TillyGen and WeTransfer

What this is about

WeTransfer does one thing: it moves files to people via a link that works without an account and expires after a set time. In a production workflow that makes it the delivery vehicle for milestones — the planning package after kickoff, the revised schedule after the client call, the storyboard with full-resolution frames that would choke a mail server. TillyGen produces those documents as PDF; WeTransfer carries them to recipients who should receive a package, not access to your project. The expiry date is a feature: it forces the question of where the file lives permanently.

An integration is good when nobody talks about it any more: the data is where it is needed and nobody exports anything.

What runs differently here

In planning terms, that means:

• One transfer per milestone — kickoff package, plan v2, final pre-shoot state — so the mail archive doubles as a delivery log
• The recipient needs no account and no onboarding, which is why this route wins with legal departments and one-time contacts
• Download notifications show whether the client actually opened the package before the call where they discuss it
• The transfer link expires; the TillyGen share link stays the pointer to the current plan state

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Export the milestone package from TillyGen: schedule, shot list, storyboard and call sheet as PDF, named with project and version so files stay identifiable after download.
2. Bundle the PDFs into a single transfer per recipient group — the client gets the approval set, the agency gets the full package.
3. Write the version and the reply-by date into the transfer message, so the recipient knows what they are looking at and until when feedback counts.
4. Watch the download notification; if the package sits unopened two days before the review call, follow up before the call instead of during it.
5. When the plan changes, send a fresh transfer with a higher version number and state explicitly that it replaces the previous one.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• The client saved v1 locally, the link to v3 expired unopened — the shoot gets discussed on a plan that is two versions old
• Using WeTransfer as an archive: transfers vanish on schedule, and with them the only copy of what was sent
• Three parallel transfers in one week with no versioning in the message — the recipient cannot tell which package is binding

With TillyGen

WeTransfer moves snapshots; TillyGen keeps the plan that produced them. If a recipient ever asks which version is current, the answer is not a transfer link — it is a fresh export from the plan.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.