First of all, how are you and your team doing in these COVID-19 times?
Our product is a cloud solution, so we initially built a team to work and support the service from anywhere in the world. The film industry has no borders and time zones – we work with clients from different countries and provide support 24/7, so there were no significant changes in the workflow. But much in our field is built on personal relationships and contacts, so we’re forced to move online like everyone else.
We are very happy that the borders are opening, there are fewer and fewer restrictions, and offline film festivals and events are coming back, where you can meet your clients and partners in person again.
Tell us about your career and how you founded or joined this company?
I have more than 12 years of experience in the film industry. I founded two film productions and have a good sense of all the trends and requirements. The idea for our company came from the need to speed up the film production and preparation; feeling it on myself, I came up with the idea that could change the whole approach to preproduction and speed up the whole industry.
The company has three co-founders – myself, Ruslan, and Andrey. We worked together for many years, allowing us to quickly test new ideas and create a product.
How does your company innovate?
Our solution is innovative and unique on the market. Filmustage is a service based on artificial intelligence, which automates the work of breaking down the script. Right now, a high-end specialist takes an average of 8 to 40 hours, and our solution does this work in 1 minute with the same accuracy.
How the Coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you Coping?
The film industry has been affected by the lockdowns very strongly. Most of the different production processes have been canceled, and there are many new restrictions at every stage of work. But on the other hand, there have been important changes – there is a widespread abandonment of paper scripts, more and more services are using process automation, teams are starting to work remotely, and most importantly – the demand for content production is growing significantly, which requires accelerating all stages of film production.
Our solution fits these trends and helps significantly increase efficiency at every stage. As I mentioned above: our team was assembled with the expectation that we would work remotely. Therefore, our project did not suffer in performance and productivity.
What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis?
On the technical side, we use the latest technology in our service. The platform is based on Google Cloud, and we use the latest solutions from Nvidia to improve our service performance. For communication with users and technical support, we have online chat 24/7. And in order to go into technical details and be inspired by the film industry, we run an author blog about movies.
Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?
We have several serious competitors, such as Movie Magic, Studiobinder, Celtx, and others. And overall, our market has grown a lot since the pandemic began, so we are experiencing a lot of competition, but no one else on the market can do automatic script breakdown. This is where our service is unique and saves a huge amount of time compared to our competitors.
Moreover, we made it possible to export from our service to use their work in any program. And this is just the beginning. We are creating a large platform to help speed up and optimize all film production processes.
Your Final Thoughts
We love movies. It inspires us and gives us the energy to move forward. We want to help our beloved industry not only finally recover from the pandemic but give it a new lease of life. Our team is happy to keep up with the times because we believe in our business and service. Filmustage creates new technologies and trends to grow the industry.
- Spokesperson: Egor Dubrovsky
- Company: Filmustage
- Website link: https://filmustage.com/