A first-week checklist for new joiners in photography, animation and creative production

A new compositor opens her workstation on Monday and finds an empty render queue, a colour-managed monitor she has not calibrated and a project folder with forty subfolders. Nobody tells her which is the live one. By Wednesday she has rebuilt a plate that already existed. The studio paid for two days of work it already owned.

Creative studios lose their first week in small ways like this. The cure is a short sheet that follows the joiner through Monday to Friday, kept by whoever allocates the work. Below is the sheet, then the way to use it.

NAME ____ ROLE ____ TEAM ____ FREELANCE OR PAYROLL ____ START DATE ____ LEAD ____.
DAY ONE MORNING: seat, workstation or locker issued; login and storage quota set ____ NAS or server folder map walked through ____.
DAY ONE: naming convention for files, versions and cards explained, with one real example ____ backup rule for card offload and project drives stated ____.
DAY ONE: tools list ticked (editing suite, compositing package, DAW, tablet, camera body, lens kit) with licence holder named ____.
DAY ONE: timesheet by task shown, with the project codes in use this week ____ billable and non-billable examples read out ____.
DAY TWO: shown the shot tracker or job board; told who sets priority when two leads ask for the same hour ____.
DAY TWO: monitor calibrated, LUT or colour profile loaded, headphones or studio monitors checked ____.
DAY THREE: first small task delivered (a retouch batch, a rotoscope clip, a lip-sync pass, an edit assembly or a stem clean-up) ____ lead gives written notes ____.
DAY FOUR: client-facing etiquette covered (who speaks to the client, who sends previews, how revision rounds are logged) ____.
DAY FIVE: one revision cycle walked through from request to approval, with hours noted ____ pay terms or freelance rate confirmed in writing ____.
SIGN-OFF: lead ____ studio head or HR ____ joiner ____ date ____.

• The folder map prevents the Monday rebuild described above.
• The naming convention keeps versions findable when a client comes back after four months asking for the old cut.
• The timesheet teaches the habit that shows where the quote lost its margin.
• The calibration line protects colour work from the first frame, since a bad monitor means every grade is later redone.
• The revision walkthrough shows how a client round is logged and approved, not merely endured.

The lead of the team, or the producer who allocates the work, fills the sheet. The joiner reads it on day one and adds comments on day five. HR or the studio head reviews it at the end of the week and files the signed page. For freelancers on a three-day booking, use days one, two and five only.

1. 1

   Photography and wedding studios

   Add the second-shooter handover, card labelling, delivery of selects to the album designer and the rule on who contacts the couple.

2. 2

   Animation and VFX studios

   Add the animatic review slot, shot status colours, rig library access and the render queue etiquette that stops one artist hogging the farm.

3. 3

   Post-production and recording studios

   Add the session template, the patch bay layout, the booth cleaning routine and the sign-in sheet for visiting talent.

4. 4

   Freelancers and trainees

   Reduce the sheet to access, rate, naming rule, first task and payment date, and send it by message the evening before.

Keep the signed page with the joiner's file, along with the freelance rate note. The filing habit is described in our HR documentation process, and the broader sequence of onboarding is set out in the employee onboarding process. Animation teams will find the animation studios onboarding page closest to their own routine.

A shoot overruns, a render crashes overnight or a festival deadline lands on Tuesday. The sheet should bend, not break. Move the safety and access lines forward, defer the revision walkthrough, and write the new date next to it. A pushed line with a date is still a record. A line left blank is a gap.

• Wedding season: second shooters often join on a Friday for a Saturday event. Send the shot list, the venue map and the lighting notes the evening before.
• Delivery crunch: a VFX artist joining in the last fortnight before a shot lock gets only access, naming rule, shot assignment and one reviewer.
• Studio move or new software: add a line for plugin versions, so a joiner does not open a scene built in a newer release and corrupt it.
• Night mixes in a recording studio: add the key-holder, the lock-up routine and the rule on who may stay alone in the booth.

Look at three things. How long before the joiner delivers a first unaided task that passes review without a rework? How many revision rounds does their first client job need compared with the team average? Did they log their hours without being chased? Each answer points to a line on the sheet that needs a better owner or a clearer example.

For the bigger picture, including allocation and revision patterns, see the photography, animation and creative production hub.