High quality thin films (100 nm to several 1000 nm) of many complex material systems such as the high temperature superconductor YBCO, have been deposited using pulsed laser ablation. Long lengths of high quality YBCO on metallic conductors are needed to meet industrial and government requirements. Although, pulsed laser deposition (PLD) grows the best YBCO films on meter lengths of metallic conductors, it has not been proven to be a consistent manufacturing process. PLD is simple in concept but has quite complicated plume and growth dynamics which are not well understood. In this study we use in-situ time-resolved mesurements of collision-driven plume emissions to characterize critical deposition parameters and to develop a computational model which includes these dynamics in a reacting PLD plume.