Why we built Cinella
We should say this upfront: we're not a software company. We're a small video crew in the UK - the kind that turns up to a brand shoot with two people, a van full of kit and a client who wants the schedule by Friday. Cinella exists because of one specific Google Doc, and the night it finally broke us.
The 11pm rebuild
Every shoot started the same way. Duplicate last month's call sheet doc. Change the date, the location, the call times. Break the table formatting somewhere around row six. Fix it. Forget to update one call time, which someone will absolutely notice at 7am in a car park. Then do the second version - the client one - by copying the whole thing again and deleting the crew phone numbers, the kit notes and the internal comments, and hoping you caught them all.
It's maybe an hour of work when you're fresh. It is never done when you're fresh. It's done at 11pm the night before, after the prep, the emails and the kit charge. We did this for years, because everyone we know does this, and it never occurred to any of us that it was ridiculous.
The software that thought we were Hollywood
We did try to buy our way out. The established tools - StudioBinder, SetHero and friends - are genuinely good at what they do, but what they do is run film sets. They open with script imports, cast breakdowns and production reports. They assume there's a 1st AD. They cost forty-plus dollars a month, which is fine when it's a production office's software budget and silly when it's two people splitting a day rate.
Nothing was built for the crew of one to three shooting commercial and brand work - which, as far as we can tell, is most working filmmakers. So the industry's smallest crews all privately maintain the same haunted Google Doc.
So we built the tool we couldn't buy
Cinella started as an internal thing with one job: take the brief and build the day. You give it your call and wrap times and it generates a sensible run of day - crew call, rig, shooting blocks, a lunch that isn't at 4pm, pickups, de-rig, wrap - which you then tweak instead of writing from a blank page. The call sheet, shot list and kit list hang off the same shoot, so there's one source of truth instead of four documents.
The part clients notice is the portal. Every shoot gets a private branded link where your client sees the schedule, where to be and who they're meeting, can upload briefs, logos and POs, and confirms the day in one tap - you get a notification the moment they do. No more screenshotting half a spreadsheet and cropping out the crew's phone numbers. It quietly makes a two-person crew feel like a much bigger production company, which is worth more than we'd like to admit.
Then it grew the pieces around the day, because the day doesn't exist in isolation: a shoot calendar, Set Mode - a live screen for the shoot itself, with the current block highlighted and a shot list you tick off at arm's length - and invoices generated straight from the day fee, with your logo and bank details, that flag themselves when they're overdue.
Every feature in Cinella exists because it was needed on a real job first. Nothing went in because it demoed well.
What it deliberately doesn't do
There are no script breakdowns, no cast management, no production reports. Not because we couldn't add them - because the moment we do, we've rebuilt the bloated thing we were escaping. If you're running a proper film set, the established tools are the right choice and we'll say so. Cinella is for the rest of us.
Where it is now
Cinella is live at cinella.app. It's £12 a month during launch - rising to £15 for new subscribers later, but if you join during launch your rate stays £12 for as long as you keep your subscription. Every account starts with a 14-day free trial, and cancelling is a button, not a phone call.
We're still a working crew, which means the roadmap is decided on real shoots - and by the people who use it. If you try it and something annoys you, tell us at hello@cinella.app. The best features so far have come from exactly that.