About
I work on how pictures get made, and how they reach your screen.
I build the systems a production runs on. I am responsible for the picture those systems produce.
Those systems are the path a movie, show, or game takes from the people who make it to the people who watch it. At the front, moving work between teams and getting shots rendered. At the back, preparing the finished picture and sending it out. In the middle, the computers and graphics processors everything runs on.
For five years the job was inventing how films get made and released. Before and after that I worked global premieres, game launches, music releases, and the first live broadcast on a streaming platform.
The work
Production, delivery, and launches
Making the picture
Five years inventing the systems studios use to make and release films — how files move between tools, how shots get rendered, and how work travels between departments, buildings, and outside companies.
Getting it to your screen
Taking finished video in, turning it into files a player can stream, and designing how a global streaming service stores it and sends it out.
Premieres and launches
Planning for the crowd, testing before the doors open, and running the response when something breaks — for global premieres, game launches, music releases, and live broadcasts.
AI and graphics processors
Using graphics processors to train software and run it: pulling details from an old catalog, checking pictures for mistakes, restoring and improving footage, and cleaning noise out of rendered frames.
Tools
From the workstation to the screen
Production
How a shot or file moves from one department to the next. MaterialX, OTIO, production tracking, and Aspera / Signiant are the files and the pipeline between those systems.
Platform & AI
Graphics-processor work on the picture, and the computers that production, delivery, and launches run on.
Delivery & playback
How a finished film becomes a stream, and stays on screen when everyone shows up at once. A finished Dolby Vision or Atmos master can be carried through the package.
Industry references
What the credits don't show
“Shawn Hoffman is kind, capable, and relentlessly optimistic. During my time at Crunchyroll I was consistently impressed by his candid leadership and technical acumen. At Crunchyroll he partnered with development teams early to build reliable, robust, and fully automated services. As a pod (team) leader he actively mentored junior engineers and brought them along to learn as he worked. Most notably, Shawn was the…”
“Shawn and I have worked together for the past 8 months on Crunchyroll's Video Engineering team. We were partnered together while building out Crunchyroll's next generation video ingestion pipeline. After having worked with Shawn on multiple projects, I can say that he has been an extremely valuable member of our team. As a developer, he's the type of person I look for when partnering with SRE and Platform…”
All recommendations were written by their authors on my LinkedIn profile.
FAQ