Team Context:
The mission of the newly organized Production Strategy & Operations team is to empower the Studio to achieve its operational goals and creative pursuits through production solutions, technology, resource assurance, and workflow optimization.
As one of the 4 pillars on this team, Production Solutions & Operations contributes to that overall goal by focusing its efforts in these 3 areas:
Workflow Optimization : Partner with Studio across Production domains to identify and remove operational friction
Technology: Partner with Product to synthesize the Production experience and guide in decisions around tool investment or development
Data Governance: Work across Studio to build a foundation of clean connected data that fuels insights and analysis
The Workflow team will work closely with Studio Production partners within and across domains globally, to examine, understand, align and refine the end to end experience of managing a title from start to finish.
This team will be guided by the objective to streamline internal and external operations.
Additionally they will collaborate closely with the Technology team in PS&O to ensure decisions and perspectives are passed through to Product, and with the Data Governance team to ensure best practices for data integrity are incorporated into guidelines and best practices.
The Role:
Studio Production is composed of many internal and external stakeholders across multiple domains and countries, often with specific needs, requirements and dependencies.
The Manager Production Solutions & Operations
– Workflow (Visual Effects) , will focus on understanding the landscape of VFX globally, and proactively identifying opportunities for optimization within and across work-streams as well as across other Studio Physical Production domains.
This role will be focused on aligning, authoring, editing, maintaining, localizing, communicating and evolving ideas and documentation needed to guide and set up our teams for success.
Under this function, they will also drive the PS&O strategy for communication through various channels (ex: meetings, forums, newsletters) to ensure visibility to all initiatives, clarity around decisions made and to create channels for conversation and feedback.
Finally, this role will work closely with the Manager, Production Solutions & Operations
– Technology to convey workflow improvement needs and as needed pressure test development assumptions.
Responsibilities
Establish, develop, modify and execute operational objectives that impact workflow operations throughout Studio Production and delegate assignments to direct reports
Define Studio domain-specific and/or cross-functional work-stream opportunities that reduce operational friction and unlock end to end title management workflow optimization
Ensure projects and initiatives adhere to plan and achieve predetermined success metrics to budgets, schedules, work plans, and performance requirements.
Quantify the impact of workflow discrepancies and identify the motivating factors that may contribute to variances in workflow within or across domains, such as market specificity or team preference
Create and maintain clear documentation that memorializes discovery, analysis and conclusions uncovered in domain and cross-functional workflow exploration and researchImplement new workflow guidelines and best practices and continue to verify the impact of workflow change management
Build the framework for a global communication strategy that includes both synchronous and asynchronous methodologies such as meetings, forums, as well as platforms for information self-service such as websites, slack channels and e-learning
Regularly interact with leaders and stakeholders as well as represent the domain or work-stream in cross-functional meetings to ensure high visibility to progress and decisions
Highlight and represent opportunities across multiple domains or with cross-functional stakeholders
Work with Technology partners in PS&O to clearly articulate business requirements for tool and tool feature development in memos and/or presentations
Collaborate with cross-functional Workflow Team Partners to identify opportunities, ideas and initiatives for future optimization
Qualifications
Candidates should excel in a fast paced highly dynamic environment
Candidates should be self-motivated, goal driven problem solvers who excel at prioritization and are flexible whether working independently or with others
Must be proactive, thorough and highly organized
Must exhibit strong verbal and written communication skills; comfortable leading large group discussions and authoring memos and workflow documentation that will be consumed locally and internationally
Must demonstrate the ability to learn, test and implement new technologies with minimal guidance
Knowledgeable about end-to-end Production/Post-Production/VFX workflows and their dependencies
Project management experience, with exposure to guiding workflow alignment and change management
Strongly prefer 4-6 yrs experience within the VFX industry preferred, with exposure to both tentpole and smaller market driven projects