Case Study: The Undeclared War
By The ImageApprovals Team ·
“Image Approvals managed our stills approvals for ‘The Undeclared War’ as well as series 2 and 3 of ‘All Creatures Great and Small.’ They are a joy to work with and their software is so user friendly, both for talent and producers/PR folks. I’ve used several other platforms in the past but this is far and away my favorite. Highly recommended!”
— Rhys Kimmitt, Director of Production at Playground Entertainment ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Production
The Undeclared War is a Channel 4 drama series produced by Playground Entertainment. The production generated over 20,000 stills across 31 days of photography — unit images and gallery shots submitted by multiple photographers on a day-by-day basis. Playground Entertainment engaged ImageApprovals to take the raw, disorganised delivery and turn it into a fully curated, tagged, and approved archive, ready to hand back to the post-production team.
Key Project Wins
- ~10,000 unit and gallery images selected from a 20,000-image raw delivery and organised across 18 days of photography, with 8 cast members holding approval rights managed on the ImageApprovals platform.
- Images organised, tagged, and live for talent to approve within 4 working days of ImageApprovals receiving the files.
- Cast approvals completed and final delivery made within another 4 working days of cast sign-off — with stills organised into killed, approved, and approved-selects folders.
The Challenge
With over 20,000 images submitted by the photographers in a disorganised way — full of duplicates and confusing file names — the production team had no clear path forward. The challenge was twofold: untangling the volume, and then managing approvals in a way that didn’t risk breaching actor contracts through errors.
The actors could not reasonably review all 20,000 images, so the team needed a partner to identify and curate only the best, usable stills before presenting them for approval. Adding to the complexity, images had been submitted on a daily basis, meaning each file also had to be identified by episode and organised accordingly.
Our Solution
ImageApprovals handled every stage from ingest to organised delivery:
- Duplicate drive and folder structure — we created a duplicate of the original hard drive to work from, then organised all unit and gallery images into clear, easy-to-navigate folder structures without disturbing the master files.
- Unique file renaming — every image was renamed to contain unique, descriptive information so post-production and distributors could quickly identify and locate exactly what they needed.
- Platform upload and cast accounts — the curated set was tagged and uploaded to the ImageApprovals platform. We created individual accounts for each cast member and prepared Welcome Packs — containing login details and a quick user guide — for production to forward on. This meant the production team received no support requests throughout the approval process.
- Production Account for selects — we provided a Production Account to key stakeholders so they could mark their selects simultaneously while cast completed their approvals.
- Organised final delivery — once all cast had completed their approvals, we organised the full set into killed, approved, and approved-selects folders and forwarded everything to the show’s post-production supervisor, along with copies of the kill reports.
Project Timeline
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 29th September | Original images received |
| 6th October | All images organised and live for cast to approve |
| 8th November | All cast approvals completed |
| 15th November | Stills drive delivered to the post-production team |
From receipt to final delivery in under seven weeks — with a four-working-day turnaround from receiving the files to having 10,000 images live for talent review, and a further four working days from sign-off to structured delivery.
What This Means for Your Production
Disorganised file deliveries, high image volumes, and multiple cast with approval rights are exactly the conditions the ImageApprovals platform is designed for. If your production needs the same end-to-end support — from curation and tagging through to organised delivery and audit trails — get in touch for a no-obligation quote or request a demo to see how the platform works.