CBS Television Studios x Funny or Die

The Challenge

CBS has long held the title of one of media’s biggest networks. As part of a push toward digital, CBS recently chose to launch a digital streaming platform, featuring the enormously popular Australian TV show No Activity re-imagined as a digital series for a US audience. Digital series distributed directly to audiences present a new set of challenges for traditional broadcast networks - in this case, No Activity needed to be ready for distribution within 30 days of the shoot. They also needed over 115 extras over the course of the 19-day shoot.

As CBS continues to invest in digital content, turning around viewer-ready content in shorter and shorter timeframes presents a challenge for the studio. CBS needed to find a shortcut to save time and money without sacrificing quality. On a fast-paced studio show with thousands of dollars being spent by the minute, there was zero room for error.

Our Solution

Castifi’s digital-first background casting platform fit the bill for CBS’s challenge of turning No Activity around quickly. Instead of shouldering the burden and spending precious staff time dealing with insurance, paperwork, management, and payment, CBS was able to streamline the production by passing on extras management to Castifi. Using Castifi’s app, the production was able to track their own time on set, fill out union and non-union paperwork, and generate digital pay vouchers seamlessly.

According to Unit Production Manager Cyndi Brenner, “working with Castifi saved my team a lot of headache,” totally eliminating a large amount of paperwork for a background-heavy shoot and allowing unprecedented control over the process. For new media, traditional solutions simply don’t cut it, and that’s where technology-aided solutions like Castifi can make a dramatic difference.