Introducing Telova: One Platform From Brief to Archive

A few months ago, I watched a producer nearly cry over a spreadsheet.

Not because of bad news. The project was actually going fine. She was upset because she'd spent four hours reconciling budget numbers across three different documents, only to discover that the version she'd been updating wasn't the one the client had signed off on. Four hours, gone. And she still didn't have an accurate number.

That night, I wrote the first line of code for what would become Telova.

Okay, that's a bit dramatic. The truth is we'd been thinking about this problem for a long time. But that moment crystalised something. The tools aren't broken individually. They're broken together. Or rather, they're broken because they don't work together at all. And nobody seems to be building the thing that connects them.

So we did.

What this thing actually is

Telova is a production management platform. Full lifecycle. Brief comes in, project gets built, production happens, post happens, client reviews, deliverables go out, everything gets archived. One platform. One login. One place where all the context lives.

I want to be specific about what I mean by that, because "one platform" is the kind of thing every SaaS company claims and few deliver.

I don't mean we took a project management tool and added a video player. I don't mean we built a review platform and bolted on some task columns. I mean we sat down with the actual workflow, intake to archive, every handoff, every decision point, and built each stage to flow into the next. The brief informs the budget. The budget tracks against real spend as it happens. Assets move through review with frame-accurate feedback. Deliverables get built against actual platform specs. Rights and contracts get archived so you can find them in two years.

Six stages. All connected. No copy-paste between tools.

Intake → Pre-production → Production → Post-production → Delivery → Archive.

Starting with the brief (because everything starts with the brief)

You set up an intake form for your workspace. Takes five minutes. Your clients or stakeholders fill it out: project type, what they need, when they need it, budget range, any reference material. It shows up in your requests queue, structured, with everything you need to make a decision.

Accept it, and it becomes a project with a brief already attached. That brief goes through an approval workflow that you define. Need the creative director to sign off before the client sees it? Done. Need the client's legal team to approve? They get a secure link and a PIN, no account required. Every approval, every comment, every revision is tracked.

No more email briefs. No more verbal scopes. No more "I think they approved it on that call last month." You can see where every brief stands. Right now. At a glance.

The days of chasing brief approval via email forwards and Slack nudges are over.

Pre-production that feels like pre-production

This is where we get opinionated, and I'm not going to apologise for it.

Most project management tools treat pre-production like a list of tasks. Check a box, move on. But pre-production isn't a checklist. It's building the foundation of everything that follows. You're assembling a crew. You're scouting locations. You're breaking down a script. You're planning shots. You're negotiating contracts. You're building a budget that has to survive contact with reality.

Telova handles all of that. Not as generic tasks, but as the actual things they are.

Crew, with 22 built-in roles from Director to Gaffer to Colourist, day rates, availability tracking, and a status flow from enquiry through to confirmation. Locations, with scouting photos, booking status, permit tracking. Scripts, versioned, with approvals. Shot lists, with camera angles, lens choices, movement types, storyboard uploads. Equipment, tracked by item, vendor, daily rate, booking status. Contracts for director deals, talent releases, music licenses, location permits. All in the project. Not in a folder somewhere. Not in someone's inbox.

And the budget. God, the budget. It's not a spreadsheet you update once a week. It lives inside the project with ten default categories: crew, equipment, locations, post, music, travel, catering, insurance, props, contingency. Every expense gets logged against a category. You can see budget versus actual at any moment. Not last Thursday's numbers. Right now.

Before you advance to production, Telova runs gate checks. Brief approved? Script signed off? Budget locked? Key crew confirmed? Contracts signed? Think of it as a pre-flight checklist. You can override it (we're not your mum) but it's there to catch the things that blow up on set because someone forgot to lock them down during prep.

On set, things move fast. So does this.

Shoot days. Call sheets. Daily production reports. Shot tracking. Budget updates.

