The End of the Old Budget — How Two Veteran Producers Are Reinventing the Way Hollywood Manages Money

This is a revolution to budget making. If you want to learn how to budget your film with the newest program that will save you hours and be accurate, listen to these two brilliant, intelligent line producers Stephen Marinaccio & Matthew Cuny, Co-Founders of Cinematic Apps who took years to create and share this new way to budget your film.

Learn More! 

Line Budgeter: linebudgeter.com 

LinePM: line.pm 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:04

What if the single most dreaded part of filmmaking, the budget, could actually become your greatest creative advantage? Well, stay with us because by the end of this episode, you will never look at a budget the same way again.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

So glad you could join us on the Art of Film Funding podcast. I'm Claire Papin, and I'm proud to serve as co-producer of this podcast alongside the remarkable Carol Dean, founder of From the Heart Productions and author of The Independent Filmmaker's Essential Guide. The Art of Film Funding Second Edition. Every week, Carol and I bring you the people, the ideas, and the tools that help filmmakers not just dream their dreams, but actually make them. And today we have two guests who are doing something this industry has been waiting decades for. Let me introduce them properly, because their stories matter. Stephen Marinaccio is a veteran producer with over 35 years of experience working on global feature films and television. He's worked in more than 30 countries from diving to the wreck of the Titanic as unit production manager under James Cameron on Ghosts of the Abyss to serving as the lead UPM on Netflix's Marco Polo. He's also the creator of the film TV budgeting community on Reddit, a space where producers share real unfiltered knowledge about the business of production. Matthew Cooney is a producer, head of production at Bix Pix Entertainment, and a 20-year veteran of both live action and animation. He's overseen more than $70 million in production budgets. What makes Matthew uniquely positioned to build the future of this industry is his rare combination of deep production experience and an early background in streaming technology. He thinks like a producer. And together, Stephen and Matthew founded Cinematic App. And on March 4th of 2026, they launched their flagship product, Line Budgeter. It's the first modern end-to-end budgeting platform built by working producers who were simply done waiting for someone else to fix the tools. And Carol, I know you want to learn all you can about the benefits of cinematic apps.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

Absolutely, Claire. And we sincerely appreciate both of you joining us, Stephen and Matthew.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Thank you for having us. Yeah, thank you. We appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

Good. Well, let's get started. Uh what's the origin story? Um, you both had extraordinary careers at the top of the industry. So what was the moment, the specific breaking point when you looked at each other and said, we have to build something better ourselves?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Well, um I can remember it vividly because I had been working in the legacy tools and um one morning I lifted or had gone to bed the night before while budgeting the show, and I had closed the lid to my laptop and walked away like I normally do, and then I returned to my desk the next morning and lifted the lid to my laptop, and all my budgets were gone. And I wasn't able to recover them, and it was uh because of legacy tools. And I had been, you know, just like many producers, frustrated with uh working in the tools that we had, and I uh had reached out to a friend just lamenting about the issue, and basically he's like, Oh, you you should talk to Steven. Steven's been wanting to do something like that, and so I'm like, I don't know, he's a busy guy. And so I sent him an email, and like 12 minutes later, Steven responded, like, I'm in. And so then we basically had a couple meetings, decided that we uh had to do something about it, and took a full year to kind of RD everything out. It's not just like, hey, we could just make what we have prettier and better and and and call it a day, but it really came down to like what we've been working in, the tools we've had. It was designed around a workflow that's 30 years old, and the workflow that we all have is dramatically changed. And so we basically, you know, at that moment we're like, we have to think about what the next 10, 15, 20, 30 years is going to be and have the tools that producers need available to them.

SPEAKER_03 5:09

Exactly. Thank you very much for that. I'm so happy that the two of you got together because you're revolutionizing the budget. So, Matthew, you've said that producers are using tools built in the 1990s. So, for our listeners, many of them have been on their first or their second film. So, can you describe in plain terms what a producer's typical budgeting day looks like with the old system? And what does that pain feel like now that you have the new system?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Absolutely. Uh, the pain, I don't think we can all ever really forget it. It's it's kind of like a PTSD of production. Um, most producers are still building budgets from old template files, and um, you reshape them for every new project and um kind of bash around the data to uh you know fit it for what your your your new project is. And um, so you spend a lot of time manually forcing that data into these tools that were never really designed for how productions work, especially today. And um we spend we end up spending or using separate tools for for cash flow, incentives, schedules, notes, and approvals, but none of them talk to each other. So a lot of time gets spent updating that information in all those different places and checking versions and making sure nobody's working on old data, or you unfortunately find out somebody's been using something that's two weeks out of date. Um, and so the the bigger issue is the production has changed, but our tools haven't. And producers are being expected to be cheaper, better, and faster while our toolboxes remain the same. And so, you know, we feel producers should not have to spend more time managing their tools and data than managing the production.

SPEAKER_03 6:51

Absolutely. All right. Well, let's talk about what you've built. So tell us about cinematic apps and your platform, uh, and specifically, what is the line budgeter and how does it change that painful experience that you described?

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Well, we we're building a platform that we call Line PM for line production management, and line budgeters the first major piece of our platform. So we we chose to start with the budget because all productions kind of start with the money. And so um you know, our our platform we've launched in in early March, and um, so basically it gives producers and production teams a modern way to build and manage budgets without relying on those old tempo files and disconnected workflows. Um you can create better budgets faster, you can model changes, work with ratebooks and incentives directly in your budget, generate cash flow out of your budget, share your budgets with other people in real time, and it keeps teams closer to the latest version and on the same page. Um, our philosophy, like I said a few minutes ago, wasn't to just make like a prettier version of the older tools. We wanted to rethink the workflow from the ground up and based on how working producers are actually building, revising, and managing budgets under the real production pressure of today. Um, and so the goal is to make the budget a living, connected part of production and not a static file everyone has to keep fixing.

SPEAKER_03 8:17

Wonderful. Well, one of the things that really surprised me in my research was the concept of framework budgets. Uh, this is not a template. Can you explain what a framework budget is and how it works and why this approach is so different from what producers have been stuck with?

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Sure. I'll I'll add to that. As Matt said earlier, in legacy applications, the user is forced to open that template file or some other version of a budget that they've done in the past as that starting point. And uh this starts the budgeting process on an inefficient footing. Uh, people are making budgets. Um, the the people that are making the budgets are very expensive data entry people. And to take that time to rebash an old file into a working version for this project, you have to pay them a lot of their valuable time to undo and redo all that work. So our budget builder system creates a clean and fresh starting point for your budgeting uh needs of your project, specifically built with the the elements and the needs of your show. And we call this the framework, and it's your starting point. So now you can focus on building your budget from there, not uh dealing with fixing a lot of stuff from the past to make it work in this new project.

SPEAKER_03 9:38

Oh, that's much better. So um good. Now let's get into this pre-flight checklist because that's a great name. You built um this one, this one into the line budgeter with over 4,600 topics and growing. That is extraordinary. So, what is the pre-flight checklist and what does it do for a producer who may not even know what they don't know yet?

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Yeah, that's exactly right. We one of the core philosophies, I'll tell I'll tell you, is that when Matt and I sat down and we got together and we said, let's make something better, um, we didn't want to just make something different and better. We also wanted to help the community, right? So the in doing budgets, we're often sort of alone and we're just doing it on our own. Yes, we have some input from producers or directors, but um we we are pretty much just sitting in a room smashing numbers into a uh a program, but uh, and there's no help for that. There's there's not necessarily a camaraderie between us, the people that do that. So we wanted to also create stuff inside of our application that's helpful for those people doing things. And one of the things is the pre-flight checklist. So very akin to a pilot checking the flight uh the plane before takeoff. Uh, we have, as you see, as you mentioned, over 4,600 topics to help producers make sure that they thought through things. In addition to that, we offer an integrated rate book for current pay rates from around the world, a comprehensive tax infringe library, as well as global incentive data with over 480 rebate and incentive programs. So all of these data sets integrate directly into your budget, giving producers an essential information that you need while you're preparing your budget. And specifically, the pre-flight checklist allows you to go through a myriad of subjects and open up that area and take a look at a bunch of things that you might want to think about. For example, if you have not done prosthetics for a while or you've never done prosthetics on a movie, you open up the pre-flight checklist, go to prosthetics, open it up, and it will ask you a bunch of questions that you might want to think about, such as have you talked to the makeup effects people that um about what kind of application they're using, potentially actors' skin is allergic to the latex versus foam, or or the the idea that you're using contact lenses and do you need a lens tech? All of these things are things you need to think about, and you might not know to think about it. So this allows you to just remind yourself or learn a little bit more. So, again, those subjects are very wide-ranging uh based on Matt and I's experience on real films around the world. We just put that all into the application to allow you to do better work.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Oh, that's so smart. Well, let me ask you about this 480 rebates. So, like if I was uh shooting in Ireland and Italy, which are two hot places now, um, you would have the rebate uh information available for maybe.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Yes, exactly. Yeah, you open up the uh the incentive tool. Our incentive engine is very dynamic and and rich with details on how to manipulate the information that you're doing as far as the costs and such per location. And it allows you to really uh hone down that projected rebate. But you open up that engine and there's a library there that you would open up and take a look, and you go down the list and find Ireland or Italy or whatever country you're going to, and it will uh populate that with the different rebate and incentive programs that are available in that area. Uh, and then you can start from uh a good starting point rather than having to Google it or call a friend of yours and wait around or try to get a hold of a production service company local. You can get started moving down that track much easier and faster. And of course, you're going to double check everything. Things change. Maybe a local production service company knows a little extra that you didn't realize. But all of that stuff is is in the program, allowing you to work faster and and more accurately from the get-go.

SPEAKER_03 13:57

Well, how do you do that when you're here in America and you're helping create a budget for someone who's shooting in Ireland? Um, how do you know what the gaffer charges or what the DP wants?

SPEAKER_00 14:12

It's a it's a great age-old question. And uh I fortunately have that experience. I do that all the time. I my most of my career is a is international and not in the United States. And this is that age-old thing that you just need to know what you're looking for. And after a while, you get the experience of who to call. But if you don't have a Rolodex of production services companies around the world or friends who are producers around the world to just call them and say, Hey, can you send me a rate guide? The um, the the next best next best thing then is again built into Line Budgeter, we have a ratebook library that you can get access to and it's growing, but we'll have a bunch of rate books from around the world. So if you're shooting in Italy or Ireland or Jordan or Thailand or so forth, you can go there and get one of those ratebooks and at least have a good starting point. And all these ratebooks are vetted by locals to make sure that they're up to date and accurate as possible.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

That's a lot of work. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

It is.

SPEAKER_03 15:14

Yeah. Well, thank you. Because you've worked in the industry for over 30 years, so you understand better than almost anyone how complicated international rates, labor laws, union rules are. And so, how does line budgeter handle the global complexity of modern production?

SPEAKER_00 15:36

So it's a great question. Obviously, it'll always come back to the line producer or UPM that you have working on the project and their experience and knowledge. But working around the world, obviously, every country has different methods and laws. Uh as a line producer, understanding how those things work in a given place affects how you budget. So uh from working hours, um, hiring practices, there are many subjects that affect all the different aspects of hiring those local crew or how you rent things. So, again, one of our tenets in building line budgeter was to assist in doing that great work. So, no matter what type of project you're doing, we built in rate books to fully uh, and then you're you're you're finally able to assimilate those rates directly into your budget from ratebook. And so, how it helps you in your international work is that it's giving you a bunch of that information and helpful steps to make sure that you're thinking about what you need to think about. Going back to that pre-flight checklist, there's a whole section for international work. You might not know to think about how that local place deals with lunch breaks, or how do they deal with um uh gear and movement, or how do they deal with if you're shooting not inside of a major city and you have to go outside, do they have uh stipulations for working nearby? So all of these things are things that you need to know. But in line budgeter, you're able to manipulate that data faster and quicker so that you don't have to deal with all the monotony of smashing it into a system that a legacy product that is just not built to take that information. And this overall creates a better level of efficiency.

SPEAKER_03 17:20

Exactly. Um, because independent pillmakers, especially, are looking for tax incentives and rebates, and that can make or break a financing plan and it's a sales pitch. I mean, they need to know how much of a rebate and how much money is coming back for their investors. So, can you walk us through how line budgeter handles incentives and why the way you built it is more accurate than anything else currently out there?

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Yeah, as I said before, the um the process of putting an incentive into a budget is not very accurate when all you're doing is sort of going to the top sheet and smashing in 30% and hoping for the best. Uh, so our system, as I mentioned earlier, is built on our really deep analysis of international uh incentives and rebate programs and how they actually work. So the idea of adding floors to monitor whether or not your budget is going to achieve that threshold to get the incentive, or the the idea that they might have a sub-incentive or a uh an uplift that allows you to do something special with a certain part of the incentive, for example, local labor, or maybe you're shooting outside of a zone. Um, those things are all handled individually in our incentive engine, which uh is unique to us, not found in any other software. And that detail allows you to manipulate the data in such a way to give you accurate uh rebate um projections. And uh and you can rely on that without having to spend days or weeks tracking down all the information. Again, you have that library to go to and build your budget um based on accurate information and uh the allowance of the system through its mechanical or its uh its detailed information of the engine, if you will, behind the scenes to be able to uh give you an accurate number. And that's that's the real thing. Every show out there is chasing an incentive, but there's different things that you need to think about. It's not just simply this place is 30% versus this place is 25. So we're definitely going to shoot in the 30% place. There's a lot of things to think about when you're deciding on that. So local rates might be lower, or in this other place, gear isn't even available, so you need to spend more money. So all of those things are inside of our system through the pre-flight checklist or the incentive library, and that engine allows you to think through the process a little bit better and deeper as opposed to just being thrown into the deep end of the water and good luck.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

Yes, no, this is really important because sometimes the rebates, particularly if you throw in the 181 and 168 from the United States, and you're shooting in Ireland, for example, and US, you you can say, look to your investors, uh, 50% of the film is covered through rebates and gifts from the countries we're working in. And that is a closer. So those are very important numbers.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 20:44

So let's talk about the cash flow feature because this really stopped me in my tracks. Line Budgeter is the first budgeting program to ever generate a cash flow document directly from the budget itself. So, Matthew, why has this never existed? And what does it mean for a filmmaker trying to raise money or present it to a studio?

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Um, well, I I think it hasn't existed before because most of the budgeting tools on the market were built to calculate costs and they don't understand how those costs move through time. And so they can't output a cash flow because they don't understand when you need the money. So um cash flow depends on the calendar, your phases, location, payroll timing, and the assumptions behind a budget. Um, and so those tools were just never structured for that. And with Line Budgeter, we do we we do track all those things. You can put your your calendar uh scheduling information into uh the the budget and basically it connects those pieces so that a cash flow can be generated directly from from your budget. And when we say just generated, it's you can put in that you you have a person working between these two dates and say that's just you know. Over four weeks, and the program will then know when you need that money, how much you need each week, and then therefore, um, when you make changes, um, it it'll just update automatically. Um, and so for filmmakers, it's it's a huge shift because making a cash flow is a lot of work. Number one, you spend a lot of time making a budget, and then you go over here and make a cash flow, and then you make changes to that budget, and then you have to go do the cash flow update, and then you do back and forth and back and forth, and that ends up eating a good amount of time in prep, depending on how many revisions you have to go through. And so with Line Budgeter, you can make those revisions in the budget and then just with a few clicks export out a new cash flow updated with all those changes, and so it saves a ton of time and it gives a real accurate um projection for when the money's needed. So uh it's not really a guessing game because if if uh a financier asks you a question of like, why do you need all this money right now? It's not just to say that, like, well, it, you know, I just divided the money across the weeks and that's what I need. It's like, no, I have 17 people starting on this day, and I'm renting this gear, and we also have to you know pay the deposit for this, and you you have all that information right at your fingertips. So it makes it much more powerful when presenting your case for financing.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

And I'd like to add to that too, working internationally in multiple countries, you're doing and studios are asking for financiers, are asking for not just the cash flow for the project in general, but if you have to break that cash flow also into different countries with different currencies, that's even further an arduous task. So, and then as Matt said, you update the budget, then you have to update not just one cash flow, but three or four for different countries. Uh, this allows you to then also get into the detail of how much money you need to send to that country because exchange rates are certain ways. And so managing that money and moving it around through different banks, you now know when you need that money, how much you need, and you can pre-buy. It makes that a little bit simpler as well for accounting. So um, just the idea of doing a cash flow is is one thing, but now imagine that you have to do multiples for one project because you're in three different countries. That's an even worse task to try to do. And line budgeter, as Matt said, does it in a couple button clicks.

SPEAKER_03 24:21

Fantastic. Well, what a lot of filmmakers don't realize is that you often have to defend your budget. Uh, this is something they don't like to have to do because you sometimes investors want to go line by line and say, why, why, why? And you have to be able to say, look, I know John at this uh post house, and this is the best price I can get for editing, uh, et cetera, or uh this is including editing and the other whatever involved. You have to know, really get close to your budget and make it easy to discuss with people uh who are the investors. But you once you can do that, you're on your way to funding your film, trust me.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it goes back to second grade math school, right? You teacher would say show your work. And if you're just doing a budget that just has a bunch of general allowances, that's harder to defend, as you say. Um, but if you can show your work and and have them understand how that breaks down, uh you're you're further along in making sure that they um can accept the idea that this project might cost X. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:39

And your knowledge, it comforts the investor. The fact you know you created it through experience and through knowledge and through friends in the internet or universe, our universe, the film industry, that's when you really feel good. When you're talking to someone who knows the numbers and they're handling your money, you feel really comfortable.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 26:07

Let's talk about the real-time collaboration because today's productions are often multi-city, multi-country, and even multi-team. So, how does line budgeter handle collaboration? And what does that mean for accountability and transparency on a production?

SPEAKER_01 26:29

Well, line budgeter was built for global production from the start. Stevens, you know, worked internationally the entire time while we developed the tool. So we basically factored all of that into how this tool needed to work. So multi-city, multi-country, multi-team, that is the reality now, and that's how this tool works. Instead of passing budget files around and hoping everyone has the latest version, you can work, um, your team can work from one shared budget with permissions and visibility and clear record of what's changed. So there's no more, um, let me check my email, make sure I have the latest draft, I'm in the wrong file. Everyone front and center knows which file is the latest one. You can all work in it together no matter where you are in the world. Uh that that changes accountability because the budget becomes a living source of truth instead of a static file on someone's computer. And um, because we are designed, uh, the line budget is designed to hand clean data into existing accounting and payroll workflows, teams get more of a modern layer, uh collaboration layer without having to like throw away the systems that they already use.

SPEAKER_03 27:31

A living source of truth that is beautiful. That's wonderful. So um the data and the reporting power. So, Stephen, you said something in an interview that I loved. You said we've been able to answer questions people didn't know they were allowed to ask. So, give our listeners a few examples of what that looks like in practice, the kinds of insights a producer can now pull from their budget instantly.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Sure. Um, so because Matt and I took that time to step back and ask why things worked the way they work, uh, we were able to approach the actual development of the software in different ways. One aspect would be incentive. We spoke a little bit about this, but legacy applications treat incentives as a line on the top sheet and just blast in a rebate allowance and calls it a day. Whereas line budget allows you to dive in deep to the details of the rebate program that you might be using and adjust those nuanced details, which manifests itself obviously into a more accurate projection. Another aspect would be fringes. Again, we looked around the world, not just inside the United States, but around the world at various uh unions and uh uh uh governments and how those actually work. And um, and we took a look at how to manipulate that data in better and more efficient ways, and we added different functionality to allow a better estimation. So LineBudgeter offers four or five more versions of fringing units beyond the standard that you'll find in any other legacy application, which is just percentage and fringe. And I guess one of the last call-out I would say is hot analytics, something we call hot analytics. Uh, basically, because we put the details back into line item details, um, the way that our sub-accounts categorize data, it allows a producer to ask crazy questions that would normally get eye rolls from accounting and uh take hours to figure out, right? So, such as uh how much are we spending in purchases in Paris during prep on episode four? That would send accounting into a tailspin, uh, hours of work on a side napkin or Excel shed spreadsheets opened up. Uh so this is all done now in line budget or naturally. As they're building your budget, it's taking account of all these things. Um, and it's not hours and hours of tedious work afterwards, grouping that information, hoping that you did it correctly, you didn't miss something. It's it's doing that naturally as you go. And now you can know that information now.

SPEAKER_03 30:14

Great. Well, now I want to speak to rescue who are listeners because many of humor making films a hundred thousand or three hundred thousand, maybe up to a million dollars. So is line budgeter for them, or is this a studio level tool?

SPEAKER_00 30:33

Absolutely. I mean, obviously, we built our system to handle massive projects, but it's also for small projects. In fact, we have a producer today that is using it who was regularly working on projects for museums, doing small productions and projects for museums around the US. And uh her project budget ranges are usually somewhere between 30 and 70,000 per project. And she was using just a simple spreadsheet. And when she saw the power of Line Budgeter, not only to be easy to use, but to be able to manipulate her information and get better accuracy for her financiers or just for her team, uh, she now uses Line Budgeter. Uh, and again, we didn't build Line Budgeter only handle $500 million films. And while it certainly can, uh, and it can handle that without breaking a sweat, lower budget projects obviously benefit as well from those more accurate estimates, which allow you to not waste the money. And um, that money could be on screen instead of sitting in a fringe account by error or overestimating incentives. That's never a good conversation with a financier when you thought you were getting back 1.6 million and you only are getting back 1.4. That $200,000 gap is is usually just because of errors in calculation, and that's not a great conversation to have. So so again, projects of all types and sizes around the world, no matter where you're filming, you they can all gain from the inherent benefits of using the software.

SPEAKER_03 31:58

Oh, that sounds great. Because that's our world, the students and the emerging filmmakers.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

For sure.

SPEAKER_03 32:06

So uh why no AI? Because in a world where every new tool seems to be leading with artificial intelligence, you both made a deliberate choice to build line budgeter around what you call human-centered intelligence. So tell us why, and also what does AI get wrong when it comes to production budgeting?

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Well, we're not anti-AI, but we are very careful about where it belongs. Um, production budgeting requires precision, context, and accountability. Um, and uh you know, you're dealing with real money, real crews, real schedules, and real consequences. And um AI is is very good at making confident guesses, but a budget can't be built on guesses. Um it needs to be built on production logic. Um, rates, fringes, incentives, uh, calendars, assumptions, and you know, producer judgment at the end of it all. Um and that's why we call or you know, we talk about it being human-centered intelligence. Um the goal is to not replace the producer or to um generate data that isn't accurate. Um, it's very easy to use AI tools. Um and you can you know see the the the they are good at at throwing you know uh some you know something on the wall and it can be considered a good starting point. But uh in terms of reliability, accuracy, and actually knowing all of those nuances that we've discussed in the last several questions, they they don't have that. And they may never have all of it, and it may not be uh uh something that you can really rely on when money's on the line. Um, because again, mistakes are costly um and and a tool that can't uh be accurate is something that we we we didn't want to build. So the goal is to give producers uh better tools with you know better information and more confidence while keeping humans at the center of the creative and financial process. Um I think um one of our our users and this quote on our website is that um while they like AI a lot, it's just AI has never built been on set before. And um it's obvious that Line Budget or has. And that comes from taking what people actually do in this job and building it into software versus having um a tool set that doesn't have access to all this information. I mean, what studio in the world is gonna be like, yeah, analyze all my budgets and then generate stuff for other people in your tool? No one's gonna do that. Um not all of this data is available for a computer to just analyze and then you know output an accurate uh you know picture. Um your project might be at a different budget range than mine is, and we we have different um you know things, uh thresholds that we met that different aspects change for each other, but the tool doesn't necessarily understand all that stuff implicitly. And so then you your budget might have now inherent errors because of that. So we we just really feel that it's an early tool. And while we want AI in our tool, we we look at it more as like an agenic uh type helper where it's like, hey, by the way, the market rate has changed on your currency today, and if in you know, it would save your project $40,000. Do you want to update your budget rate for that currency? And that could positively affect your your um your budget. Tools like that is where we see AI as a very good help because as a producer, you're tracking a million things at once. And so remembering to check the market rate on currency, you know, that's that gets pushed down the line, you know. Um, having a tool that can help you be aware of all those things, that that's where we see a benefit from, but not in terms of trying to um accurately uh make make budgets.

SPEAKER_03 35:59

Right. Well, so what's next for line budgeter? Is this the first product? Um is cinematic apps building towards a full end-to-end production management platform? So where does it go from here?

