Scriptsana

Scriptsana is one of my favorite projects, because it started as just a proof of concept and is now part of the backbone of one of the most popular and successful HBO shows.

When working on the first season of Totally Biased with W Kamau Bell, our graphics workflow revolved around a shared Google document with a list of items in it. Every new script draft required our producer to go line by line and reconcile our list of graphics with the current script, mark graphics as cut, and add new graphics.

So much wasted effort, and even worse, the work on our producer's end scaled exponentially. I hated watching it.

When we were picked up for season 2 and our order upped to 5x a week, I investigated project management systems to tame our department. Asana seemed to have the healthiest API and so that night I wrote a PHP prototype that would accept an uploaded script, match with a corresponding Asana project (or make a new one), and reconcile the project's tasks to be a current to-do list of graphics in the script. Any graphics not in the latest draft would be cut from Asana; any new ones found would be added. 

This allowed the producer to just take new drafts from the writing staff, chuck them at the system, assign new graphics to one of the designers, and get on with their day. The designers were able to leverage all of the project management features of Asana — uploading proofs, assigning sub-tasks to interns, and being able to keep on top of their assignments. It was an immediate success.

After Totally Biased was cancelled, one of the designers moved over to Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, where he quickly advised their production staff to adopt what I now call Scriptsana. I was brought in to develop the concept more fully and was able to build a standalone site for their use. Scriptsana and Asana has been the backbone of Last Week Tonight's graphics department for three seasons now, and the department still has nothing but glowing praise for its ease of use.