise information, Mr Wang said.

Despite the extra set-up time for the initial input of information, overall the system cut the workload in half, Mr Wang said.

"We will be improving different modules, for example so the production manager will be able to manage the crew in a more efficient manner through our scheduling tool," he said. The goal of the project was to bring business process management to the creative industry as a whole.

"Currently, we are building a set of tools for the film industry, and particularly for production companies in Australia such as Porchlight," Mr Wang said.

"Once we are able to come up with a model that learns how to introduce creative business process management, we will try to apply the kind of knowledge we learn to other areas, such as games."