Meet Stephen And Matthew | Co-founders of Cinematic Apps

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stephen And Matthew and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stephen and Matthew, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Between us, we have over 50 years of experience in entertainment production working on feature films, television, commercials, documentaries, shorts, animation, and TV news production management. We’ve worked in more than 30 countries on budgets ranging from $300K to $200M. We’ve been on sets with James Cameron, produced for Netflix, Amazon, Paramount, and AppleTV, and managed Emmy award-winning animated series. We know production inside and out.

Through all of that, we kept running into the same problem: the tools producers rely on haven’t meaningfully evolved in decades. They’re essentially glorified calculators—digital paper that adds up whatever you type but doesn’t actually understand how production works. Every producer we know has felt that frustration, and we’ve seen it firsthand in Stephen’s r/FilmTVBudgeting Reddit community, with over 6,800 members. It’s a space he created to invite industry professionals to ask questions, share tips, and discuss the realities of film and TV budgeting. We’ve found that people are spending weeks on manual data entry, hunting for rates, cross-referencing disconnected spreadsheets, and stitching together workarounds just to get a budget that’s close to accurate. That’s time taken away from the creative, strategic work that producers actually got into the industry to do.

We kept saying to each other, “Why hasn’t anyone fixed this?” And eventually we realized we were the ones who should. Not because we’re software people, but because we’re producers. We’ve lived these pain points on every continent, on every kind of show. We didn’t want to build another tool based on how things have always been done. We wanted to reimagine the entire workflow from scratch, grounded in how producers actually work. That’s how Line was born.

What should our readers know about your business?
Line PM is a modern, end-to-end production management system designed to replace outdated and inefficient production workflow built by industry professionals for industry professionals. Our first product, Line Budgeter, launched in early March and it tackles one of the most foundational and time-consuming tasks in production: budgeting.

What sets us apart is that we didn’t just put a new skin on an old spreadsheet. We built an entirely new budgeting system from the ground up. Every feature reflects real problems we’ve actually had to solve on productions, budgeting from partial scripts, juggling multiple international locations and tax incentive schemes, managing crew changes mid-project, keeping legacy templates from breaking. We took all of that painful, lived reality and turned it into smart, intuitive automation.

Line Budgeter has features no other tool offers. We built the industry’s first fully integrated Cash Flow tool, which gives producers predictive insight into when and how money is being spent. It’s a task that used to take hours or even days, done in seconds. We have Global Integrated Ratebooks so producers can pull accurate union and non-union rates from countries around the world directly into a budget. There’s real-time online collaboration, a dynamic reporting system, offline mode for on-location shoots, a Pre-Flight Checklist based on decades of production knowledge, and deep customization so the tool adapts to your project.

Was building this easy? Not even close. We were building something that didn’t exist while still working as active producers. We had to challenge the most dangerous phrase in production, “We’ve always done it this way.” Every feature required us to step back and ask hard questions about how things actually work versus how they’ve been done by default. That took time, testing, and a lot of honest conversations with other producers.

The response from the industry has been incredibly validating. Beta testers have called it “revolutionary” and “fresh thinking from the ground up.” One producer told us it’s the first budgeting tool that feels like a producer built it. That kind of feedback reminds us why we started this, which is to give producers the tools they deserve so they can spend less time fighting software and more time bringing stories to life.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
In no particular order, we’d have to visit the California Science center and check out the recently completed Endeavour exhibit. Grab a bite to eat at Momed. Hit up Highland Park Bowl. Dodgers game if they were in town. Mexican for dinner at either old or new like El Cholo or Desvelados.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Stephen would like to give a shoutout to Delia Circelli. She was the first person to really give him a chance. Sure, others had hired him before he worked with Delia, but she truly took him under her wing. He worked on perhaps eight projects with her, advancing from PA to Coordinator.

Their first meeting happened when Stephen really wanted to work on a project with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Delia was the Coordinator, and after Stephen came into the office on the Warner Bros. lot perhaps six times asking to be hired, she finally asked, “If I hire you, will you stop bothering me?” He started the very next Monday.

After that film, he was hired on Titanic. He was so happy that he called her to share the news, but she told him to quit that show and come work for her instead. He did, and that led to a wonderful working relationship on film after film for years.
Years later, Stephen needed some real help on a project where he was shifting into a bigger role. He called her, and she came to work with him. It was never awkward because he knew she did everything to help him shine. He deeply values her kindness and guidance during those early years of his career.

Website: http://line.pm/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewcuny/

Other: https://www.reddit.com/r/FilmTVBudgeting/