A studio, end to end
The whole thing as one worked example: a small agency sets itself up, takes on a customer, and gets a cut approved, with what each person can see at every step.
The cast
Meridian Pictures is a small production outfit. Chai & Co is a beverage brand they make a vertical serial for. Nobody in this story does anything unusual.
| Person | Seat | Job |
|---|---|---|
| Asha | owner | Runs Meridian. Invites people, owns the accounts, signs off on what goes out |
| Ravi | operator | Produces the episodes, cuts them, submits them, works the client's notes |
| Devika | reviewer | Looks at everything before it goes out; doesn't run productions |
| Priya | client | Marketing lead at Chai & Co. The person who says yes |
| Arjun | client | Priya's colleague. Invited, hasn't accepted yet |
Setting up
1. The licence is already the studio
Asha has a pod licence: it's the key she pasted in when Meridian started using pod. That key is Meridian's studio on the hub: five studio seats, two client seats, and one person in it, her.
2. Two invites
She invites Ravi as an operator and Devika as a reviewer. Each invite gives her a one-time link, which she sends them herself, in the chat she already uses. They set their own passwords and land on the hub. Three of five studio seats are now taken; the client pool is untouched.
Ravi Signs in and sees every episode Meridian has ever pushed, including the ones he had nothing to do with. That's intended.
Devika The same view. She can watch and comment on anything; she just doesn't produce.
3. The Chai & Co project
Asha creates a project: slug chai-serial, name "Chai Serial — Season 1", client label "Chai & Co". Everything Meridian makes for this customer will be filed under it.
4. Assignments
She adds Ravi to the project, and no publishing grant yet. Then she invites Priya as a client seat and adds her to chai-serial, and invites her colleague Arjun as the second client seat. Arjun hasn't opened his link yet, so the seat line reads "client seats 2 of 2": a pending invite holds its chair.
Priya Signs in at the portal and sees one project, called Chai Serial, with nothing in it. Correct: nothing has been surfaced. She cannot see Meridian's other work, who else Meridian makes films for, or that Meridian employs anybody but the person who wrote to her.
Devika Can see the Chai Serial project and its episodes like any colleague. She isn't assigned, so it isn't her job, but nothing is hidden from her.
Making the film
5. Ravi produces the episode
On his own laptop, exactly as always: produce "the first pour" --duration 30 --aspect 9:16, through the gates, past the cost gate, to a finished cut. Nothing about the studio changes how a film gets made.
6. Ravi pushes it under the project
❯ pod push ep-001-the-first-pour --project chai-serial --media
(filed under Chai Serial — later pushes remember it)Meridian The episode appears on the hub with its script, decisions, state and footage. Devika can open it and watch what Ravi shot.
Priya Sees an episode name and a status appear in her project. No video. Pushing is not showing.
7. Ravi submits a cut
He picks the 30-second cut and submits it with a note: "first cut for Chai & Co" — one command, pod push ep-001-the-first-pour --submit --note "first cut for Chai & Co". What goes up for review is the light 540p review copy; the master's fingerprint rides with it, so whatever Priya approves names the delivery file too.
Asha "Pending your approval" at the top of her hub: the episode, the exact file, submitted by Ravi, with the time and his note, playable right there.
Priya Nothing at all. She can't tell a submission happened, or that it's sitting with Asha.
8. Asha rejects it
The logo lands two frames late over the end card. She presses Reject and says exactly that. The system won't take a rejection with an empty note, which is the right rule: sending work back with nothing to fix just costs a day.
Ravi The rejection and the note, on the episode. He knows exactly what to fix.
Priya Still nothing. Rejections never leave the studio. The customer is not shown the studio arguing with itself.
9. Ravi fixes it and resubmits
Two minutes in the edit, a fresh push, submit again. Same gate, no shortcuts.
