PINEWOOD INVESTS IN FILMTECH STARTUP WE GOT POP

We Got POP (“POP”), the London-based film technology start-up, has closed a $660,000 (£462,000) investment round led by listed international film facilities giant Pinewood Group and high profile angel investors including entrepreneur and film producer Richard Northcott and ex-advertising executive and early stage tech investor Richard Fearn.

POP is an online platform for production to connect directly with the film-making community: crew and service providers alike. POP launched with an extras casting platform in September 2013, and through the agents and agencies using POP some of the most high profile films shot in the UK including Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens, Spectre and Everest have been cast and paid via the platform.

In contrast with traditional film industry service providers, POP’s focus is on technology innovation. Since 2014, POP has enabled entirely new ways of working for extras casting agents. Via the platform: POP offers agents a community of vetted artists; super fast software for checking availability and booking artist; and a completely managed payment process. This has been transformative for agents and agencies, allowing them unprecedented flexibility and the ability to focus on what they love – casting the right faces for productions large and small.

Jordan Brown, Production Accounts Department, Spectre says:

“Having worked on the accounts side of crowd processing on a number of major studio productions I had a good understanding of the downfalls of the system, so when I was shown the POP platform I could instantly see this was a game changer.”

The fresh infusion of capital will primarily be used to expand the product offering into crew management and prepare POP for launch in the US.

Kate McLaughlin, We Got POP’s Co-founder and CEO says:

“The film industry uses modern technology to great effect on camera and in distribution. However the actual production process is lagging far behind with a heavy reliance on paper and manual data entry. POP’s mission is to enable all people on production to work together seemlessly through one beautiful, integrated platform.”

“There is a growing appetite in the industry to employ technology to make the production process more efficient and flexible; and we have had a lot of interest in what we are doing. With the support of our investors, we are now in a great position to speed up the rolling out of new products for a large range of productions.”

Ivan Dunleavy, Pinewood’s CEO says:

“Pinewood are delighted to announce an investment in We Got POP. POP is a production specific technology platform that will offer our key partners an improved service for handling their management and payment of extras casting. With our investment we are looking forward to seeing POP expand into crew management. It is a business that can scale globally and we plan to assist its launch in the US.”