New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Castifi completely handled casting and managing extras over 26 days of production... As a result, we had more free time to focus on creating the best series possible.
Castifi, a film tech startup based in Culver City, announced today its involvement with Stargate: Origins, a prequel to MGM's franchise Stargate, which was produced by New Form Entertainment.
Castifi provides a software platform for film productions to find, hire, manage, and pay cast and crew members. This enables productions to source from Castifi's vetted network of thousands, sending all start paperwork, time cards, and payroll digitally through one of their integrated payroll partners. Castifi was used by the production teams for the show Stargate: Origins during casting, which resulted in operational efficiencies and reduced costs.
The Stargate: Origins team utilized Castifi's Cast & Crew Member app, as well as its On Set app to manage the production. While casting, Stargate: Origins production team sourced background actors through the platform. Once selected, the background actors received a notification about the production call time, location address, wardrobe photos, and hair/makeup notes, through the Cast & Crew Member app.
Background Actors then confirmed their availability and attendance, which notified the production they would be attending. Once the actors arrived on set, the production assistant used the Castifi On Set app to clock them in/out and add pay bumps. The PA also received alerts when background actors were approaching overtime. Once wrapped, the payroll was automatically calculated based on the digital time cards and ready for payroll submission.
Stargate: Origins will follow the adventures of young Catherine Langford, a character from both the film and TV versions of "Stargate." MGM's official statement explains that the new series "will explore a brand new chapter in Catherine Langford's early history surrounding the extraordinary portal. Young Catherine embarks on an unexpected adventure to unlock the mystery of what lies beyond the Stargate in order to save Earth from unimaginable darkness."
With Castifi's platform, New Form Entertainment was able to streamline the casting process and reduce hours of administrative tasks and paperwork processing. Castifi sourced all background actors through their booking platform, sent tax and release forms electronically, tracked time digitally via their app, and paid out the actors within 24-hours.
"We know that New Form produces great stories with talented, highly efficient production teams… they were the perfect partner to use Castifi throughout their process," says Castifi CEO and founder Rumala Sheikhani.
"Castifi completely handled casting and managing extras over 26 days of production. Many of these were specific looks and specialty extras. As a result, we had more free time to focus on creating the best series possible," adds Michael McGarry, Senior
Director of Production at New Form Entertainment.
Extras casting and crew management are common problems for production companies as they scale for distribution into Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, and other streaming platforms. Castifi has built a unique system from the ground up offering last mile support by providing proprietary software for production teams on set.
About Castifi Inc.
Castifi is a digital platform to find, hire, manage, and pay cast and crew. The current industry standard of casting and managing production staff is a paper-based process of time cards, paperwork, and cutting physical checks for everyone on set. Moving from public accounting to production accounting, CEO/Founder Rumala Sheikhani was inspired to create software tools to improve efficiency and streamline casting and crew management. Castifi was founded in 2015, and now over two hundred and fifty productions later; the company is living the vision of digital cast and crew sourcing, management, and payroll.
For more information about Castifi, visit https://www.castifi.com or follow them on Instagram @castifiapp to see what they're up to.
About New Form Entertainment
New Form is an entertainment studio that redefines how stories are developed, packaged and distributed. New Form empowers creators and audiences to produce original narratives that transcend traditional categories and platforms. Watch New Form series on a variety of global outlets, including CW's The Seed, Refinery29, Fullscreen and go90. Learn more at NewForm.com or follow us @NewForm.
