Overview/Roles/Production team
Production team
Where the work actually gets made. This guide covers the Creative Director, Content Operations, videographers, editors, and the social accounts manager — five roles that produce four videos per client, every month, without dropping quality.
Who does what
| Role | Owns | Primary screens |
|---|---|---|
| Creative Director | Content plans, final quality control, contested revisions, urgent-shoot override. Today held by Ayman. | Cycles, Review, Approvals, Exceptions |
| Content Operations | The day-to-day: scheduling, shoot readiness, editing assignment, QC batches, revision classification. Today held by Nej. | My Work, Cycles, Production, Review |
| Videographer | Capture: call sheets, shot lists, checklists, footage organisation, post-shoot reports. | Production, Today's Shoot |
| Editor | The edit: brief, assets, feedback, the two-day service level, quality standards. | My Work, Projects, Review |
| Social accounts manager | Posting and performance. Scheduling executes in Buffer; Slate records confirmation and metrics. | Cycles, Posting, Reports |
The Creative Director
Your role exists so that creative quality has one accountable owner rather than a committee. Four responsibilities sit with you, and two of them are gates that nothing passes without.
Content plan sign-off
You build the plan with the team, sign it off internally, and it then goes to the client for a 48-hour window. Your sign-off is a recorded step, and the plan cannot be sent to the client without it. No shoot can be scheduled before the client approves — this is the gate that stops the agency booking crews against an unapproved idea.
Final quality control approval
Content Operations runs the daily QC pass; you give the final decision. Nothing reaches a client before both are complete. The system will not release a video to a client on QC alone — your approval has to be recorded, which is what makes this a real gate rather than a formality. It is also the last point at which a production error can be caught internally, so it is worth the discipline.
Revision classification disputes
Content Operations classifies feedback as production error, preference change, or new request. When a client disputes that call, or the classifier is unavailable, you make the final decision. It is one tap, and it is recorded.
Urgent-shoot override
The plan-approval gate normally blocks. You hold the authority to override it for genuine emergencies, subject to a code, a reason, and an upload obligation. See below.
The urgent-shoot override, properly understood
Clients sometimes call needing a shoot immediately, and the plan gets agreed on the spot during the shoot. Rather than making the plan rule meaningless for everyone, Slate treats this as an explicit, counted exception. You will find it on the cycle page, as Urgent shoot.
- You present the override code
The code is validated by the server, issued per authorised person, and rotated. Failed attempts are logged; the code itself is never written into any record.
- You give a reason and name the shoot
The override applies to one specific shoot, not to your account generally.
- The override creates a time-boxed session
Roughly 30 to 60 minutes for that action. It is not a general admin mode and cannot be reused elsewhere.
- The plan is uploaded and marked approved
The plan agreed verbally with the client during the shoot is filed against that shoot the same day. It is marked approved on the spot — no review window, because approval genuinely happened in person.
- The cycle is visibly flagged until it is uploaded
Until the plan is filed, the cycle shows as plan pending under urgent override — on the cycle itself, not only in a report. That flag is how the team knows to chase it, and filing the plan clears it.
- The client still reviews the finished video
The final quality gate is never skipped. Skipping the plan window does not mean skipping sign-off on the deliverable.
Content Operations
This is the control tower of production. Your job is ensuring that everything due today is either done or visibly blocked, and that nobody is waiting on something they have not been told about.
Your daily responsibilities
| Area | What you do |
|---|---|
| Shoot readiness | Confirm client confirmation, location, crew, brief, shot list, access, and required assets. Any failure becomes one named blocker rather than a vague worry. |
| Scheduling | Slate provisions the four monthly shoot slots; you give final confirmation. |
| Editing assignment | Assign the edit with its brief, assets, due date, and the two-day service level. |
| Batching QC | Review in daily batches with timestamped comments, rather than reacting one video at a time. |
| Revision classification | Read the client's comments and determine whether each is a production error, a preference change, or a new request. |
| Chasing | Run the automated chase sequences so follow-up is systematic rather than personal effort. |
Classification is your call, and it matters
An automated suggestion may draft a label, but you confirm it. Nothing affects the client's revision count until you have decided — and the three labels are not interchangeable.
| Label | Your test | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Production error | Does the video fail to match the approved brief, or is it technically faulty? | Fix it. It does not use a client revision, and it counts against internal quality. |
| Preference change | Was the original delivered correctly, and has the client changed their mind? | Uses one of the two included revisions. |
| New request | Was this ever in scope? | Routed as a scope or upsell conversation. Never absorbed silently. |
Bulk actions exist for a reason
You are the role most likely to face twenty decisions at once. Slate supports approving or returning multiple QC items, reassigning a group to another editor, sending one reminder batch, and advancing several items at once. Use them instead of working through items one at a time.
