A NOTE: This post is heavily featured in our April/May newsletter (you can sign up here). It's a very expansive subject so I've also broken in out into these blog posts.

Nerd Alert!

This is a deep-dive into some technical and obscure subjects. While not specifically about the film-making process itself this post is about the use of complex digital systems to support and enable that process. Grab a coffee and a snack cos it's gonna get nerdy like you would not believe...

Flying Solo

Everyday I face a core problem with this project - it's just me. I'm prepping the shoot, organizing cast, building social media posts, applying for grants - the waterfall of tasks simply never ends.

I need another person to share the load but absolutely no one is as free or as involved to commit the same amount of time and effort as I do - for free! Between this project, family and my day-job as a 1st Assistant Director I can become dangerously overwhelmed. Also, whenever I become sucked into a large commercial this project both falls off my radar (so things don't get done that absolutely need to get done) and it loses any visibility to the general public.

That last part is very dangerous for a project that's going to heavily rely on a Kickstarter campaign at some point. Public visibility, community engagement and social credibility are crucial elements to any crowdfunding success.

I desperately need more time, another set of hands, another brain. I need a partner - but everyone else has their own lives, needs and priorities. They could help for a while but, inevitably, life & work will pull them away (I don't begrudge them - this is also my reality!). I need an employee - but I've no funds to pay them.

And Yet, There Is Hope - I'm A Nerd.

A complete, to-the-bone, nerd. I built my first PC from scratch at 12 years old. I read substack articles on Ai Automation. I'll watch an hours-long live transmission from deep-sea submersibles as they explore oceanic vents and youtube videos on the War of 1812. I listen to podcasts on medieval European history, politics in the US, global developments in chip manufacturing, the war in Ukraine (Putin is scum). I prefer Iain M. Banks over Vonnegut, Gibson over Asimov. Picture a nerd - that's me.

When Stuck Fall Back On What You Know

If I know anything it's computers and digital systems. I don't code but I can usually read it and get the gist of it. Crucially, I know how to find someone or something that will read it for me. I'm deeply comfortable with digital processes and fundamentally believe that anything digital is solveable, hackable and usable in some way.

The solution was inside me all along: my experience and comfort with digital & online systems.

To that end February, March & April have been all about deep, behind the scenes prep of digital systems and workflows. I've focussed on building automations that amplify my work, removing as much repeated manual effort as is possible and creating secondary (even tertiary) effects.

The objective is to avoid repeating tasks, and if I must do a task to automatically simplify the workload in advance before I must engage.

Stacking The Stack for Me

I needed to build an array of different platforms and services, working together to reduce my workload, get things done and help me keep track of the entire process. In the digital world this is called a Stack. The logos above show my current stack of primary platforms & services:

• Coda - database storing all text and tables of data
• MailerLite - for sending emails. Like Mail Chimp but far better value.
• Claude - Anthropic's AI. Way better than ChatGPT 4. Wayyyyyy better.
• Make - automation service: "If This, Then Do That".
• WordPress - Hosts the website. Acts as the starting point for online social media presence.

(Seeing as you didn't ask, yes - I'll do a follow-up post on this stack, and the other services not shown here).

One example: I write a blog post on WordPress (where our website is hosted), then an online service called Buffer spreads that blog post across multiple social media channels. This happens automatically, with an excerpt and the featured image from the blog post being re-formatted and copy-pasted into each social media channel.

Another example: I use the database service called Coda to organize the entire project. Coda is a table-based database service; it's like a version of Dropbox /iCloud / Google drive where the files can be linked to other files and then changed by changing those files. In Coda, its more about data than files themselves. You can still upload and store files, like pdfs, images, etc, but they take up space and really, that's what Google Drive, iCloud are for. Coda is about connecting data to data, not organizing files into folders.

Coda.io is a table-based online service that helps users to build and automate workflows (without writing any code). Unlike static/dumb spreadsheets or word docs, tables in Coda can communicate with each other, display data (as charts or calendars), change each other and sync edits everywhere.

You can set rules (e.g., "if a status in this table changes, send an email") and automatically generate text or summarize & visualize data. Coda connects directly with almost any outside platforms like Slack, Google Calendar, Mailchimp, Airtable and Salesforce, allowing you to pull data directly into your doc, present it in understandable way, adjust it and send the new version back out.

Coda can host almost any data and perform a range of calculations. The Coda tables can be organized into folders (called Pages) and the many tables you build can cross reference to each other, as well as accept and display third party, external dynamic data.

While Coda does have its own "A.I." and a certain amount of automation, the real efficiency kicks in when I use a second service - Make.com. Make is the automation part of this stack, critical to its success - and my peace of mind!

But this blog post is already a bit of a monster, so I'll continue on with Part 2 later next the week.

Stay tuned!