I’d like to go over what I focused on during my first three months as a junior VFX project manager.
Probationary period
I was on a three months probation for this position. Look up the definition of probation on a site: “Probation is a period where employers assess how suitable you are for a particular role.” The period was an opportunity for me to figure out whether the company is good enough for me. It involves navigating not only my task at work as a junior but also looking at trivial things like the distance between home and work, welfare system, library, cafeteria, the relationship between workers, etc. It’s difficult to figure out what the coordinator does during the probation. I was even able to tell that I got to know what I do in the third year of my previous work. On the other hand, the employee also takes into consideration me as an employer and a coworker in this period. While no one seemed to care about me, my coworkers had observed what I was doing. It was not until later that I learned that senior managers were reviewing my attitude at work because it’s almost impossible to review my performance during few months.
And here’re 5 things that I usually did in the three months:
1. OJT
Each company conducts different styles of OJT systems. In my case, I had several weeks to take a two-hours-class a day before being assigned to a project. I learned through the training how to use software tools for the management: editing and managing VFX shots, and interacting with coworkers following the VFX workflow. I got an assignment a day to brush up on a lesson.
2. Review a workflow
I spent the remaining time reading some guidelines and opening files of old and ongoing projects. My coworkers in the production team were occupied with doing ‘dailies’, ‘conference call’, ‘shot editing’ or ‘ on-siting’. So, I got to observe their daily log — what assistants usually do in the morning and the afternoon. And I tried to make plenty of records by hand-writing about everything — work, tips, passwords, lead VFX artist’s name, etc. One of the helpful pieces of advice about what to do in the first months was to rewrite on the white paper everything that I’d learned through the OJT and then, check to see if I fully understood the process.
3. Who’s who?
One day, a coworker told me off for not remembering her name. It made me daunted and annoyed. ‘Am I joining the army? How can I memorize all colleagues’ names within two weeks after joining the work?’, I thought. Eventually, I began with memorizing a name per day using a company’s intranet. Thanks to her, this training allowed me to quickly catch up with whom I had to communicate.
4. Where to go?
I have no sense of direction. Even in a small office! Numerous dailies, conference calls, and meetings take place in a conference room. My office has almost 10 conference rooms. As I used to get lost on the floor in the beginning, I got to make up a map for me to visit a conference room and each department.
5. practice software skills
I used to work on images with Adobe series at work. Final cut, Davinci resolve, Nuke series or Avid are commonly used for an editorial in the VFX company. I wasn’t then friendly with them, so I practiced the shot counting of turnovers using final cut and the shot managing the film scans using Hiero. And I needed to use the production management platform, which improves productivity and efficiency in the production workflow and work tracking. There are some famous platforms: shotgrid, formerly known as shotgun software, and ftrack. As technology develops over time, I might not stop this practice.
After three months, I finally got assigned to a project. Did those 5 things above help me? Of course. However, there had needed more than them. In the next article, I’m going to see questions that I got during the job interview and the reason why the hiring managers asked me.
