Let’s All Meet at Circus.
In the film industry, ‘Circus’ is a very special place. We meet there to eat lunch together, to discuss being ahead or behind schedule. Circus is where we park our trucks and our gear, where the actors get ready to go on camera, and most importantly, it’s the central location where everyone groups together to tell one, unified story.
Circus is also the name of our new startup (meetatcircus.com) and the beginning of a new chapter in my life, one that catalysed over a decade ago when I started off in the industry as a production assistant. As I transitioned into different roles with more and more responsibilities, and a deeper understanding of how the machine works, I noticed quite a few inefficient workflows that simply didn’t cut it compared to the innovation we put on the screen. We’ve sent a submarine to capture the bottom of The Mariana Trench, brought dinosaurs and aliens to life and have created spectacular worlds from our dreams and imaginations. To our audiences we look like quite an advanced industry, but behind the scenes, it’s a different story. The existing tools used to manage and create content are not nearly as evolved as they could be. This drove me to want to do something to help my community, using my past experiences.
For our first act, we are launching a free, streamlined Canadian crew rate & fringe calculator that helps provide efficient and reliable data to producers, line producers, production managers and accountants.
The calculator will generate rates and fringes that apply to each unique production based on the following information entered by the user:
- What type of production is being made (feature, series, short, doc, branded content, music video);
- If it’s Canadian certified content or otherwise (ie. All Canadian cast, one american cast, or otherwise)
- Where the production is shooting;
- When principle photography commences;
- What affiliations (unions & guilds) they will be working with;
- And finally, their estimated budget.
Users can also toggle between different currencies if they’re a foreign production looking to shoot in Canada.
This tool has evolved from the old way of doing things, rifling through stacks of paper and PDFs provided by multiple unions that offer different rates for varying productions. It was complicated, but it didn’t need to be. I wanted to make this easier so that the industry can do what they do best — better.
This is just the tip of the iceberg (These James Cameron nods are not on purpose, I swear) for connecting the entire industry through innovative ways, that I aim to achieve with my amazing co-founder and CTO Nigel Fish, who I am so incredibly grateful to have met and is the machine behind the machine and honestly a huge reason why you will get to use this tool.
So let’s meetatcircus.com and start working smarter, not harder!
