This article breaks down a fun workflow using Griptape.

Intro​

It was during my first ever meeting with the machine learning working group at the Academy Software Foundation that I met Jason Schleifer, Chief Creative Officer at Griptape and a Wētā FX alum. He was there to showcase Griptape and breakdown the progress they had made in what was described as the connective tissue for AI in modern day VFX. Fast forward a year and The Foundry purchased Griptape to signal their focus on tomorrow's compositing ecosystem. It's exciting to see, and I've been planning a chance to meaningfully test out the project for some time.

What is Griptape?​

Griptape is a few things. First and foremost it's an AI orchestration tool that allows you to set up multiple agents using a graphical node based interface. With The Foundry's acquisition it's becoming increasingly integrated into the Nuke Family suite of tools. It's also a framework, meaning Griptape is an open-source, Python-based library for building AI applications — crucially it's the layer underneath the node UI you see when you set up the installable application. The UI, called Griptape Nodes, is the visual front-end; the framework is the code-level foundation that the same workflows compile down to (or can be authored in directly). It's a robust, highly extensible Python architecture designed for scale, workflow longevity, and integration with existing infrastructure.

This post is an update on the work on Dailies Notes Assistant, and a reflection on my brother's article: Quality in the Age of Slop.

My brother Sinclair recently wrote an article that's been getting some traction on the internet. Yes, he blogs too, or rather, I blog too, he was very much first. If you're familiar with Hank and John Green from the vlog brothers, well, we've turned into the blog brothers! In his post, he explores the idea of 'Quality' from the book Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) and how it relates to programming in the age of AI. Robert Pirsig, in his book, refuses to really define what he means by Quality, but eventually distinguishes between:

Romantic Quality — the immediate, felt, aesthetic surface of things. The beauty you see at a glance. How something feels.

Classic Quality — the underlying structure, function, and reason. How something works.

Reading Sinclair's article, I couldn't help but think about my work with the Academy Software Foundation sandbox project Dailies Notes Assistant, and specifically, what Classic Quality looks like in dailies note taking.

This post is about a simple yet foundational equation for rendering 3D objects on a computer screen.

Working in VFX, I have always been curious about the math behind the work we do. I am far removed from any of the heavy lifting on that front, but have wanted to understand, at least at a high level, how this stuff works.

The other day I came across an interesting youtube video. The video outlined how to put together a simple HTML page and some javascript to generate 3D images. The intro explained an elegant and super important equation for mapping the points of 3D objects to a 2D surface. The equation looks like this:

x' = x/z
y' = y/z

This post is a little less technical than what I've been writing mostly. It's about my time working show-side in VFX and the lessons I learned.

Background​

In 2026, I spent 6 months working on a large scale film production involving the biggest vendors in the industry. I learned a huge amount and I'm excited to share what I can. It was challenging at first to switch gears from my previous, more technical role. Honestly, I only really got good at this job about 5 months and 29 days in, but this experience gave me a valuable perspective that I'm hoping to share here.

1. Filemaker Pro 🗃️ - Production tracking... if you're up for the challenge.
2. BBEdit 📝 - The veteran Mac text editor. I use this for its super unique option-click feature that lets you select segments of text vertically.
3. Cinesync 🔄 - Remote review tool for VFX and post-production.
4. Clearview Flex 🔻 - Secure remote video playback and streaming tool for reviewing film and VFX content at a distance.
5. Griptape 🩹 - Python framework for building AI workflows, recently acquired by The Foundry.
6. Docker 🐳 - Containerizing and solving the age old "works on my machine" discussion.
7. Figma 🎨 - Collaborative design tool I've been using to wireframe ideas for Dailies Notes Assistant and mapping out production workflow diagrams.
8. promptfoo 🥋 - Advanced open source LLM prompt testing that I'm using to benchmark prompts for an Academy Software Foundation project.
9. Bluesky 🦋 - Social media for the conscientious that let me leave Meta in 2026.
10. Hugo 🅷 - Markdown native, static site generator that I use for The Apple Box Collection.

This post is about a common gotcha when transcoding QuickTime containers for review, and how I fixed it this one time.

Where people trip up​

Here's a scenario that will be familiar to anyone who's ever used QuickTime Player for editorial or client review: you render a DNxHD file. Same source, same codec, same colorspace. You open it up and it looks noticeably different; maybe lifted, maybe with a gamma shift, maybe slightly desaturated. You bring it into Nuke or something similar, with no color transforms applied, read as raw data, and it's pixel-for-pixel what you were looking at before. So what's going on?

The answer, more often than not, lives in the QuickTime container's color metadata, specifically the NCLC atom.

This post covers show-side production tracking in the visual effects industry - looking specifically at tools used to maintain and communicate a database of work on film and television projects. I'm including a simple python script that I set up to quickly A/B dailies against previous versions in Nuke.

I've worked for a studio, I've worked for a vendor, but for the longest time, show-side work has been this big mystery to me. I always figured it was vastly different to anything I'd done before. I've been working show-side on a large project for the last couple months; it's early days but I've learned a few things, so here goes.

In this post, I showcase a fun integration with Pro-Tools and take a look at what makes MASV a great tool for large file sending.

Meet MASV​

MASV is a cloud-native Managed File Transfer service with a long list of multi-industry use-cases. The idea is, rather than trying to manage your own transfer setup, you give that responsibility to MASV who has built out the infrastructure to safely and speedily transfer your files. It's important to note, most MFT companies are not reinventing protocols, they're wrapping them with security and reliability enhancements, a job that would be a headache to do in-house. MASV's specific approach is to provide users with a store and forward model, primarily utilizing Amazon Web Services as their backbone. What this means is users have the flexibility to upload their files, and grab them whenever they want, including while they're still uploading: see MASV Express. With this model, the transfer has a middle man, that for most intents and purposes, is secure and compliant, but that's a consideration some users have to make.

This post covers pretty senior level work volunteered by some serious veterans in the industry - so with that in mind, I am adding to the project humbly with the perspective I've gained as a previous coordinator. I'm hoping to add that perspective here to help build a useful LLM assisted note-taking process.

What is 'DNA' so far?​

'DNA' stands for Dailies Notes Assistant. It's a new open-source project in early development by folks contributing at the Academy Software Foundation. The idea behind the project is to scope out the usefulness of integrating LLM transcriptions with the VFX note-taking process. A heavy emphasis on utility rather than novelty is at the center of the project — as well as a thoughtfulness about adding to rather than taking away from the work of production professionals.

This post is a review of Resilio Active Everywhere and their Slipstream features. This post also outlines a Resilio ShotGrid integration using a webhooks workflow. Here's the demo video and GitHub repository for that. This post is not sponsored.

Introduction​

For a couple years now, I've been wondering about the best setups for data distribution in Visual Effects. How do you get shots to clients? How do you make it easy for artists, working from a million different places, to access data and plates? In 2024, I wrote about a new company called Suite Studios, and recently in August, I revisited the subject, writing about the whole landscape for file streaming and data-distribution. At Baked Studios, I put together a workflow that incorporated file streaming, and it worked for the most part, but there was always some parameter, some feature that didn't work perfectly for us. It seemed impossible to find a platform that could tick every box.

It's September 2025 now, and I think I've found the workflow I was looking for.