First Take
A crew matching platform born from personal frustration.
Ten years ago I made a short film in a small town and struggled endlessly to find actors, editors, and musicians. Not because they didn't exist, but because there was nowhere to look. That problem hasn't gone away. Across India, thousands of independent filmmakers have the talent and the intent and no way to find each other.
Before building anything I looked at why FrontRow failed. The lesson was that dreamer audiences don't convert. People who want to have made a film will always outnumber people actually making one, and a platform full of the former is dead on arrival.
First Take connects zero budget filmmakers by city and craft. Phase 1 is a scroll driven 3D experience that walks you through the idea before landing on a waitlist, with traffic coming organically through Instagram.
Calls I made
- Launch in two cities instead of all of India, because crew matching only works where there's density
- Use my own Instagram audience as the test channel rather than paying for traffic
- Set a signup threshold the six week test has to clear before I build the matching engine
- Make "Walk the set" the primary action once I saw visitors skipping straight to the form
- Ask for recent project activity at signup, to filter for doers rather than aspirants
