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Creative Producer - Special Projects
AppleCupertino, California, United States$161,300 - $308,9005+ years
Apply Apple is where individual imaginations gather together, committing to the values that lead to great work. Every new product we build, service we create, or Apple Store experience we deliver is the result of us making each other's ideas stronger. That happens because every one of us shares a belief that we can make something wonderful and share it with the world, changing lives for the better. It's the diversity of our people and their thinking that inspires the innovation that runs through everything we do. When we bring everybody in, we can do the best work of our lives. Here, you'll do more than join something — you'll add something.
The Special Projects team is seeking a Creative Producer who sits at the intersection of performance craft and machine learning data quality. You will direct on-camera and voice talent to capture richly authentic human performances for AI/ML model training and evaluation, and serve as a lead expert annotator — building the guidelines, taxonomies, and decision trees that empower cross-functional annotation teams to label data consistently and at scale. This is a rare opportunity to bring the precision of a director's eye to one of the most technically demanding production environments in the industry.
Creative Producer is responsible for two equally critical functions: leading performance capture sessions that produce high-quality visual and audio datasets, and developing the annotation frameworks that give those datasets meaning for ML pipelines.
On the production side, you will coach actors and non-actors through structured sessions designed to capture the full spectrum of authentic human expression — facial, gestural, and vocal. On the annotation side, you will serve as the subject-matter expert in emotion and expression labeling, authoring the guidelines, decision trees, and calibration standards that cross-functional annotation teams rely on to label data accurately and at scale.
The ideal candidate brings deep experience in performance direction — film, television, or theater — combined with the analytical rigor to translate nuanced human behavior into structured, repeatable annotation frameworks. You are equally at home on a production floor and in a documentation sprint, and you understand that both are essential to building AI systems that genuinely understand people.
- Performance Direction & Capture Lead structured on-camera and voice recording sessions, directing actors and non-actors to deliver natural, emotionally authentic performances across a defined range of expressions, emotions, and vocal nuances that meet ML dataset specifications.
- Expert Annotation & Guideline Development Serve as the domain expert in expression and emotion labeling — designing annotation guidelines, taxonomies, and decision trees that enable cross-functional annotation teams to label data consistently, accurately, and at scale.
- Quality & Data Standards Establish performance benchmarks and emotional fidelity standards, review and approve recorded materials, and ensure all data collection and labeling processes meet technical, ethical, and consent-based requirements.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration Partner with ML teams, PMO, and data engineers to translate technical dataset requirements into actionable performance direction, bridging the creative and technical domains to support scalable, repeatable capture and annotation pipelines.
- 5+ years of professional directing experience in film, television, theater, or commercial production.
- Demonstrated expertise in coaching actors and non-actors toward authentic emotional and vocal performances.
- Deep fluency in facial expression, micro-expression, body language, vocal modulation, and emotional psychology.
- Experience working in AI training data, motion capture, or structured data collection environments.
- Experience structuring and managing studio recording environments (audio and/or video).
- Strong written communication skills with the ability to produce clear, precise documentation (guidelines, protocols, taxonomies).
- Excellent cross-functional collaboration and interpersonal skills.
- Able to Travel domestically - up to 25%. NY/LA/SCV
- Hands-on background in annotation, labeling QA, or annotation tooling workflows.
- Familiarity with inter-annotator agreement methods and quality calibration practices.
- Background in acting, theater, or vocal/speech performance.
- Experience directing diverse talent across cultures, languages, and performance backgrounds.
- Familiarity with audio engineering fundamentals and camera framing principles.
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