craig roberts

Source: Tom Wood

Craig Roberts

UK filmmaker Craig Roberts has joined with entrepreneur Craig Heyworth to launch FILMD, an online platform to enable film professionals to connect and collaborate.

The app-based platform has been in development for 18 months ahead of its launch this month, and has recorded 650 members already.

A mission statement for FILMD notes ‘two major pain points’ that it is looking to solve. First, the issue it defines as ‘to get work, you need work’ – the difficulties many aspiring filmmakers have in getting first projects underway. The app gives users the ability to create projects, produce roles for them and seek out talent to join to create them.

Second, FILMD has identified an issue of collaboration: ‘you could be around the corner from an aspiring filmmaker and have no idea’. It is attempting to solve this with a Google-provided mapping system, through which users can search for other FILMD members near them by location, profession, skillset, equipment and name.

FILMD is free for the first three months, then priced at £9.95 per month.

Roberts broke out as an actor with the lead role in Richard Ayoade’s 2010 feature Submarine, and was named a Screen Star of Tomorrow the same year. He has now made three features as a director: 2015’s Just Jim, 2019’s Eternal Beauty and 2021’s The Phantom of the Open, the first two of which he also wrote.

He is co-founder of FILMD with Heyworth, who will also act as CEO. Heyworth’s previous ventures include Yeti, an app development agency; while he is chief technology officer for pet insurance comparison website Pet Insurer.

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