FAQs

All kinds of productions use TiM to onboard their crewmembers and cast: from studio feature films to television series to commercials and even web series. Over 25,000 crewmembers have been onboarded across the country using TiM. That’s a lot of paper saved!

Fair question! We built TiM based on our on-set experience, feeling the struggle of crew and production alike to manage unwieldy amounts of information with the crude instruments of pen, ink and paper. (Not for nothing, but did you know the latest innovation in everyday ink pen technology occurred in 1888, with the invention of the mighty ballpoint? Just sayin’.)

As working union crewmembers, we felt the pain of going from show to show and having to fill out all that same information again each time… and being ADs, we doubly felt the pain of having to track down and manage all that paper from crewmembers who, understandably, were more interested in getting to work crewing than writing their Social Security Number and withholding allowances over and over.

Thus, with lots and lots of input from our fellow crewmembers and production management veterans, we went forth and built a system designed to be as pain-free as possible… for both sides.

So, why should you use it?

For crewmembers: The ability to create a free, lasting account of your own online, which can then be used to auto-generate all your paperwork on any show using TiM, is a giant saver of time and toil. Once you’ve been set up on one show this way, the next show will be even easier, as you basically just click through your paperwork online to make it official. You can do it from your phone in less than a minute!

For productions: Never chase down another piece of paper from your crewmembers on set. Never make another checklist of who has gotten which parts of their startwork back to you, or wonder what happened to that one W-4 that that one guy in craft services swears he left on your PO desk and really doesn’t want to fill out again. Just look at a single hellotim.com screen to see at a glance what packets are outstanding… and click to send reminders if needed.

But don’t take just our word for it. Scroll through our home page to find some helpful testimonials from the happy people we’ve been happy to help.

This is the point in the conversation where we say: we are not labor attorneys. Nor are we a payroll service. However, if you’re working with one of the Big Three production payroll providers – Cast & Crew, EP or Media Services – you’ll be happy to know we have templates aplenty waiting for you to use, with all the forms they require for given states!

Of course, we always include I-9s and W-4s for employees, and W-9s for loanouts. And you can add your own documentation specific to your company, and customize the fillable fields and signing features via our intuitive form builder.

The short answer is: because the government says you need to. You may be accustomed to paying crew members as independent contractors, but there are a lot of reasons you shouldn’t. Did we mention we’re not labor attorneys? We are definitely not labor attorneys.

We’re also not the tax police. But TiM is for onboarding crewmembers the right way, and that means hiring them as employees, even if it’s short-term. Most likely you’ll be working with an employer-of-record payroll service, and they’ll require you to do all your onboarding by the book anyway.

You bet! We spread the love to all kinds of shoots. Whether you set up your crewmembers once per year and have them work on multiple jobs, or onboard them separately for each project… the TiM solution is designed to work for you. Our commercial clients are realizing the efficiencies of being able to focus more on creative, and less on paperwork.

It’s no problem to pay loanout corps via TiM. When you send your packets, you’ll be able to pick a slimmed-down Loanout template to send to your performers and crewmembers who want to be paid under their established corp. Plus they’ll be able to upload their articles of organization or incorporation into TiM to submit with their startwork, saving you beaucoup time.

TiM stands for Time is Money. We know how true this is on production, where there’s seemingly just never enough time to do everything you want and need to do artistically, and the meter is always running. We know that every hour a crewmember spends filling out paper not only kills a tree and crushes a unicorn, but literally takes them away from making the project that much more of a success for everyone. That hurts us in our hearts.

More than that, we landed on the name “TiM” because we wanted this whole process to be approachable and easy, like having a little friend on set with you. Say hello to TiM.

If you’re a production, just contact us here for more info or to schedule a demo.

If you’re a crewmember, feel free to Sign Up now for free, even if you haven’t been invited by a production yet.

We can’t wait to have you say hello to TiM!