Production: Vampire Surf Cult

Medium: 2D Animated Pilot

Logline: A human named Cody washes up on an island of fun loving, blood drinking, night surfing monsters. He has no recollection of his past, but slowly his memories return. Now he must make a choice: Return to his mortal life or escape his reality on this island of immortals?

Director: Adam Cournoyer

My Role: Production Coordinator

My first major assignment on Vampire Surf Cult was to dive deep into the script and make a script breakdown for every character, prop, background, and FX assets that would need to be created in pre-production. Using a template, I filled in the script breakdown based on the most current version of the script, which then became the basis for pre-production assignments, including applying naming conventions, if assets needed to be modified, or any other necessary details.

I coordinated voice actor meetings and tracked audio files, so I modified this template originally created by Allison Sribnick to keep track of the progress for recording. The “Line #” column aligns with the line numbers notated in the VA version of the script the actors used. The “Recording Progress” column tracks each stage of the audio we were using for the pilot, from scratch to fully complete, and it also informs the “Recording in Progress” and “Recording Done” progress bars at the top in real time using Google Sheets formulas. The “Final/Retake Pass” was an as-needed column in case any rewrites or retakes were needed.

Along with the script breakdown, I also analyzed and notated an animatic breakdown in SyncSketch (storyboards by GiA Ligammari), which was essential in populating our animation shot list and background assignment list.

Below, I determined the complexity and priority of each background and animation assignment, which helped us set deadlines and hire crew accordingly.

To save time and confusion for our background and special pose artists, I set up background files and special pose files in Photoshop. Using a template created by the producer Lewis Schuyler and smart object shortcuts in the program, I efficiently prepared files with references from storyboards, character design, environment design, and anything else needed for artists to start their assignments.