Clea Blockey
Project Manager
Welcome to the team!
Who We Are
Netflix’s stands up full-service creative, production, and post executions for a multitude of business partners across Netflix around the world. The INC Studio team focuses on content that talks about Netflix as a business, brand, culture, and company, and uses storytelling to promote, educate, inform and inspire. Content lives both internally and externally and can range from long-form animated series to documentary interview style shoots, repeatable format, and everything in between. We work on integrated campaigns, video series, one-off projects, and a multitude of other projects and content types. We’re an ever-evolving and agile team; we tell stories for screens of all sizes.
You can see a lot of our external-facing work on the . We are working on setting up an archive of all of our work (and several other teams) within an internal Netflix Video Player. Tech Setup and Office Space
You should already have a Netflix laptop by the time you are reading this document!
For your computer, you will work with our N-Tech team to set it up and gain access to our various websites, databases, and materials through our VPN. This can be a little tricky, so the first thing you need to do is set up your computer. If you need help with this, you can reach out to your Manager or N-Tech directly: . Working Hours & Communication
Our team’s operating hours are from 9am PST - 5pm PST Monday through Friday.
Teammates are encouraged to manage their time and schedules as they see fit for their specific roles and projects. We respect everyone’s availability and ability to do the work within a reasonable time and this general working schedule.
Our Google calendars are open and shared with everyone on the direct team. We ask that you share your calendar (including events and details) with the team upon starting, once you are set up. This gives us both transparency for what everyone is doing and allows for easier navigation around scheduling meetings. We can see what is moveable and what meetings are set in stone. We also encourage everyone to block “focus time” or “working blocks” during the day where they need to dial in their focus to get things done. For anything that is private or personal, feel free to make those specific instances on your calendar private.
On Fridays, most people on our direct team and across Netflix aim to have little to no meetings to allow for intentional focus blocks and “heads down” time that may be challenging otherwise throughout the week.
Holidays
Remember to Breathe
What to Expect
The Soft Launch
The Hard Launch
Your Role & Responsibilities
See project through from start to finish - meeting with stakeholders starting with discovery, going through system build outs, creating training and documentation, and completing rollout. Keep all projects on track to make sure we are hitting deadline.
Work with the The INC Studio Ops team to oversee multiple projects across a variety of teams Set meetings with stakeholders to do deep dives, understand use cases, and get buy in Send regular updates on project status to stakeholders Create user stories, workflow maps, and documentation Help the operations team with discovery, system building and implementation, system rollouts, and training Help to identify systems that already exist within the Netflix ecosystem and if those can be utilized, or if a new system is required Help to identify additional teams or stakeholders that would benefit from workflow and infrastructure changes Directory of Primary Contacts
Sarah Semlear: Manager, Operations Organizational and team development Production workflows & end-to-end efficiencies Finance & legal best practices Expansion and adoption across studio, infrastructure and equipment Expansion and adoption across post production infrastructure
Christina Popwytsch: Production Finance Lead Leads all financial operations and workflows including PO & invoicing process, ensures accounting and data accuracy across all accounts and internal cost centers. Supervises 1x Contingent operations coordinator who supports administrative needs across the ops team and financial workflows. Supervises retained payroll partner (Wrapbook)
Kristine Guzman: Studio Infrastructure Lead Leads equipment, technology and creative facilities (studios/stages, edit/audio/color suites, etc). Supports tooling and build out of project management platform for end-to-end workflow support and integrated tracking across projects and resources. Supervises 2x Contingent Talent staff to support booking, tracking and deployment of equipment and facilities support. Supervises 2x retained vendor equipment partners (camera + G&E) Supervises Brightcove vendor for housing of internal media content and distribution across the business (with support from Post Supervisor)
Zach Gouz: Post Production Supervisor Leads post production workflows and tooling. Ensures project-based support and internal workflows and tooling are operational within post production space. Supervises several contingent post support roles: Post Producers, Post Coordinators, Editors, AE’s, media managers etc. Supports management of Brightcove vendor for housing of internal media content and distribution across the business (with support from Studio Infrastructure Lead). About INC Studio
The INC Story
tells the history of our team and the impact we have had across all verticals of the organization. It’s a great overview of how far we have come by thoughtfully applying our strategy and responding to the business needs over time. Team Structure & Operations
Our team is uniquely positioned and structured within Netflix. We are both makers and operators, telling stories about the business, brand, culture and company of Netflix while also empowering storytelling across the business through our resources and operations. It’s important to understand both our full-service integrated production pipeline as well as our operations arm which is the backbone behind everything we make.
