Jay Woodard's 10-App Creative Stack

Jay Woodard is a creative director working at the intersection of film, advertising, and branded content. Not the kind who just approves other people's work. The kind who's in the trenches from concept development through final color grading, managing every phase of creative production.

His portfolio spans commercial campaigns for major brands, short films that have screened at festivals, and creative strategy work where the deliverable is the idea itself. At any given time, he's juggling 3-5 active projects in different stages. One in concept development. Another in pre-production. Two shooting. One in post.

The logistics are insane. Coordinating writers, designers, directors, DPs, editors, colorists, sound designers, and producers. Managing client feedback loops. Tracking budgets. Maintaining visual references. Developing scripts. All while the creative vision stays coherent from pitch to delivery.

The Jay Woodard tools reflect this complexity. Notion for project management. Milanote for visual development. Final Draft for scripts. ShotDeck for cinematography references. ChatGPT for creative exploration. Each app handles a specific layer of the creative process without stepping on the others.

Everything below comes from his public portfolio, interviews about his process, and behind-the-scenes looks at how he actually manages creative production. This isn't theoretical. It's the real stack coordinating multiple six-figure projects simultaneously.

When it comes to Jay Woodard productivity apps, Notion is the master database. Each campaign gets its own workspace. Timelines showing production milestones. Deliverable tracking. Team member directories with roles and contact info. Reference material libraries. Client feedback organized by revision round.

Production schedules live here too. Pre-production checklists. Shoot day rundowns. Post-production workflows. When you're coordinating 30 people across a 6-week timeline, the shared visibility prevents constant "what's the status?" questions.

He templates the structure. New project spins up from a master template with all the databases and views pre-configured. Saves hours of setup every time. Just duplicate, rename, and start filling in project-specific details.

Google Sheets handles the financial layer. Budget tracking, equipment rental costs, crew day rates. Shared with producers and clients for real-time cost visibility. Notion can do tables, but Sheets is better for complex formulas and number crunching when budgets get into six figures.

Apple Notes is the quick capture tool. Ideas during client meetings. Feedback on set. Random creative thoughts. Syncs across phone, laptop, iPad instantly. Later gets organized into proper Notion pages when there's time to structure it properly.

Milanote is where visual concepts come together in the Jay Woodard tech stack. Mood boards for every project. Reference images pulled from films, photography, art. Color palettes. Typography samples. Visual inspiration organized spatially instead of in lists.

The boards get shared with designers and directors during early creative development. Instead of verbally describing "moody, cinematic, warm tones with high contrast," he just shares the Milanote board showing exactly what that means visually. Saves weeks of misaligned expectations.

Clients see these boards too. Much easier to get approval on a visual direction when they can see 20 reference images showing the aesthetic versus reading a creative brief. The spatial layout helps communicate relationships between different visual elements.

ShotDeck is the secret weapon for cinematography references. When pitching visual styles to directors and DPs, he pulls specific film frames showing exactly the lighting, composition, and color treatment desired. Searchable by mood, color, lighting setup, camera angle.

Instead of saying "I want it to look like a Wes Anderson film," he pulls 10 specific shots from ShotDeck showing the symmetrical framing, pastel color palette, and centered compositions. The DP knows exactly what to aim for on shoot day.

Wix hosts his portfolio. Built it once in 2021 using templates. Updates quarterly with new projects. Not the fanciest custom website, but clients and potential collaborators reference it constantly during pitches. Having work easily accessible online matters more than perfect custom design.

Final Draft handles all scriptwriting for branded content and short films. Industry standard formatting means production teams can immediately read and understand the script without translation. Revision tracking shows exactly what changed between client feedback rounds.

When clients request script changes, he uses the revision mode to highlight edits. The producer sees new dialogue in blue. The director sees cut scenes marked clearly. Prevents confusion about which version everyone's working from.

Tried writing scripts in Google Docs. The formatting was a nightmare. Final Draft's automatic scene numbering, character tracking, and production reports save hours of manual work every project.

ChatGPT entered the Jay Woodard tools around early 2023. Not for writing full scripts (that's still human work). For creative brainstorming during initial concept development. Generates alternative angles. Helps refine messaging. Suggests visual metaphors.

Example workflow: Client brief comes in for a tech product launch. He feeds ChatGPT the product details and asks for 20 different narrative approaches. Gets back everything from documentary-style to metaphorical storytelling to character-driven emotional arcs. Picks 3-4 interesting directions to develop further with the team.

This speeds up the exploration phase significantly. Instead of the creative team spending 2 days brainstorming to get 5 solid concepts, ChatGPT generates 20 starting points in 10 minutes. Still requires human judgment to identify what's actually good, but the raw material generation is way faster.

Zoom replaced in-person meetings almost entirely since 2020. Client presentations, creative reviews, rough cut feedback sessions. Shares screen to walk through concepts, treatments, and edits. Records everything so team members who couldn't attend can catch up.

The recording feature is clutch. Client gives feedback on 50 different aspects of a rough cut. Instead of frantically taking notes, the editor watches the recording later and implements changes systematically. Nothing gets missed or misremembered.

Gmail manages the email chaos with an extensive label system. Active projects each get a label. Archived work filed separately. Invoicing and vendor communications organized. Inbox zero approach with everything filed or actioned within 24 hours.

Filters auto-sort incoming mail. Client emails get labeled by project automatically based on subject line keywords. Vendor invoices tagged for accounting. Production updates flagged as high priority. The automation prevents the inbox becoming an unsearchable mess when managing 5 projects.