How can you become more efficient on your productions? Making projects is already hard enough. What if there were a program to help with script breakdowns, buying props, and more?
That's where Filmustage comes in.
Learn directly from Filmustage CEO and co-founder, Egor Dubrovsky
We are all living in the world of constant technological race. I prefer to do things with my own hands, but there's no way to have five or six hands to finish all my tasks before the deadline. It's where new technology came for help and became as natural as a cup of coffee you take every morning.
After years of being on the cutting edge of innovations, I can say with confidence you have no need to change or get over yourself to use new tools as it becomes so convenient that sometimes even seamlessly integrate into your processes without extra efforts from your side.
That was the main aim of Filmustage—build a highly technological software solution based on the needs of filmmakers, grow it and adjust it in line with the time and challenges our customers face, make it easy and intuitive, and be compatible with other industry flagships.
How was the product born?
Our company was born in 2020. It was founded by me and two more enthusiastic and very talented professionals. We have known each other since university. Andrei Karalkou and Ruslan Khamidullin have a strong technical background and shared my passion to change the world. So when the idea of the product came to my mind they were glad to support it and involved a lot of effort to make it live.
I was working in the film industry for more than nine years and was a co-founder of my own production studio Nota Kitchen, so I understand how the film industry works. I even had a chance to work for Netflix for some time.
So by that time our team had already accumulated significant experience working on different projects in such companies as Uber, TikTok, Wargaming, EPAM Systems, the Future Group AS, and the United Nations. Some of them were for the film industry and combined virtual reality and real shooting. So we had all the cards in our hands.
About the product itself
The first version of the product was launched in 2020. Since then it has been evaluated significantly. We’ve already added more than 30 different features and have many more fascinating launches in the near future.
Everything started with an AI-powered automatic script breakdown. We strongly believe that NLP technology continues to change the world in a good sense, helping people to avoid routine work, decreasing stress rates, making things eco-friendly, avoiding pandemic risks, and helping professionals to stay focused on what is important.
From the very beginning, there was a lot of skepticism from the old-school filmmakers who could not even imagine that AI technology can be a part of their lives, but today with thousands of clients of all ages on board we continue to change the world for the better, persuading people that we can change the way they work and set up new industry standards. Today our neural network accuracy rate is up to 86% depending on the category, and you get your script breakdown in just a few minutes.
We support English script breakdown only, but we plan to significantly expand the number of languages supported by our AI system by the end of 2022. We closely communicate with different companies to define the language priority.
Is the software mainly focused on the script and its analysis?
Not really. Film pre-production starts with script analysis and breakdown, but there are much more things needed: scheduling, call sheets, total summary sheets, budgeting, and more.
The second step was scheduling. The user-friendly interface provides easy access to semi-automatic scheduling based on the uploaded script. With a total summary we provide, industry professionals can get clear reports with a total number of props, cast, locations, and other elements, an effective sorting function, and a customizable interface.
Scene synopsis and editor we recently launched not only added script preview in a scheduling stripe, but made all the strips fully editable, thus film professionals have full control over scheduling—they can change or add information in headings according to their needs.
We are working on expanding the boundaries of possible visual reference boards. One of the crucial steps of film production is a visual understanding of how your characters, objects, locations, VFX solutions, and other elements look like and interact with each other. Now you can formulate your thoughts into visual images and share them with your team.
It’s possible to add a visual reference to each and every tag in your breakdown by choosing pictures from the asset stores, stock images, or your own uploads. Details are important.
AI system magic will assist you in the process and show recommendations based on your script keywords. Visual reference boards can be used not only for choosing assets needed for your production and reference creation, but may be transformed into a simple storyboard template where you can upload your own drafts or images.
What’s next? What do you see for the future of Filmustage?
In a global sense, I would say that we are planning to expand and develop our product in a few directions. At the moment we are mainly focusing on film production and we are planning to cover more aspects of pre-production and production so that our clients can find a solution to all their needs in one place. We still see a lot of potential there. We have improved our AI system recently and we are planning to add multi-tagging for our script breakdown. You can assign one parameter for two categories simultaneously. At times one element can be essential for two different departments working on a film and we are planning to solve it.
For the next quarter, we are planning to add integrations with different kinds of marketplaces. Such interactions with cast, props, location marketplaces, second and third libraries may significantly simplify the process of film pre-production for a wide range of specialists like cast, props, location managers, costume designers, directors, producers, and line producers. Thanks to these integrations you can directly purchase a lot of elements you need for your film production, create alternative lists of items and compare them by cost. If you need to prepare a script pitch for your investors you may prepare preliminary estimations or find cheaper alternatives for locations and props.
Film budget estimation is something we have in the works. It is in big demand among directors, producers, insurance companies, and scriptwriters. Dealing with a budget for a feature film is always time-consuming, and detailed budgeting is something that only a professional can do for now. But how about a rough estimation? We are planning to start with a quick budgeting and resource estimation based on the information from your script, and our NLP technology should provide a more precise solution in the future.
Another feature we are planning to work on is a script pitch deck for film investors. Having an amazing script is not always enough to get investments. We want to help with reports about your script to showcase planned resources and budgets and analyze all the film elements.
If you already have investors for your film, it may help you to stay on budget and analyze where you can cut your expenses.
Are you planning to focus only on the film industry?
The film industry will stay our main focus for the near future, but it won’t be the only niche that we have ideas to cover. The game industry is what attracts our attention and we already know what we can offer and to what niche. This industry stays in focus and accumulates a lot of money and technologies. At the same time, it is very patchy and bitty.
If we are talking about film production we can rely on at least Hollywood standards. If we speak about gaming—there are no standards there. In practice every company is working according to their own standards based on the game types they develop—they implement their own approaches, practices, and tools.
We are interested in penetrating the world of narrative games with richly detailed worlds. Uncharted and The Last of Us, developed by Naughty Dog, could be taken as an example. It’s important to understand that although narratives are prominent in video games, not every game has a narrative. The two elements of a good narrative are the player-character dynamic and the interactive world the character is in. The major story of the game is the step where Filmustage may come to play with AI-based script breakdown and other functionality. We can easily scan, analyze, systematize and show possible assets that are already present on the market.
As the game industry is flexible, technologically advanced, and multilateral, I feel that it will be a great journey.
What would you like to say to our readers?
Thank you for reading till the end! And we will be glad to see you among Filmustage's new customers. Use your unique promo code, which grants 60% off your first purchase: NOFILMSCHOOL60.
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