How We Operate
The INC Studio team projects are produced in OWNED, MANAGED or DIRECT (OMD) models. We track our footprint across each of these models to understand where our impact and value is most beneficial to the company, how to manage bandwidth against the volume of asks that come in and to purposefully right-size our efforts. OWNED are full-service projects that we produce in house. We’ll directly oversee the end-to-end process at every stage of the execution including the resourcing of both our full time employees and contingent worker bench. With these projects, our team operates as both the Creative Agency and Production/Post Services company. About 20-25% of the projects we produce are executed in this model. MANAGED are productions that have a vendor partner who is co-servicing elements of the project with our team. Our Project Lead will own the scope, creative and overall budget and facilitates communication between our vendor and internal Netflix teams. With these projects, our team operates as a Creative Agency with a bit more input than standard-fair commercial agencies. About 75-80% of the projects we produce are executed in this model. DIRECT projects do not require creative production or leadership support from our Team. In these cases, we connect Netflix teams directly with an appropriate vendor to facilitate their needs, supporting their contracting and bidding process as a consultant. About 5% of projects are supported in this model. Our (colloquially called The Base), is the main source of truth for the ongoing and past project work for our team. Producers utilize their individual project record throughout the execution of their project, to update everything from granular project information to financial information. You will have a CODA onboarding session but please feel free to make an account and review the base in the meantime. Project Intake & Resourcing Our gives you an end-to-end overview of how we take a project from a request to delivery. This is coupled with our CODA base for project management along the way. Our includes a catalog of previous work as well as outlines what projects we do and don’t do, and our (which auto populates information into our team base). Whenever possible, we aim to set up calls for all project requests and complete an with key questions we always need answered in order to properly scope and resource for a project. We evaluate all new project requests weekly at with the management team. In these meetings, we gauge our bandwidth and the timeline for the project to determine if we are taking the project on and who from our team will be assigned to the project. Our in The Base gives you a clear line of sight on anything that is happening from intake requests all the way through delivery, wrap & archiving. Producers are responsible for building and updating project records and calendars as we move through the project lifecycle. Project codes are assigned in resourcing and live in the Base Project codes start with the year the project kicks off (ie: for 2023 coding starts with 23) Initiatives also have codes but those start with i-## and assigned to broad scale initiatives by the operations team Project Workflows vary based on the type of creative work and the OMD model The Producer will always be the “front of house lead” on projects when assigned For Direct projects or those that provide only infrastructure, payroll or operations support, the Project Lead will vary. For Post-only projects, that will land on the Post Supervisor. For Production or full-service asks, that will land on the Manager, Production, for EQ or studio-only needs it will land on the Studio Infrastructure Lead. After delivery, Producers are responsible for owning the complete project wrap The Producer is responsible for reconciling all expenses on their projects across all expense categories. This includes payroll, vendor expenses, P-Cards (digital petty cash) and all extraneous expenses and costs billed to the project ID. The Producer will use The Base to wrap the project, following the prompts to ensure all budgetary elements and project assets/deliverables are saved on Google Drive and noted in the base The Producer (with Coordinator and/or AP support) will walk through the final deliverables and project collects to ensure that everything is accounted for and all information is accurate within the CODA project record The Post supervisor will partner to ensure that everything is accounted for and correctly dialed in. Finance Lead will review all wrap materials and financial actuals to ensure data accuracy and sign-off to approve the wrap Ones wrap is approved, Producer sends Wrap Report PDF to stakeholders with cc’d Recurring Meeting
Regular check ins with Stakeholders Department Software & Tools
- All project-related documentation lives in our . This includes final deliverables, budgets, memos, agenda docs, receipts, etc. Please make sure that you are saving everything in an organized fashion within the project folder. The template folder file structure for each project folder lives Collaborative Docs, Spreadsheets & Decks All stakeholder communications will be through email, with critical project members cc’d for viz. For any stakeholder communications, it is important to always have a Full Time Employee CC’ed for viz. Channels are set up for each project We use this for day-to-day comms and quick shares Threads: Make sure to use “threads” for replies on any project channels to keep the conversations organized We do not use G-chat so please familiarize yourself with slack Our Coda base holds vital project information including but not limited to; Creative, Production & Post: Project Assignments & Leads Project Creative, Briefs, Bids Crew + Project Resourcing Booking Project #’s and Cost Centers All project files & raw media Smart Sync workflow (for editorial hires only) We use Adobe CS for most of our post production workflow. This includes but is not limited to the below software: The Operations Team
The Operations team deals with the infrastructure and big picture resourcing and support needs of the team, helping to ensure we’re set up for success. This includes the business of our studio operations, equipment, post-production, financial pipelines, project tracking and shared workflows within the team and our cross-functional partners.
