Customer stories


"Jimmy Neutron:Boy Genius", The Movie

FileMaker Behind the Scenes of ‘Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, The Movie'

 Assembling a feature-length animated film is a complicated job. Every individual scene is the product of many -- animators, background artists, technicians -- and all those individual elements have to fit together perfectly in the finished product. Keeping careful track of the production process is essential -- and for the producers of the cartoon feature 'Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, the movie', the key to keeping it all organized is FileMaker Pro, the award-winning database software application from FileMaker Inc.

'It wasn't too many years ago that animated films were tracked manually on a large hanging board,' explains Ben Gilberg, production coordinator for Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, the movie. This board was studded with nails, each representing a single stage of the production process, and each individual shot would be represented by a key ring, to be transferred from nail to nail as that shot moved through production. 'Not only was this an unwieldy system,' observes Ben, 'but if somehow something should make the board fall over, your entire tracking system just went out the window!' And, even when the board remained intact, there was only one such board -- meaning staffers from all over the building would have to physically go to it in order to keep up to date on the state of the production.

And so it went -- until the advent of a new tracking system, built around FileMaker Pro. FileMaker was already in use around the studio for keeping track of tape stock and other necessary supplies -- and it soon proved a natural fit for production tracking. 'The FileMaker Pro system has not only helped us eliminate the key ring/nail board method,' notes Ben, 'it has allowed us to expand our tracking system exponentially. Now as each shot passes through the system we can readily call up its current location, frame length, which artist has been assigned to the shot, and all of its assigned-and-due-dates. We can also quickly identify which shots have and have not been approved at various points on the pipeline, allowing us to instantly figure out how far ahead or behind of the projected production schedule we are.'

All told, four databases make up the production tracking system -- one follows the initial storyboards, one tracks the assignment of shots to individual artists, one follows the progress of each shot through production -- and the final database assures that once each shot is completed, any necessary changes or follow-up work are completed on schedule.

Eliminating the key rings and the nail board has greatly streamlined the production-tracking process -- after all, for an average animated film consisting of 1500 individual shots, there might be nearly twenty thousand individual points where approval is required before moving on to the next stage. With the FileMaker system, everyone involved can access the status of any shot in seconds, with no delays, no confusion -- and no upset boards! 'Now maybe I no longer get the same amount of exercise by not running back and forth to the production board, ' laughs Ben, 'but I can give the executives any answer they need almost before they finish asking it!'



Contact information

Contact Info for Customer:

Ben Gilberg
Coordinator
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, the movie
214-352-4694
bgilberg@dnahelix.com


Filemaker Contact:

Kevin Mallon
Public Relations Manager
FileMaker Inc.
408-987-7227
kevin_mallon@filemaker.com
http://www.filemaker.com


Overview
  • Producing a cartoon isn't child's play: every scene is composed of many individual shots, and every shot is a collaboration of a team of artists and technicians. When the production team of the animated film Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, The Movie needed a system to track production, they made the intelligent choice: FileMaker.
Industry
  • Creative Markets
  • Entertainment
  • Small Business