VFX Pipeline Consolidation.

The problem

Every VFX studio runs the same fragmented stack. ShotGrid for shots. Spreadsheet for bids. Email for client comms. Slack for internal. None of it connected. Coordinators were the glue.

Visible cost: two weeks of ramp per new coordinator. Hidden cost: every shot that slipped through the gaps because the system could not see itself end-to-end. On a $100M production, a missed shot is not a coordination problem. It is a margin event.

The approach

One unified pipeline view. An AI onboarding agent in Slack, trained on internal documentation under tightly scoped access controls, answering the fifty questions every new hire asks in their first two weeks. Institutional knowledge becomes a queryable system. Engineered so the wrong question does not return the wrong answer to the wrong person, and so a mis-tagged shot cannot pollute downstream automation.

The build

Four-week engagement. Integration-heavy because source data already lived in mature systems. The work was making them visible together for the first time without corrupting the upstream sources.

• Custom integration layer pulling ShotGrid API, Google Sheets, Gmail, and Slack into a unified Postgres view
• Coordinator dashboard surfacing every shot's status across all sources in one place
• AI onboarding agent in Slack trained on internal documentation, naming conventions, historical decisions
• Risk-detection pass surfacing shots slipping schedule before the dailies catch them
• Full handover documentation; lead coordinator owns the system after launch

The outcome

New-hire ramp cut from 14 days to 3. Coordinators recovered hours per week. Institutional knowledge that lived in three senior heads now lives in a queryable system every coordinator has on day one. The studio no longer runs on memory.

Background context: $100M+ production work on Skyfall, Avengers, Game of Thrones. The failure modes of fragmented VFX pipelines compound across every shot, every milestone, every billing cycle. Staying outdated outruns the cost of the build.

Tech stack

ShotGrid API, Google Sheets API, Gmail API, Slack Bolt, PostgreSQL, Claude API (onboarding agent), Python, Next.js (coordinator dashboard). T-shape engineering: software on the vertical, operations on the horizontal. Four weeks. Built solo.