AI tool Filmustage raises $1.5m
August 7, 2024
US-based Filmustage, an AI platform that enhances the film pre-production phase, has announced a $1.5 million (€1.37m) seed funding round led by UK-based VC fund Raw Ventures with US-based Geek Ventures among other investors.
Filmustage reduces the time and effort required for manual breakdowns by 90 per cent, allowing production teams to operate more efficiently. It was founded by Egor Dubrovsky who identified the problem through his experience shooting pilots for Netflix and Prime Video. Filmustage uses AI to analyse scripts, identifying over 17+ categories such as characters, locations, and props. It dynamically updates breakdowns with script changes. The platform features smart scheduling, risk analysis for each scene, and generates synopses for individual scenes and the entire script. Additionally, the platform supports export to industry-standard software like Movie Magic, Gorilla Scheduling and Final Draft, facilitating seamless integration into existing workflows.
Filmustage is already used by various and independent filmmakers including Roger Christian, renowned for his work on Star Wars and Byron Saltysiak, a former Vice President at WarnerMedia. Recently, Filmustage was used in the pre-production of Guy Ritchie’s Netflix series The Gentlemen. Currently, Filmustage is being used during the shooting of Universal Pictures’ film Nobody 2.
Dubrovsky commented: “Filmustage continues to work on reducing budget risks and ensuring efficient resource management for film production studios. The investment will be used to acquire new B2B clients, including Tier-1 clients, and expand our AI capabilities to cover even more aspects of pre-production and post-production, including AI-based budget estimation, AI-based storyboards, and marketplace & Omniverse integrations.”
Alexey Skobelkin, a CPO responsible for Product and Technology expertise at Raw Ventures, added: “We invested in Filmustage after their attendance in the finals of our investment programme Global MediaTech Pitch Day, where they stood out among 400 applicants. The main reason we invested is due to the pragmatic and efficient approach by which the company’s product successfully integrates advanced AI developments, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, into the production processes of the film industry without competing with them. Meanwhile, the team is developing their own specialised and unique AI model for working with scripts and production plans, which ensures the product’s practical efficiency. We see the product market fit, the team’s focus and concentration, and we want to support scaling both financially and with our industry expertise.”