Short film pre-production software

Most pre-production software is sized for a feature: a full production office, several months of prep, somebody whose job is to keep the documents current. A short film keeps every obligation and loses every resource — and that gap, not the page count, is what derails the prep. A lost day costs a quarter of the shoot instead of a fortieth, and the budget attached to a grant application is expected in the same shape as one for a three-million film. The table below sets out the differences that matter when you are choosing a tool.

The entry point is the script, as a PDF or a Final Draft file. The AI splits it into scenes and pulls out everything that carries a cost or a constraint: locations, day or night, interior or exterior, cast present, costumes, props, vehicles, animals, effects, special technical needs. On twenty pages the first pass takes minutes where manual tagging takes an evening — but speed is not the real point. The breakdown is the database the shooting schedule, the call sheets and the budget are derived from: as long as it lives in a spreadsheet, those three documents are retyped by hand and drift apart at the first change. Nothing the AI proposes is applied without your approval: you review it scene by scene, correct what was misread and add what the script does not say.

A short film budget is small, but it is read by people who expect a familiar shape: accounts and sub-accounts, quantities and unit rates, crew and cast separated from goods and services, employer contributions and fringes calculated rather than guessed at the bottom of a column. Soldum builds that budget from the breakdown and the shooting schedule, so the quantities come from the script and the day count instead of from memory. That matters more on a short than anywhere else: with no production accountant on the team, an understated payroll line is discovered during the shoot, when there is no contingency left to absorb it. Excel and PDF exports are ready to attach to an application, and regenerate when the project moves.

Short films are financed by stacking sources: a regional or national film fund, a broadcaster or platform acquisition, a production company's own investment, a film school, crowdfunding, sponsorship in kind. No single source covers the film, and each of them wants to see the others. Soldum keeps a financing plan alongside the budget, so what is still uncovered is visible at any moment without maintaining a second spreadsheet. One thing worth knowing if you shoot in France or co-produce with a French partner: crew and cast costs are computed from French industry collective agreements — the sector-wide rate cards that set minimum pay and employer contributions — which is exactly the part nobody wants to research by hand for a four-day shoot. Wherever you shoot, eligibility rules and ceilings change: the tool helps you track applications, it does not verify the criteria for you.

Across four shooting days there is no slack: the schedule does not need to be optimal, it needs to be survivable. Soldum builds it from the breakdown, groups what shoots at the same location so you are not moving the company mid-afternoon, and takes into account cast availability — usually the real constraint on a short, where everyone has another job — and the working hours a small crew can realistically sustain. When a location falls through ten days out, you do not redraw the plan: you change the location and the schedule recalculates, along with the crew days, the equipment rental and the budget lines that depend on it. That is the most common event on a short film, and the most expensive one to handle by hand.

On a feature the call sheet comes from the production office; on a short it is written at midnight by the person directing the film, from a Word template found online, and it contradicts the schedule as soon as anything changes. Soldum generates it from the shooting schedule: one sheet per day, with the scene order, individual call times, locations and addresses, key contacts and the forecast weather. It is shared by link rather than as an attachment, which removes the most expensive question on a short shoot — who is holding the current version. When a day changes, the affected sheets are regenerated and the link stays the same.

Better said before you open an account. Soldum does not write your script and offers no text editor: writing is imported. It does not handle dailies, editing or sound post, which take up much of a short film's calendar. It files no application on your behalf and guarantees no funding: the tool prepares the documents, the committee decides. It does not replace scouting or negotiating with vendors either — the rates you obtain are still yours to enter. And on a three-minute film shot in an afternoon by two people, there is not much formal prep to automate: the value then comes down to the budget, if you have to submit one.

The lowest-risk test is a real script rather than a sample: upload your short and compare the breakdown you get with what you would have tagged by hand. The first project is free, which is enough to decide before committing to anything. On pricing, the subscription is billed per account rather than per seat: Solo at €149/month excl. VAT for one film at a time, Studio at €479/month excl. VAT for unlimited projects with the whole team invited at no extra cost per member, and 25% off with an annual commitment. On a short film that billing model changes the arithmetic: inviting eight people, several of whom are working for a credit, does not cost eight times as much.