Anyone who sees a film before the world does
Six kinds of people use a private screening. Find yours: what you are trying to do, how it is done today, and what changes with Lodge.
Producers
Get the film in front of a platform, a distributor or a co-producer — quickly, and before anyone else has seen it.
A Drive link or a file sent to an acquisitions inbox. Once it is sent, it is out of your hands: forwarded internally, downloaded, and still sitting in someone’s folder a year later.
Show the first act, or the whole film, at a time you agree. Every viewer’s name is on their screen, the room closes on time, and you get a report of who watched and for how long — useful when you follow up.
Directors & editors
Get notes on tonight’s edit from a producer or an actor who is in another city — without waiting for everyone to be in the same room.
Booking a preview theatre and lining up six diaries, or sending a rough export that then becomes “the version” people keep quoting.
Send the reel or the scene that needs notes. Everyone watches together, you pause the whole room on the same frame to talk it through on your usual call, and the clip is gone a week later — so old cuts do not circulate.
Studios, sales & distribution
Show a film to several buyers or exhibitors, fairly and without any of them learning who else is looking.
One screener link per buyer, each a full copy, each one more place the film can leak from — and no way to know if a buyer actually watched.
Invite each buyer by name. No guest can see the rest of the guest list — that is enforced in the database, not hidden in the interface. The report shows who turned up and how much they watched.
Platform & acquisitions teams
Watch submissions quickly and safely — and never be the team a leaked screener is traced back to.
Dozens of links and files from producers, each with a different login, many of them downloads that now live on a work laptop.
Open the invitation in a browser, type a six-digit code, watch. Nothing is installed and nothing is saved on your machine. The viewer pays nothing — a platform never needs a Lodge account.
Actors & their managers
See your scenes or the cut before release, privately, at a time that suits your schedule.
A file on your phone, or a copy sent to a manager, which is exactly where leaks get blamed.
A private screening at a time you pick, in any browser. Nothing lands on your phone, and the visible name on the screen protects you as much as the production: it shows the copy was yours and nobody else’s.
Music, VFX, dubbing & post
Get sign-off on your part — a song, a VFX sequence, a dub — without being sent, or sending, the whole film.
The whole film comes to you to review three minutes of it, and your studio becomes one more place a full copy lives.
The production shares only your sequence. You watch it together, agree the notes, and the report records that approval was given, and when.
Pitching a film to a streaming platform
A week, from finished cut to follow-up. Names and times are illustrative; the steps are exactly what Lodge does.
Choose the part
A producer in Mumbai has a finished cut and a meeting request from a streaming platform. She marks the first 38 minutes — the part that sells the film. Lodge makes a clip of exactly that.
Invite by name
She invites four people at the platform by email: the acquisitions lead, two colleagues and their head of content. They choose Thursday, 8:00 pm IST. Each gets a calendar invite with no link in it.
The seat check
As they open their rooms, the producer sees green, amber or red for each person — one is on a slow connection, and there is still time to tell them.
Watch together
Thirty-eight minutes, all four watching at once, each with their name on their screen. She pauses the room twice to answer a question on their usual video call.
It closes
Ten minutes’ warning, then the room goes dark. Nobody holds a copy; there is no link to forward. A week later the clip itself is deleted.
The follow-up
Her report shows all four joined and three watched to the end. She follows up knowing that — and if a recording ever surfaced, the name on it would say whose screen it was.
Does one of these sound like your week?
Tell us what you need to show and to whom. A person replies, usually within a working day.