Written by our founder - Jonathan
I spent the best part of five years freelancing as a filmmaker. Five years of juggling tools that cost a fortune, did too much, and somehow still didn't do enough.
I was paying for software I used maybe 10% of. The other 90%? Buried somewhere behind a hundreds buttons I never clicked. And the worst part wasn't the price - it was the feeling of it. Nothing talked to anything else. My script was in one place, my schedule in another, my call sheets somewhere else entirely. Every shoot felt like I was running five different businesses at once just to manage one production.
I kept thinking… why is this so hard? Why does software built for creative people feel like it was designed by someone who has never been on a set in their life?
So I built Shotly.
Not to compete with the tools that already exist. But to replace the whole mess of them. One platform that actually thinks the way a filmmaker thinks. That gets you from first draft to final call sheet without making you feel like you need a manual just to find the scheduling tab.
Shotly started as a fix for my own frustration. But it was always bigger than that. Independent filmmakers, emerging studios, production companies scaling up, they all deserve tools that work as hard as they do, without the price tag that assumes you're working with a Hollywood budget.
Pre-production Software was outdated and confusing.
So we fixed it.
I truly hope you enjoy using shotly.io as as much as I do.
All the best,
Jonathan