Operations Team (Full Time Employees) Production Finance Lead - Christina Popwytsch Leads all financial operations and workflows including PO & invoicing process, ensures accounting and data accuracy across all accounts and internal cost centers. Supervises 1x Contingent operations coordinator who supports administrative needs across the ops team and financial workflows. Supervises retained payroll partner (Wrapbook) Studio Infrastructure Lead - Kristine Guzman Leads equipment, technology and creative facilities (studios/stages, edit/audio/color suites, etc). Supports tooling and build out of project management platform for end-to-end workflow support and integrated tracking across projects and resources. Supervises 2x Contingent Talent staff to support booking, tracking and deployment of equipment and facilities support. Supervises 2x retained vendor equipment partners (camera + G&E) Supervises video player vendor for housing of internal media content and distribution across the business (with support from Post Supervisor) Post Production Supervisor - Zach Gouz Leads post production workflows and tooling. Ensures project-based support and internal workflows and tooling are operational within post production space. Supervises several contingent post support roles: Post Producers, Post Coordinators, Editors, AE’s, media managers etc. Supports management of Brightcove vendor for housing of internal media content and distribution across the business (with support from Studio Infrastructure Lead). Production Workflows & Project Support Supports team leadership in resourcing for contingent talent and vendor partners as needed; delegates resourcing to appropriate channel within operations team structure as needed Supervises adjustments to team project management tools & integrations as needed; supervises the build out and maintenance of workflow documentation, best practices and systems guidance Ensures quarterly data accuracy and compliance for accurate reporting across project base Consistently checks-in with leadership team and Production team to ensure workflows, tools and support are operating effectively and efficiently and determine areas for improvement or growth Finance, Contracting & Legal (Christina Popowytsch) Supervises financial and legal operations to ensure compliance, business standards and updates and ensure workflow efficiencies; ensures all payment entities, processes and legal systems are up to date and for Shields Productions LLC (INC Studio’s exclusive production entity) Supports contracting as needed; approves all high-stakes initiatives contracts and payments terms with leadership and appropriate legal and financial partners prior to commitment Supports Finance Lead in maintaining on-going financial trackers and data for accuracy, integrity and redistribution of operating and project budgeting as needed Supports Finance Lead in maintaining relationships with payroll providers (Wrapbook, Atrium) Studio Resources & Tooling Infrastructure (Kristine Guzman) Supports Technical Infrastructure Lead in planning around equipment and studio infrastructure needs for purchases, priority vendor agreements Supports Technical Infrastructure Lead in establishing XF partners to understand support needs and propose payment options across teams when needed Supervises Technical Infrastructure Lead in maintaining booking systems and oversight of creative facilities spaces managed by INC Studio (edit bays, audio bays, color suites, podcast studios etc); communicates to upper management as spaces expand or collapse based on utilization or business changes Works with Technical Infrastructure Lead to sure-up our priority vendors for physical production resources and equipment, building on and advancing retained partnership and deals as needed; ensures Production team and XF partners understand how to tap into resources Post Production & Infrastructure (Zach Gouz) Supports Post Supervisor to consistently up-level post production workflows to create more automation and efficiencies within INC studio work Supports Post Supervisor with integration of new tooling and systems as well as onboarding materials and logistical management of workflow shifts Supports expansion of internal server and cloud infrastructure for hybrid and remote-based workflows; integrates solutions with existing XF teams and support pillars within Netflix Assists with post-production equipment needs and upgrades, supervises installation (hardware and software) and onboarding for all new tools and systems - links to all/most department memos/workflow guides (currently work in progress to update and improve these) Studio Infrastructure & Tooling
The Studio Infrastructure & Tooling function aims to centralize, streamline, and optimize the way production teams access resources and information to enable them to do better work. We also build out tracking and organizational solutions via tooling to empower the work across functions.
The Post Production arm ensures post operations are streamlined and documented, projects are properly scoped and resourced, and final deliverables are packaged for delivery and archival. The post team also manages LucidLink for the PCS Motion and Games teams.
