Camera, Set, Action: Process Innovation for Film and TV Production1
Chun Ouyang
Kenneth Wang
Arthur ter Hofstede
Marcello La Rosa
Michael Rosemann
Business Process Management Group
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
Katherine Shortland
David Court
Australian Film, Television and Radio School
Sydney, Australia
Abstract: Film and TV productions, a key area in production screen business, comprise of processes with high demand for creativity and flexibility. However, despite the era of fast developing technology, film production processes are carried out in an old fashioned way. This is reflected, for example, by the fact that document processing accompanied by daily shooting activities is still primarily paper-based and coordinating geographically distributed cast and crew is purely manual or at best through emails. There is an opportunity to bring process innovation into this industry, which can streamline and optimise film production processes and thus reduce production costs.
Business Process Management (BPM) is the mainstream contemporary technology-enabled business improvement method. It has proven to provide significant benefits to an organisation in terms of cost savings and responsiveness to changes. In this paper, we apply BPM technology to process innovation for film production. We also share experiences in how to deal with innovation barriers in the film industry. Over the course of the investigation, a prototype called
YAWL4Film was developed on top of a state-of-the-art BPM system. YAWL4Film supports collection and entering of production related data and automatic generation of reports required during film production. The system was deployed in two student productions at the Australian
Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), as well as in a feature film production by
Porchlight, an independent film production company.
Keywords: Business Process Management (BPM), YAWL, YAWL4Film, Screen Business,
Film Production, Production Management, Production Office, Film and TV Scheduling.

1. Introduction
In recent years the field of Business Process Management (BPM) has risen to prominence in terms of its perceived importance by the IT industry. Successful BPM implementations may lead
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This paper is an adaptation and extension of (Ouyang, ter Hofstede, La Rosa, Rosemann,
Shortland, and Court, 2008).
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to significant efficiency gains, may help demonstrate compliance with standard practices and procedures, and may increase adaptiveness to changes in the environment in which a business operates. While there are several definitions of BPM sometimes emphasising different aspects, a core notion is the concept of business process. Examples of business processes include the processing of insurance claims, mortgage applications, and travel requests. BPM is concerned with the lifecycle of these processes, which not only involves their brief and execution, but also their post-execution analysis and subsequent improvement (van der Aalst, ter Hofstede, and
Weske, 2003).
While BPM technology has reached a certain level of maturity in recent years and has great potential to deliver benefits in a wide range of application areas, it is typically applied by organisations with a high adoption level of information technology. As part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI)2, we move well beyond the typical use of BPM and investigate how the application of BPM technology can deliver benefits to the field of screen business.
The screen business comprises all creative and business related aspects and processes of film, television and new media content, from concept to production and finally distribution. A value chain model for the screen business consists of four major phases: development, pre-production, production, and post-production (Clevé, 2006). Whether it is a live action drama with actors, a documentary or animation,