As a member of the production team on an
animated or visual-effects film, a Technical Director lives in the
space between images and code. The technical director is
responsible for mastering the tools required for production, both from
a user's perspective and a programmer's perspective, and often helps
develop the tools herself. On a large scale production, such as
a feature length film, each department will typically have its own
group of dedicated technical directors, each of whom specializes in the
tools that are utilized in their department. On a smaller
production, such as a short, a technical director may need to learn and
help develop the entire set of tools across all departments. A
technical director then helps
the artists to produce the final product that each department is
responsible for. If production demands are very great, or if a
special, unique challenge presents itself, a technical director can
also step into the role of artist himself, bringing a deeper level of
technical expertise to bear on the problem, or simply just helping to
shoulder the load.
Technical Directors contribute in
pre-production, during production, and even sometimes after the main
production has been completed. A technical director does not
generally develop large pieces of software that take long periods of
time to implement -- those are provided by the software development
department, or in the form of third party software. Instead, a
technical director will write many smaller pieces of software which are
typically used for shorter periods of time, commonly for the duration
of only a single project. Often a TD will write small programs,
known as "shell scripts" or just "scripts," that help artists and
others deal with the complexities of the operating system and software
environments they find themselves immersed in. A TD may also
write scripts, plug-ins or macros that are unique to a particular piece
of software, such as Maya scripts or plug-ins, Renderman shaders, or
compositing node macros. Sometimes a TD will write these tools to
help with the general workflow within a production or department.
At other times a TD may write a tool to address a very specific problem
occuring on just a few shots, or even a single "one-off" shot. At
all times, however, technical directors serve as life-support for
artists using complex hardware and software, and are quite literally
the glue that helps keep a production together!