Call sheets generate from your schedule and crew list. Crew confirm attendance through a link, no account needed, no app to download. The DPR captures what actually happened that day: first shot time, scenes completed, footage shot, equipment issues, incidents.

Here's the thing I'm most proud of. When the director wants to add an extra setup, you can see what it does to the budget before you say yes. Not after wrap. Not at the end of the week. Right there, on set, in the moment the decision is being made.

That's not a feature. That's a fundamental shift in how budget decisions get made during production.

Post-production, untangled

Post isn't one stage. It's seven. Rough cut. Fine cut. Picture lock. Colour. Sound. Mix. Master. Each with different people, different dependencies, different handoff points where things historically fall apart.

Telova models all seven. Each has its own task set. Each flows into the next. The asset management system underneath handles versioning, proxies, thumbnails, and folder organisation so nobody's ever working from the wrong cut and nobody's downloading 50GB files to check a grade.

When a cut's ready for review, you create a review session directly from the asset. Client gets a link and a PIN. They watch. They leave timecoded comments. If words aren't enough, they can draw on the frame. Arrows, circles, freehand. "This thing here, at this exact moment." No ambiguity.

"Make it pop" is no longer acceptable feedback when the client has annotation tools.

Comments are threaded. Decisions are tracked. You can see who approved what and when, what they said, and whether anyone contradicted them later. The entire review history lives with the asset, not in an email thread you'll never find again.

Delivery that knows what a spec sheet is

You define deliverables with actual specs: format, resolution, codec, destination platform. We have presets for the platforms people actually deliver to. YouTube 4K, Instagram Reels, TikTok, Facebook, UK Broadcast AS-11 DPP. Or build custom specs.

Each deliverable has a status: not started, in progress, ready, QC pass, QC fail, delivered, confirmed. No more "did we ever send the 9:16 version?" conversations. It's either delivered and confirmed or it isn't.

Archive like you'll actually need this stuff again (you will)

Everyone skips archiving. And everyone regrets it six months later when the client calls about re-licensing footage for a different market and nobody can find the talent releases.

Telova's archive stage tracks rights. Talent releases, music licenses, footage licenses, location releases, all with territories, platforms, and expiry dates. When someone asks "can we use this shot in the US market?" you check the rights record. Ten seconds. Done.

Retention policies control how long assets live. Storage tiers down automatically. Active files sit on fast storage, older stuff shifts to cheaper tiers, and masters get preserved at whatever level you set. You're not paying premium storage rates for footage nobody's touched in eight months.

Who actually uses this

Production companies running multiple projects across multiple clients. Post houses managing complex deliverable matrices. Agencies juggling client work with internal creative. Freelance filmmakers who are tired of running their business from a Notes app and a prayer. In-house creative teams handling 75% of their company's content with a fraction of the headcount they need.

We didn't build Telova for people who manage projects. We built it for people who make things.

What we deliberately didn't build

Telova doesn't edit video. That's Premiere, Resolve, Final Cut, and they're great at it. We're not competing with creative applications. We're replacing everything around them. The spreadsheets. The email approvals. The review platforms. The asset management systems. The scheduling tools. The budget trackers.

All the stuff that's not the creative work but somehow takes up most of your time doing the creative work.

Why right now

Content demand is up. Budgets are down, 15% year-over-year. Teams need to do more with less, and duct-taping 15 tools together isn't scaling.

Adobe spent $2.77 billion buying Workfront and Frame.io. Two tools that still don't fully talk to each other. That acquisition was a signal: creative production management is a massive category. But buying two puzzle pieces doesn't complete the puzzle.

91% of agencies are actively shopping for new tech. Not because they love software demos. Because what they have doesn't work.

We think we've built the right answer. But don't take our word for it.

Go try it

Sign up. Create a workspace. Run a project through it. The whole thing, brief to archive. See if it changes how your day feels.

No six-month implementation. No dedicated admin required. No "contact sales for pricing." Just start.

And then try going back to the spreadsheet.