VIDEO: Mindset & Production Career Advancement

Advancing along the Production career path in the VFX/Animation industry isn't just about acquiring skill, it's also a series of shifts in mindset.



I want to talk about the growth of Production staff, not in the sense of PA to Producer, but of the changes in mindset and attitude that indicate a progression along the career path of Production.


When it comes to growing and advancing in the Production role, it’s not just about mastery of skill, but understanding of your role in the greater context of a show. I find this is a common misunderstanding of those who are hoping to advance their careers in animation Production - it's not enough to know Shotgrid and Excel/Google sheets inside out, its also about the professional maturity and understanding.




So you're a Production Coordinator

When you’re a coordinator, you start with the understanding of yourself, and your role in relation the department(s) you are coordinating. 


I find at this beginning stage, a common pitfall is thinking it's about you, it is not. Your self-awareness contributes to your success and growth but Production is first and foremost a service department. 


Coordinator --> Your Department

Your awareness should then expand to your department/team. What exactly is, say, your design team about? What are they responsible for? What personalities do you have? What are some common fixes? What is design expected to hand off downstream?


A common mistake at this stage of growth is excessively defending your team, or creating an us versus them mentality. This is extremely unhealthy and unprofessional for a show. 


While it can be easy to fall into, it's important to remember that you are not, say, a designer. You are part of the Production team supporting the design team, and you still must help hold your department accountable for their deliverables to other departments. 


Your Department x Other Departments

The next stage of growth for a coordinator is to understand what your department does in connection to other departments - not just the deliverables, but what you can do to help make things easier for downstream departments. You don’t want to operate as an island, you start to see your department as part of the show more, it’s that teamwork, baby. You’re not just thinking for what’s good for your team, but looking ahead for what’s next. 


A critical practice at this stage is very basically, to listen in meetings like production huddles and all-hands or interdepartmental meetings. You want to build an awareness of where your show is at generally, listening for what challenges might be coming down the pipe, and therefore what you should possibly be setting up for down the line to avoid issues in your own department. 


I see this a lot with coordinators - in huddles, they will only listen or pay attention when its their department’s turn to speak or report. What you should be doing if you want to grow into say, a PM role, is to be listening to everything - how it all fits together, and the decisions that have to be made, things to flag, how to move all that information around. PM’s are rarely responsible for just one department, you can’t pick favourites or listen selectively, its about how it all comes together. 


Production Manager/Producer --> Show Awareness

The next step, therefore, is thinking about not just yourself, your department, or departments before and after yours, but of the show generally. An awareness at this level can help inform farm priorities, fix priorities for the pipeline team, and thinking more about what we can do to improve things for departments that are struggling. 


Producer --> Studio Awareness

The last kind of level of awareness, shall we we say, is the studio level. It’s not just about your show, but recognizing that we have to share resources with other shows and consider our actions in the greater context of a studio’s values and goals. 


This is usually at the Producer level, and can be conversations about lending and borrowing artists from other shows to help cross a finish line, and understanding that if its a question of farm allocation, some shows might come before yours even though we all have deadlines. 


At this stage, I find a common pitfall is similar to the coordinator pitfall of defending your own department - in this case, its defending your own show excessively without thinking, or rather listening, to a studio’s directive that another show might need more support or consideration. There’s always going to be a time where you gotta take one for the team, and at this Producer-y level, that team is the studio. 



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