Give crew some time back.
I’m Van — a stagehand with a tech and operations background. I work on sets, I see the repetitive paperwork and improvised systems we all live with, and I keep thinking: there has to be an easier way.
Backlot Cafe is starting as a place where I’m building small tools to automate the boring parts of production life — so crew, department heads and production teams can get hours back. The bigger vision is exactly what the name suggests: a literal backlot cafe for film people — a place to crew up, find useful tools, source what you need, share practical knowledge and eventually bring every department into one useful industry hub.
Tools I’m building.
Some are already running on real workdays. Others are prototypes being shaped around crew feedback.
DTR + Weekly Timesheets
Mobile-first time capture, travel, weekly paperwork, PDF generation and payroll workflows without rebuilding the same week by hand.
Runsheets
Turn buying, pickups, returns, vehicles and department runs into something easier to hand off, update and actually follow.
Marketplace + Sourcing
Film-specific ISO, props, materials, rentals and vendor knowledge where solved requests become reusable production intelligence instead of disappearing in a feed.
Crew Exchange
Availability, trusted crew pools, referrals and vouches modeled around how Keys, Leads and crew coordinators already find people — without replacing official union dispatch systems.
What would give you hours back?
Tell me the annoying thing your department repeats every day or every show. The smaller and more boring it sounds, the more interested I probably am.
Crew, Keys, Leads, coordinators, production office, vendors — I’m interested in where the friction actually is.