After almost a year of development, I finally hit the moment I'd been waiting for — I uploaded Filmari to App Store Connect. Huge milestone. I'm excited, but honestly, it's a little nerve-wracking too. Good time to look back.
I've been into filmmaking and cameras for twenty years. Started out as a naive cameraman shooting wildlife just for myself — the occasional music video, a short art film for friends from film school. Somehow, almost without noticing, I ended up in TV production, where I started picking up real-world experience. Great times. Flying out for news shoots, pulling all-nighters in the edit suite. I look back on that fondly.
The last few years I've shifted more toward live streaming — lots of gear, lots of computers, and above all, lots of calculations. Simplifying things has always been in my DNA. That's how my first calculator came about: Time to Seconds. I needed to log video duration in seconds when uploading to FTP. Did it by hand for a bit like a dutiful grunt, but my brain was already screaming — this isn't sustainable. So Time to Seconds Calculator was born.
More tools followed, and it hit me that it'd be nice to have everything in one place, in a single app. Last year I dove into Filmari. It went through a lot of changes — a complete wipe and a clean rebuild — anyone who's been through a development cycle knows exactly what I'm talking about. But gradually it started taking shape into something functional and, said with a little humility, actually usable.
Why one app?
It's not like similar tools don't exist online. They do. But what drove me nuts was the endless list of browser bookmarks — every tool on a different site, every site with a different interface. Having everything in one place just works better for me.
As the app grew, an idea clicked: some tools are great as standalone utilities, but others only make sense in the context of a specific project. That's how the Projects section came to be — a place where you can build out a script, put together a shot list, compile your gear, and set up a budget.
Budget Planner — my favorite
Speaking of budgets — this tool is one of my favorites in the whole app. In filmmaking forums I regularly see younger cameramen struggling with pricing their work. They pull numbers out of thin air, they're afraid to ask for a fair rate, or they simply don't think through all the costs that come with a shoot.
The budget system in Filmari is built to tackle that problem systematically — from hourly rates and gear costs to taxes and overtime rules. I wrote more about this in a separate article on pricing.
Shooting — no more winging it
The second big struggle for filmmakers starting out: showing up on set with no prep and just going freestyle. I was exactly like that. Grab the camera, fingers crossed, hope it works out.
Over time I switched to the old-school approach — before every shoot, even casual ones, I'd sit down with pen and paper and write out what I wanted to capture. On set your head is full of a million other things, and without a record it's easy to just forget a scene entirely.
In the app, that's what the Shooting section is for — a place to map out your scenes and shots before you roll. A digital shot list and technical script in one. And it doesn't stop at the shot list — there's also an on-set mode where you can log takes for each shot, tag them with your own tags, and export everything for the edit. When you come back from a shoot with 300 clips and sit down to edit it a week later, that export is the difference between finding your bearings and drowning in chaos.
Business model: no subscription, no data
I had to include some paid features to at least cover costs. I went back and forth on a subscription model for a long time — theoretically stable income, a lot of people recommended it. But as an old-school filmmaker I decided to go the other way — one-time payment, in the spirit of DaVinci Resolve.
The whole app is free and fully functional. If you're a hobby filmmaker, you can use it for years for free — with just one limit: you can have one active project and one inventory list at a time. If you reach the point where you're juggling multiple projects and need more inventory lists, there's a one-time fee that unlocks those. No hidden charges, no subscriptions.
The other thing I wanted to avoid is data mining. A lot of apps present themselves as free, but in the background they're harvesting your data, spamming you, and so on — we all know how that goes. Filmari has no accounts, no servers of mine. All your data stays on your device unless you choose to share it yourself — whether that's a PDF for a client, a CSV for your accountant, or an inventory list for a colleague. Device sync runs through CloudKit.
And fully offline mode? That was the plan from day one. Cameramen often end up off the grid on a shoot, and the app has to work there too.
Alright, I got a little carried away. I'll keep posting about updates and new features as they come — stay tuned.