I always have conversations with friends and strangers. One of the questions that always seem to arise is “What is a Technial Director?”. I am sure you may be asking yourself the same question and to be honest, there is a lot of generality when looking at the name Technical Director. Now I am speaking not as a veteran in the industry but merely a student and recent TD which may help people better understand what a Technical Director is.
First, you may hear this term and immediately put it up in the role of a “director”. Though the status of a TD may not be quite up there in the industry ladder, the idea is fairly similar. Just as a director makes decisions and chooses the paths the film decides to take, a TD’s role involves making decisions and choosing the path of the technical workflow. Now, this role can vary to different specifications. I will talk mainly about the TD aspect in the pipeline development as I have most knowledge in this area.
As a friend and co-worker once said, a TD’s role is to make the lives of everyone else in the production easier. Just as technology improves the workflow of our lives, so must our roles as TDs improve the workflow of the studio. Now a question that make come up is how do we improve the workflow? There are many things that are involved to improving the workflow of the artist, the studio, and ourselves as TDs.
I will talk in my future posts about things that I have learend that I either wished I learned earlier or know will be useful in any case for any aspiring TDs out there looking to fulfill their dream and create.
If you have any questions, follow and ping me on Twitter- I’m twitter.