10. Asha publishes it, then sends it
She watches, presses Publish to client, and that click is the moment the cut becomes visible to the customer. A card appears underneath with Priya's review link on it: copy, or "Send on WhatsApp". She taps the second one, picks the Chai & Co thread, and the message goes out from her own phone with the link in it. Pod sent nothing. It just made the thing she was going to send worth tapping.
Priya A message in the chat she already uses. She taps it on the train, and the cut plays, with no password, no app, and no "reset your password" detour. The page tells her it was made for her, that it is not a sign-in, that this is the first cut of this episode sent to her and that Asha published it. Approve, request changes and a box for a note are right under the video.
Meridian The episode moves to the strip marked "awaiting client", with who published it and when on its record. The link Asha sent is good for a week, works only for Priya's seat, and opens nothing in Meridian but that one cut. If Asha loses the card, Send link hands it back.
The notes round
11. Priya requests changes
She likes it, with one problem: the cup is the old packaging. She pauses on the shot, taps + note at 0:22, writes it down, and then requests changes from the same page without going anywhere.
Ravi The change request, and the episode back with his crew. Her timecoded note has landed on shot 7, the shot that was on screen at 22 seconds, and it's waiting on the request board. Nothing has started: no generation ran, no credits moved. He reads it from the terminal with pod notes ep-001-the-first-pour, and sees the same note stamped on the shot's card in his own Studio.
Asha The same, and that the episode is back with her crew.
12. Ravi works the list
He re-shoots shot 7 with the current packaging in the reference: a targeted redo, at the price of one shot, not a film. Then he marks the note done, saying what he did, because "dealt with it" isn't something the system will accept.
13. Asha grants the publishing grant
Ravi has now run two rounds of this customer's notes cleanly. Asha ticks can publish against his name on chai-serial, on that project only. On any other account he still lands in her queue.
14. Ravi publishes directly
He submits the new cut, and because he holds the grant on this project, it surfaces on submission. The fresh link comes back on the same command and he sends it himself, in the same thread as the last one. Asha sees that it happened.
Priya The new cut, that evening rather than the next morning, as a second link in the same chat. Tuesday's link no longer opens anything, because this cut replaced it. She can't tell whether it was published by Asha or by Ravi under a grant, and it doesn't affect her either way.
Asha Both events on the record: Ravi submitted at 18:40, and it surfaced at 18:40 under his standing authorization. Nothing about the direct publish is quieter than a queued one. Had he wanted to release Devika's cut instead of his own, the grant would not have covered it: that stays Asha's call.
15. Priya approves
She watches shot 7, the packaging is right, and she approves with one tap, still without signing in to anything. The approval is written against the exact video she watched, not against a filename that could later hold something else, and it carries precisely the authority it would have if she'd typed a password first.
What's left behind
The episode's record now reads, in order and unalterably: Ravi pushed it, Ravi submitted, Asha rejected with a note, Ravi resubmitted, Asha published it, Priya requested changes and left a note at 0:22, Ravi closed it off with what he did, Ravi published the next cut under his grant, Priya approved cut e930… from the link, which the record notes beside the approval rather than instead of it.
Nobody wrote that down. Nobody had to be trusted to write it down accurately. And in March, when someone asks which version Chai & Co actually signed off, the answer is a hash rather than a memory. That is the whole reason to build any of this. See the decision record.
What it cost them, in effort
Worth totalling up, because the honest measure of a system like this is how much of it you have to think about:
- Asha, once at the start: two invites, one project, one assignment, two client invites, and sending four links by hand.
- Ravi, once per episode: one flag on one push.
- Ravi, per round: submit, read the notes, close them off, submit again, and send the link, which is one tap on the card that publishing hands him.
- Priya: tap, watch, click. She signed in once, on the day she was invited.
- Everyone else: nothing.
That's the target. If your studio finds a step here that costs more than that in practice, that's exactly the sort of thing worth telling us: feedback inside the studio, or thebrainpuddle@gmail.com.