We’ve just pushed out the 0.8 update to ShotRunner, if you are a user, you should have seen an announcement in your email.

Here are the major new features:

• Multi-Project: The primary goal of this release is to allow multiple projects per account. After you log in at your company web address, you will have access to all of the production projects you are a member of.

• Customizable Property Sheets: No matter what kind of information you need to track: timecode, formats, frame ranges, on-set measurements, camera settings, lens information, rights information, anything, ShotRunner can handle it. Project administrators can now define custom properties (fields) to store any information required by the production and attach those properties to Shots, Elements and Assets.

• Multi-file upload: Our bulk file uploader now support Flash 10, and should work in any browser. Please try it out and let us know what you think.

• Feedback: There is a new ‘Feedback’ link on every page so that you can note an idea, suggestion, or problem any time. We are using the popular Get Satisfaction customer service portal. You will be able to read and comment on proposed features and enhancements at: http://getsatisfaction.com/shotrunner

We are still making some adjustments to the dashboard and project overview pages—they are still a little rough so if you have any suggestions for what you would like to see in a dashboard, please let us know.

Thanks to everyone who has already sent in ideas and suggestions. You will see the rate of fixes and updates increase quite a bit now that we are past this release.

I will be putting up tutorials on the new features, including property sheets, shortly. In the meantime, if you have a question on anything, just ask!

I hope you enjoy the update, and please let me know if there is anything we can do to help you get organized and collaborate.

Thanks, Cameron

We had an issue come on up a project where the VFX supervisor was getting inundated with email because all the artists were checking off everyone whenever they left a note on a task. We probably should have the system constrain the people that a user can notify to their immediate team and maybe one level of supervision. I’ll have to ponder that. In the meantime, here is the procedure I’m following:

1. Instruct artists that they should post notes and submit work only in their tasks, unless there is an item of broad interest that crosses task or shot boundaries.
2. Instruct artists to not include the VFX supervisor on notes added to tasks.
3. When the team lead, coordinator or VFX producer want to send something up for review and approval, create a new note on either the shot, or a shot element, then do a Request Response on that note. This will send an email with the subject “Review Requested” and create a workflow item.

This way, all the work details stay down in the tasks, and the higher level reviews and approvals happen at the element or shot levels.

The general theory is that the show producer and/or client work at the sequence level, the VFX supervisor and team leads work at the shot or shot element level, and artists work at the task level.