Filmustage 3.0: AI Budgeting, Smarter Templates, Call Sheets & VFX v2

At Filmustage, we’re always working to make pre-production easier and more efficient. This time, we’re rolling out one of our most requested features: AI-powered budgeting. Instead of spending hours filling out spreadsheets or relying on guesswork, you can now generate a draft production budget in seconds. We’ve also upgraded budget templates, streamlined fringe management, improved the interface, completely reworked Call Sheets, and introduced smarter tools for managing VFX — all designed to make your daily planning faster, smoother, and more reliable.

Here’s a closer look at what’s new and how it can help you save time, stay organized, and focus on the creative work.

🧠 AI Budgeting Has Arrived

You asked. We delivered.
The long-awaited AI Budgeting feature is now live — and it changes everything. Instead of spending hours filling in spreadsheets or guessing line items based on past experience, you can now generate a draft production budget in seconds, directly from your script breakdown and project data.

How AI Budgeting works:

• 🧩 Data-Driven Inputs: It analyzes your script breakdown tags, Day-to-Day schedule data, and any manual inputs you've added — understanding the real scope of your production.
• 🌐 Powered by Open Sources : Our system references a wide range of reliable, publicly available financial data to estimate costs based on standard industry practices.
• 🎬 Guild & Union Rates
  Official wages by crew type from U.S. guilds and unions.
• 🏠 Rental Costs from Partners
  Real prices for locations, wardrobe, props, and equipment.
• 📊 Your historical budget data (account-level only) — COMING SOON
  Data from your previous projects available in your account.

What you get is not just a rough guess — it’s a smart, contextual starting point tailored to your script and production needs. You’ll receive an AI-assisted version of your budget that reflects the complexity, scale, and structure of your specific project — giving you something solid to work from and refine, instead of a blank page.

This is budgeting, reimagined for the modern filmmaker.

📤 Is budget data from my previous projects used in estimation?

Currently data from your previous projects is not used for budget calculations. Soon, they’ll also be used to enhance AI budgeting on your account.

• 🔒 Private to your account only
• 🚫 Not used to train AI models
• 🧩 Used only to improve your own cost calculations

Your data stays yours — always.

📁 Smarter Budget Templates

You loved our budget templates — and since their release, they’ve become one of the most popular features on Filmustage. But we knew they could go further. While the original version helped structure your projects, it didn’t retain the real financial data that makes templates truly powerful. That’s why we’ve taken them to the next level.

With our enhanced template system, you can now create fully-loaded templates that include not just categories and layout, but all the actual data you’ve entered — from rates and fringes to line items and cost values.

Now you can:

• Save templates with all entered data — from rates and fringes to line items.
• Launch new projects with everything pre-filled.
• Maintain consistency across your productions without repetitive setup.

Whether you're building a short, a series, or a feature, these enhanced templates give you a fast, consistent starting point — and keep your budgeting style streamlined across projects.

🧾 Enhanced Fringe Management

Fringes — those additional costs tied to crew benefits, taxes, insurance, and more — are a crucial part of budgeting. But when you're juggling multiple projects, managing them manually can be error-prone and time-consuming.

That's why we reimagined how it works.

What’s new:

• Default fringes are automatically added when you start a budget.
• All fringes are centralized in a new sidebar for quicker access.
• Edit and sync across multiple budgets — keep your data consistent.
• Use search to easily find and manage large fringe lists.

These upgrades eliminate repetitive data entry, reduce the risk of inconsistencies, and make managing fringes across multiple budgets faster and more reliable — no matter the size or complexity of your production.

🖥️ Interface & Workflow Enhancements

Alongside templates and fringe improvements, we’ve made additional interface updates to streamline your experience:

🧩 Simplified Project Info Block

The Project Info section is now cleaner and less visually distracting — so you can focus on what matters.

💱 Currency Switch

Need to work in euros or pounds? You can now change your currency display in the budget (note: this is visual only — no automatic conversion is applied).

A cleaner workspace and flexible currency display help you focus on what really matters — the content and cost of your production.

📬 Upgraded Call Sheets

Once your budget is set and your project is structured, the next challenge is coordinating your team — day by day, shoot by shoot. That’s why we completely reimagined Call Sheets to make daily planning and crew communication easier than ever. This isn't just a visual refresh — it's a smarter, more connected system that integrates deeply into your project workflow, reduces repetitive tasks, and improves clarity for everyone involved.

Now you can:

• Store call sheet data structurally inside templates.
• Use the new My Contacts panel to save and reuse contact info.
• Email call sheets directly from the platform, with delivery confirmations.
• Enjoy a cleaner, more intuitive layout.

Whether you’re managing a one-day commercial shoot or coordinating a full season of episodic television, the new Call Sheets system helps you keep your team aligned and informed — with less hassle.

🥷 AI VFX Breakdown v2

This update introduces the ability to add custom parameters when applying the VFX Breakdown to your script. Custom parameters let you tailor the breakdown process to focus on specific types of visual effects — like detecting only explosions — so you can isolate and work on particular elements without being overwhelmed by everything at once. This targeted approach helps streamline your workflow and makes it easier to plan, budget, and delegate VFX tasks more efficiently. You can now also edit the breakdown results to better suit your creative needs.

🚀 What’s Coming Next

With your budgets optimized, templates streamlined, and daily coordination made seamless, we’re not stopping there. The next evolution of Filmustage is already underway — and it's all about giving you even more control and customization through AI. We’re building a Budget Optimization tool to help you:

• Compare costs in other countries
• See rebates & incentives
• Reconfigure team/service setups for lower cost
• Personalize estimates using your previous project budgets

This roadmap is designed to give you maximum flexibility and accuracy — with AI doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes. Stay tuned!