On a cycle's QC tab, choose Batch actions and select the videos you want to cover: one action passes the standards across all of them, and another records the Creative Director's sign-off across the batch. Bulk never bypasses a rule — each item still has to satisfy the same gate, and anything blocked is reported back with the reason.
The videographer
Your work is largely on set and largely on a phone. Slate is designed for that: open the day's shoot, see the checklist and shot list, capture, then organise and upload.
-
Open today's shoot
The call sheet gives you location, contact, crew, equipment, and the shot list. It is built to tolerate poor connectivity on location.
-
Shoot against the checklist
The preflight and capture checklist is your safety net. Running it is faster than discovering a missing setup in the edit.
-
Organise the footage per video
This is the step that saves the editor's day. One shoot feeds several videos, so clips are assigned to the specific video they belong to. If a clip serves two videos, it is shared rather than duplicated. If a video was cancelled or added, that is reflected rather than left to be guessed.
-
Mark the handover complete
When footage is organised and uploaded, you mark the handover. The editor then opens their video and sees only its own footage and brief — not a folder of everything.
-
File the post-shoot report
A short structured report. It travels with the footage and feeds the client's post-shoot summary, so you never have to explain the shoot twice.
The editor
You should never have to hunt for anything. When an edit is assigned to you, the brief, the footage, the deadline, the quality standards, and the feedback all arrive together in one place.
What you receive
- One brief for one video.
- Only that video's organised footage.
- The due date, driven by the two-day service level.
- The quality standards to meet before submitting.
- A required thumbnail.
How feedback reaches you
- Timestamped comments against the exact moment in the timeline.
- Consolidated rather than arriving in fragments.
- Each item labelled as production error, preference change, or new request — so you know what is mandatory and what is a change of mind.
- Revision eligibility shown, so you are not guessing whether a request is in scope.
Versions, and why they are never “final-final”
Every version is owned by the system, not by your file naming. V1 becomes V2 becomes V3, and the history is preserved automatically.
| Guarantee | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Version identity is automatic | No one has to invent a filename convention, and no one can lose track of which cut was which. |
| Approved versions are never overwritten | Once approved and locked, a version cannot be silently replaced. Your approved work stays approved. |
| Previous versions remain available | Clients and staff can still view and download earlier versions. Nothing is destroyed by moving forward. |
| Internal and client-facing states are separate | A version in internal QC is not visible to the client. What the client sees is what has genuinely been released to them. |
| Everything is audited | Who did what to which version, and when, is recorded. |
The social accounts manager
Your work begins when the client approves and the version locks. That lock is the signal that a video is good to post.
- Receive the locked item
The post work item arrives with the approved asset, thumbnail, caption, hashtags, target platforms, and target time — inherited from the locked version, so nothing is retyped.
- Schedule in Buffer
Slate does not replace your scheduling tool. Publishing executes in Buffer.
- Confirm the publication in Slate
Record that it went out, with the post link. This is what closes the loop and matches the plan to reality.
- Record performance
Enter views, reach, DMs, and engagement per post. Engagement rate is derived for you.
What the monthly report contains
The report closes the cycle and feeds the next strategy meeting. It is deliberately built around decisions rather than vanity numbers.
Plus the ranked top performers, the least performers, and a structured learnings field answering “what should we do better next round”. That learnings field is what makes the next strategy meeting start from evidence instead of opinion.
Your daily rhythm
Creative Director
- Clear plans awaiting your sign-off.
- Clear the final QC queue — this is your main gate.
- Resolve any contested revision classification.
- Check any exception raised yesterday.
Content Operations
- Start with My Work: overdue, then due today.
- Check shoot readiness for the next 24 hours.
- Confirm edits are assigned and on track within the two-day SLA.
- Run the daily QC batch and classify new feedback.
- Check the client review queue for windows approaching expiry.