Yamdu

We are an independent film production company based near Vienna in Austria, focused on fiction and non-fiction shows. All our projects have one thing in common: we use Yamdu to organize and share relevant information among all team members. Before Yamdu, information sharing was up to Dropboxes, google drives and e-mails. Every projects had kind of its own organziation. Mostly it was up to the freelancer production coordinators and production managers, who used their own systems. That worked within a project but it was tricky for the company to have all different sources in sight.When we started to use Yamdu we started to set communication-standards for the whole company and all projects. The basic functions we use in all projects are the crew list and the production calendar. The bigger the projects, the more functions we are using. Our fiction projects use nearly all functions. For us it is important to have one place, where all team members can rely on to always get the latest information. And that is Yamdu.

• Yamdu reduces failures that occur when team members are not working with the latest scripts, information, ...
• Yamdu improves the ability to keep track with all projects of the company

We used Yamdu to ingest scripts, build shot lists, schedules, and production plans. We typically used it with short films and music videos, though occasionally used it for corporate video work.

A big problem that Yamdu addressed was having flexible and powerful shot listing and scheduling options. I have used shot list/scheduling applications in the past, but Yamdu had the most extensive set of options and exports available, and adjusting the schedule was always easy. It was particularly useful for me when it came to estimating shoot length and planning out our days.

• We never really got a chance to analyze this. It was certainly helpful in the preproduction/planning side

StudioBinder and Celtx

Yamdu is an ambitious software package developed by a motivated team. The fast support is definitely a plus point and there are many interesting tools integrated into the software. However, the operation can sometimes be a bit cumbersome, and some important tools do not work satisfactorily.

Another criticism is that the mobile app needs to be better developed in order to be used effectively in the field.

Additionally, the price-performance ratio is not good, especially for smaller companies, the software is simply too expensive.

A limitation is also that the ability to export one's own data is limited. This can be very restrictive and impair user-friendliness.

• Positive impact, centralized place with some good tools for film productions
• Negative impact, not that flexible and as expected and strict pricing policy with little flexibility

Celtx and StudioBinder

• Positive impact, better management of the entire production process.
• Negative impact, clearly shows all the flaws in the process that my company has to improve.

Adobe After Effects, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro X