Film Forge

Film Forge is a single workspace for everyone on a production — producers, accountants, line producers, legal, and distribution — organized around how a film actually gets made.

Instead of scattering your incentive research, budget, cast list, contracts, and compliance records across spreadsheets and email, everything lives in one production workspace. Along the way, every important action (locking a budget, signing a deal, registering your IP) can be sealed with an independently-verifiable proof — the kind of trust layer investors, insurers, and distributors ask for.

Film Forge is invitation-based — there's no open sign-up.

1. 1Request access. On the home page, choose Request access and tell us about your production. An account manager reviews it.
2. 2Activate your account. Once approved you'll get an email to set your password — that link activates your account and signs you in.
3. 3Sign in anytime with your email and password. Forgot it? Use Forgot password.
4. 4Open or create a production. Your Dashboard lists your films. Choose New production to start one.
5. 5Activate a license. Finance and production features unlock with an active license (Indie, Feature, or Studio). Gated tabs will prompt you — see Members & License or your account manager.

Every production opens into a workspace with a left-hand menu of tools, grouped by stage of the film.

The guided setup on Home

New productions open on Home, which shows a progress strip of the setup steps with a Next → button. Follow it and you'll never wonder what to do next.

Full vs. Finance view

Use the Full ↔ Finance toggle (top right) to switch between the whole toolset and a streamlined finance-only menu.

Land where your work is

Film Forge drops each collaborator where their job is: an accountant on Finance & Compliance, a consultant on Incentives, legal on Chain of Title, a distributor on Deals, cast/crew on Documents.

Jump anywhere & stay informed

• Press ⌘K (or CtrlK) to open the command palette and jump to any tool by name.
• The bell shows notifications — task assignments, keystone events, a signed deal, an expiring license. Click one to jump there.
• Film Forge can email you a periodic digest of unread notifications — turn it off in Account → Email preferences.

The Development tools shape the creative before production, and each hands off to the next.

Ideation

Describe your concept, genre, and comparables to generate loglines, a synopsis, and tonal pitches. Curate the results: ★ pin the ones you're keeping (they rise to the top), ✎ edit any line, ✕ delete the rest.

World Bible

Build a structured reference of every character, location, and object. Extract entities from your synopsis or pasted material, or add and edit them by hand.

Visualization

Generate concept art and mood boards from your World Bible entities to lock the look.

Script

Draft and version your screenplay. When ready, Lock script — this freezes the draft, notarizes it, and unlocks the production breakdown.

Scenes & Overview

Your scenes drive incentive matching, the breakdown, and the shooting schedule. Add them three ways:

• Extract from your locked/saved Script.
• Import from a script file — upload a PDF, .txt, or .fountain, or paste text.
• Add by hand — number, heading, location needs, estimated days.

Incentives

The front door of Film Forge: before you lock a location, find out where the money is. It ranks incentive jurisdictions against your scenes and budget.

1. 1Review the ranked comparison — rate, caps, refundable/transferable status, local-hire uplift, and a plain-English risk & complexity read.
2. 2Hover any term (the ⓘ marks) for a glossary explanation.
3. 3Choose Set target on the program you'll shoot in — it drives your projected credit everywhere else.
4. 4Shooting in more than one place? Use the multi-jurisdiction plan to split photography and post and see the combined credit.

Breakdown & Schedule

Once the script is locked, Generate breakdown parses every scene into tagged elements (cast, props, locations, effects), derives casting roles, and lists locations you can mark scouting or secured.

Then Build stripboard for a real day-by-day schedule: scenes grouped by location to minimize company moves, banded day/night, and colored with the classic strip convention (white = INT day, yellow = EXT day, blue = INT night, green = EXT night), with total shooting days and company moves.

Participants (cast, crew, vendors & investors)

Build your roster, flagging local residents (and their state) for incentive local-hire requirements. For a full crew, use Import from CSV / spreadsheet — paste rows straight from Excel or Google Sheets. Bad rows are reported by line number.

Milestones & Tasks

• Milestones — track big events (financing close, principal photography, wrap, delivery); completing one is recorded and can be notarized as proof for investors.
• Tasks — assign work with a due date; assignees are notified and reminded as tasks come due or go overdue.