SPEAKER_01 36:17

Yeah, that that that's that's the hope. Um budgeting is the starting point, and and because everything begins with the money, we started there. Um we've we've developed this over the last five years. It's not a brand new uh kind of featureless tool. It's a very robust tool with over 150 features. Um, all kinds of helpful tools are built into the program, and um it's the first step towards a much larger platform. Um, the vision is to build uh what we call line PM, which is line production management, um, and it's to connect the major pieces of production management, uh, budgeting, scheduling, cash flow incentives, collaboration, approvals, and eventually handing that data um both off into and out of accounting and payroll so data can travel downstream and back into these tools that we use so that you as a producer have more real-time data. You know, you're using your budget and you're going like, oh, I have $5,000 in purchases. Let me check my cash, uh, my cost report that's a week old. Maybe I don't have $5,000. What do I have accounting? I got to get back to, you know, all that stuff's in these different systems and they just don't talk to each other. And so building a way for all this data to come back gives that producer um more confidence in making those decisions because it's very easy in the beginning of the production to be like, yes, get the tool. It's an extra $1,000, no problem. But near the end of that production, you may not know you have an extra thousand dollars to get that. And it's always a bummer when you say no and then find out later you had the money for something and you had to say no because you just didn't you couldn't make that decision uh confidently. Um, and so uh we're we're building this platform, you know. We we we've started with around film and television, but it's actually also for commercials and animation, video games, live events, theatric, uh theater uh concerts, and really any project where production teams are managing people, time, money, and constant change. And so the goal for Line PM as a platform is to become the connected backbone of modern production, um, not just another tool, but the place where production information stays current, accountable, and usable from prep to wrap.

SPEAKER_03 38:23

Well, keeping all of this information current is a process. And you're going to be able to handle that with your current setup.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

It'll yes, because the entire uh focus has been from the beginning that um when we started producing and wanting to be producers and and and stepping into this, the producer is a person that's involved in in every aspect of production and bringing this whole whatever you're building to life. But as time has progressed, the producer feels like you're more relegated to be behind screens, managing spreadsheets, budgets, schedules, all this data that you're just staring at a screen all day, keeping them all updated, and you're not out there doing the the work that you need to do to understand your production. You're part of that heartbeat and need to know what's going on. You're not in a room locked away behind a screen. You know, it's not happening on the screen on your on your spreadsheet screen. It's happening on the on the on the on the monitors down at Video Village or whatever. Those screens are what you need to be a part of in the world that you're building. Um and so uh our tool is designed to uh to allow for that, to get you back into why you got into this business. Like you didn't get into this business to work on a spreadsheet, you got in this to make great, great creative content, projects, music, whatever you're doing that is your creative passion. Like that's why you're here. You're not here to be like a better spreadsheet operator. And so we've become very expensive data entry people to do all this. And you can't necessarily trust other or rely on other people to do it. You know, they didn't hire you as the producer to then pass this off to um people that may not have the skill or the access that they should have to this data. So it's usually confidential information. You kind of have to be the only person to manipulate it. And so you end up spending a ton of your time on this. And uh our tool is trying to give that time back to you, and you can use it on the production in better ways.

SPEAKER_03 40:21

Oh, how wonderful! You're so right, Stephen, Matthew. That's where you belong is on the set, watching this uh filming in the post room. That's where you really belong because you're the carrier of so much knowledge, and this program will allow that. I think it's wonderful. And I sincerely thank you both for the information today, because what you've built isn't just software, it's a statement that the people who actually make films deserve better tools, and it will say production hours of research. So to our listeners, I want you to leave with this. Every great film begins with an idea, and then it becomes a budget. And in that moment, the spreadsheet in the numbers, in the fringe rates, and the incentive calculations, your story either finds its foundation or it doesn't. So for too long, that process has been harder than it really needed to be. Sometimes it was confusing, and most of the time it was time consuming and intimidating. So I want to capitalize and say here that Stephen and Matthew, some of the things they said today are such as the structure is not the enemy of creativity, the structure is the container that allows your creativity to breathe, to survive, and to reach an audience. So when you understand your budget, really understand it, you're no longer at the mercy of the process, you're in command of it. And that changes everything. Because I've spent my life believing one thing about filmmakers, that the magic is already inside you. You don't need permission, you don't need a spirited studio, you need clarity, you need tools, and you need to believe in yourself enough to take that first step. This is exactly what I wrote in my new book, You Are the Magic, because you are. And every single one of you listening to this right now, your story matters, your film matters, and you have more power to make it than you think. So go visit line p.pm. Explore what Stephen and Matthew have built and start your budget, not with dread, but with confidence. And remember that every great filmmaker, every one of them, started exactly where you are right now. So we'll leave a link to the line budgeter and uh all of today's resources in the show notes. And Claire, thank you as always for having and being on my side for this journey and to our incredible listeners. We're very grateful to you. So please share this episode with a filmmaker who needs to hear it and leave us a review and come back and join us for our next podcast because we have more extraordinary conversations coming your way. So until then, make your film because you truly are the magic.