ToolUp.biz
← All case studies

Case Study 03 - Film & Screen Industries

Sussex Film Office

A production members hub bolted onto the existing film office platform

In Plain English

Sussex Film Office already helps productions film in the region - permits, locations, local crew, the lot. What they didn't have was a private space where a production company could plan a shoot end to end without emailing the office for every question.

So I built one, tucked inside their existing site. Members log in, describe the scene or shoot they're planning, and an assisted search pulls back the right locations, facilities, cast and crew from SFO's own directories. It sits on top of what they already have rather than replacing any of it.

The big picture

A members-only production planning area added to the Sussex Film Office platform. Production companies subscribe, log in and get a private workspace for shaping a shoot - shortlisting locations, checking facilities, and building out cast and crew - with an AI-assisted search sitting over SFO's existing directories. The public-facing site is untouched; the members area extends it.

Assisted production search

  • Natural-language brief - a producer describes what they need ("1930s coastal cottage, tide-in exteriors, quiet road access for a low-loader") and the assistant returns matching locations from the SFO catalogue with the reasoning shown.
  • Faceted resource search across locations, facilities, cast and crew - filter by role, availability window, distance from unit base, day rate band and past credits.
  • Shortlist boards - drag resources into a per-project shortlist, add notes, and share a read-only link with the wider production team.
  • Gap flagging - when a brief can't be met from current members (e.g. no available steadicam op in the window), the assistant surfaces it so SFO can reach out and grow the directory in the right direction.

Members area & production workspace

  • Production company accounts with multiple seats - producer, line producer, location manager can all work in the same project.
  • Project workspaces - one per shoot, holding the brief, shortlists, saved searches and enquiry history.
  • Enquiry handoff - a shortlisted location or crew member becomes an enquiry that flows into SFO's existing permit and production workflow rather than starting a new thread.
  • Member profile controls for the directory - cast, crew and facilities members keep their own availability, rates and showreels current, so the assistant is searching fresh data.

Integration with the existing platform

  • Bolted onto the current site, not a rebuild - shared header, shared auth, shared branding, single sign-on for existing SFO accounts.
  • Reads from SFO's canonical locations, cast, crew and suppliers records - one source of truth, no parallel directory to maintain.
  • Permits and production support requests continue to run through the existing SFO process; the members hub feeds it, doesn't replace it.
  • Subscription billing via Stripe for production company memberships, with tiered access to the assisted search and shortlist tools.

Why this matters

Film offices sit on years of hard-won local knowledge - which barn has power, which crew member is worth the drive, which facility can turn a job around in 48 hours. Most of that lives in inboxes and heads. This members hub turns it into something a production company can actually search at 11pm the night before a recce, without losing SFO's role as the human in the loop.

Back to case studiesAbout AlexHome