Budget & Risk

1. 1Set your above-the-line reserve and let the AI draft a below-the-line breakdown — each line tagged for incentive qualification.
2. 2Review and import the lines, or add your own (ATL/BTL, account codes, cost category).
3. 3Set fringes — a flat rate, or per-union groups (SAG-AFTRA, IATSE, Teamsters, DGA, WGA) each with their own rate.
4. 4Track the shoot with the cost report: budget vs. actual vs. cost-to-complete, with estimate-at-completion and variance.
5. 5When final, Lock & notarize — this freezes the top sheet and seals it on-chain. You'll confirm first, because you can't edit lines afterward.

Spend

Log actual transactions, tagging whether each qualifies for the incentive (and under which jurisdiction) and whether it's for US services (§181). For volume, Import from CSV. Remove a mistaken entry with ✕, and Notarize any transaction you want independent proof of.

Cap Table & Waterfall

Record how the film is financed — equity, debt, gap loans, presales — per holder. Set up a recoupment waterfall (senior debt → gap → investor recoupment → producer → backend). As revenue comes in, Film Forge shows each investor's recoupment status and suggested disbursements by priority.

Finance & Compliance

Your finance dashboard: projected tax credit, §181 status, a compliance checklist, and a link to the printable investor report.

Sources & Uses

The one-page financing statement banks and bond companies expect — money in (cap table + projected incentives, split hard vs. soft money) vs. money out (your budget), flagging any funding gap and whether hard money alone covers the budget.

Deals & Royalty

Track distribution deals by territory and rights type, with live conflict detection so you never double-license a territory. Recording a deal's minimum guarantee feeds your waterfall. Jump from a deal to Draft memo to paper it.

Deal Memos & e-signature

1. 1Pick a template (distribution license, option/purchase, custom) — optionally prefill from a deal — and fill in the terms.
2. 2Add each signatory with name, role, and email.
3. 3Send for signature: those with an email get their signing link automatically; copy links for the rest.
4. 4Each party reviews the exact terms and types their name to sign — bound cryptographically to the document.
5. 5When all sign, the memo is executed. Notarize it for permanent, verifiable proof of the closed deal.

• Editing — log each cut (assembly → first → director's → final). Locking the final cut seals the runtime and signals distribution to begin.
• Audience Testing — simulate a persona-based audience panel on a marketing asset before you spend on the campaign (AI-simulated — directional, not a real screening).
• Marketing — generate taglines, trailer concepts, and key-art posters per audience, and send one to Audience Testing.
• Rights & Deliverables — keep the rights-clearance register and the per-buyer delivery checklist (masters, captions, M&E, E&O) that a distributor's diligence relies on.

Film Forge keeps a tamper-evident record of your production and can seal key artifacts with proofs anyone can verify — the credible answer to “who owns this, and has anything changed?”

• Chain of Title — assemble the ownership links (source rights, writer agreement, assignment) with a completeness checklist. E&O insurers, financiers, and distributors need this.
• Trust & IP — register your script/IP with WGA and copyright numbers for court-ready proof of authorship and integrity.
• Documents — log contracts, releases, and E&O docs; mark them received and notarize the important ones.
• Project Vessel — a live, one-page status of the entire production.
• Activity Log — a tamper-evident record of every action, each entry sealed to the one before it.
• Audit Package — bundle everything into one verifiable package for an auditor or film commission (printable report or notarized snapshot).

Members & License

Invite collaborators by email and assign a role that scopes what they can see and do. Admins issue or renew the license and seat count here.

Roles at a glance

Account

Manage your profile, change your password, and toggle digest emails under Account → Email preferences.

Studio API

For technical integrators only — issue API keys and webhooks to sync data into a studio's systems. Most teams won't need this.

• Production workspace — one film; everything lives inside it, scoped by your role.
• License — an active license (Indie / Feature / Studio) unlocks the tools. Trials are time-limited; you're reminded before one lapses.
• Target program — the incentive jurisdiction you set in Incentives; it drives your projected credit.
• Qualified spend — transactions marked as spent in your target jurisdiction; these earn the credit.
• Keystone events — high-consequence sealed actions (lock budget, lock script, lock cut, register IP); notarized and often final.
• Notarize / on-chain proof — a verifiable, tamper-evident fingerprint; your files stay private.

• Press ⌘K to jump to any tool instantly.
• Not sure what's next? Follow the Next → guide on Home.
• Entering a lot of data? Import from CSV — paste from a spreadsheet.
• Hover the ⓘ marks for plain-English explanations of industry terms.
• Finance-only user? Switch to Finance view to hide the creative tools.
• Locking a budget, script, or cut is final — you'll always confirm first.

Need a hand or a new seat? Contact your Film Forge account manager, or reach the team from any request-access page.