Case Study: Chief of Station
By The ImageApprovals Team ·
“I’ve been producing for many years and it’s always a great pleasure to find a vendor who brings excellence to your project. This group is COMPETENT and ON IT from the moment they are engaged until they deliver in spades. One less hassle in the cornucopia of them in the delivery process. You won’t find a better company to handle your cast approvals. Really great!!!”
— Steve Jones, Producer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Production
Chief of Station is a feature film that generated approximately 3,000 stills during production. The producing team needed an end-to-end talent approvals solution — from raw file handling and curation through to cast approvals and organised delivery — on a tight budget and an even tighter deadline.
ImageApprovals was engaged to manage the complete workflow: file organisation, expert curation, talent approvals on the ImageApprovals platform, producer selects, and a fully reported final delivery.
Key Project Results
- Organised approximately 3,000 stills into easy-to-navigate folders with filenames that facilitate easy search and identification.
- Curated a manageable working set of the best shots for cast to approve — resulting in an overall cast approval rate of 86%.
- All cast approvals completed and images delivered back to the client within 23 working days of receiving the files.
- Images returned to the client organised into Killed and Approved folders for both RAW and JPG formats, along with a complete set of reports.
Their Challenge
The producing team came to us with a set of challenges that are common on independent and mid-budget productions:
- Budget and turnaround pressure. They needed an affordable stills approvals solution with a quick turnaround to meet their image delivery requirements before the film’s deadline.
- Volume without waste. With 2,820 stills in hand, they did not want to waste the time of their production team — or, more importantly, the time of their A-list cast — by sending out thousands of unfiltered shots that may not be worth approving.
- RAW file access. The production only had a small number of low-resolution JPG selects from the photographer alongside the RAW files, which they could not open. Thousands of images were effectively invisible to them without conversion.
- Producer selects. Beyond talent approvals, the producing team needed to identify and extract 150 key images to be delivered as the main image set for use in press and marketing.
Our Solution
Custom Pricing
To meet the client’s budgetary requirements, we developed a custom solution that provided the best possible pricing for the scope of the project.
RAW File Conversion
We created high-resolution JPGs from all RAW source files so that the production team could access, review, and deliver everything they needed without requiring specialist software or additional storage.
Expert Curation
Before any image went out for talent approval, our team performed a first-pass curation of the full 3,000-image set — removing duplicates, out-of-focus shots, unnecessary frames, unflattering images, and anything otherwise unusable.
This reduced the full set to a curated working selection of 923 images, ensuring:
- Full scene coverage from multiple angles
- Shots covering all key cast members
- Captivating behind-the-scenes images
- Supporting material such as plates and prop details
Presenting only the strongest images to cast delivered a direct result: 798 images — 86% of the curated set — were approved for use.
Approvals Platform
Cast accessed their images through the ImageApprovals platform, with each member reviewing only the curated set relevant to them. No email chains or spreadsheet tracking — a clean, intuitive interface that keeps things moving.
Once cast approvals were locked in, producers logged in to view the approved set and mark their selects — the 150 key images earmarked for delivery as the primary press and marketing package.
Organised Delivery
Final delivery was made with everything clearly organised:
- Killed and Approved folders for both RAW and JPG formats
- An Approved Selects folder for the producer-marked key images
- A complete set of reports logging which images were killed, approved, or marked as a select
Nothing left the project unaccounted for.
Project Timeline
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| July 21st | Original images received |
| July 31st | All images organised and online, ready for cast to approve |
| August 22nd | Approvals complete; organised images delivered to post-production team |
From receipt to final delivery in under five weeks — covering file conversion, organisation, expert curation, approvals management, and reporting in a single, managed workflow.
What the Producer Said
Steve Jones gave the project five stars and described the team as “COMPETENT and ON IT from the moment they are engaged until they deliver in spades.” He specifically highlighted the delivery process and confirmed he would not find a better company to handle cast approvals.
Does your production have cast with stills approval rights? The ImageApprovals platform is built for exactly this: high-volume stills, A-list talent with approval rights, tight timelines, and distributor-grade delivery. Contact us for a no-obligation quote or learn how the platform works.