Fifteen years ago, I spent six months of my life doing something that nearly broke me. I was working for the second biggest telecom company in France, and my CEO asked me to renegotiate a thousand vendor contracts. Simple enough, right? Wrong. I spent months crawling through filing cabinets, building a massive Excel spreadsheet with 52 columns and 500 rows, then sending hundreds of Word documents back and forth to negotiate terms.
Every night, I came home asking myself the same question: Why are we managing contracts like it’s 1985 when we have software for everything else?
That experience eventually led me to found Concord, but more importantly, it opened my eyes to how broken contract management is across industries. And nowhere is this more painful than in independent filmmaking.
The Hidden Time Sink Killing Indie Productions
Last week, I was talking to an independent filmmaker friend who’d just wrapped her first feature. “You know what nobody tells you about making movies?” she said. “It’s not the 16-hour shoot days that kill you. It’s the paperwork.”
She wasn’t exaggerating. Independent filmmakers juggle an astronomical number of contracts: actor agreements, crew deal memos, location releases, music licenses, equipment rentals, distribution deals, investor agreements, and dozens more. Each one traditionally involves downloading templates from sketchy websites, customizing them in Word, emailing them back and forth for revisions, printing them out for signatures, then scanning and filing them somewhere you’ll hopefully remember.
One producer I know estimated she spent 30% of her pre-production time just managing contracts. That’s time not spent on shot lists, not spent with actors, not spent actually making the film.
The Democracy of Professional Tools
Here’s what excites me about where we’re heading: We’re witnessing the democratization of professional tools in real-time. My grandmother uses an iPhone – a device more powerful than the computers that sent humans to the moon. She doesn’t need a manual. She doesn’t need training. It just works.
The same transformation is happening with contract management software. What used to require lawyers, filing systems, and administrative armies can now be handled by a filmmaker with a laptop and an internet connection.
Think about what this means: An indie filmmaker in Austin can now access the same caliber of contract management tools that major studios use. They can collaborate on agreements in real-time, like editing a Google Doc. They can track which contracts are pending, which are signed, and which are expiring. They can pull up any agreement instantly from their phone while on set.
Why “Good Enough” Isn’t Good Enough Anymore
In my journey building Concord, I learned something crucial: You don’t invent simplicity, you craft it. This is why we removed features that only 1% of users needed, even though they were already built. Less is more, especially when you’re trying to democratize access to professional tools.
The same principle applies to how indie filmmakers should think about their contract processes. Those generic templates you downloaded? They’re probably outdated. That filing system on your laptop? One crashed hard drive away from disaster. Those email threads with seventeen different versions of the same contract? Good luck finding the right one six months from now.
More importantly, as the film industry becomes increasingly professional at every level, “good enough” contract management can sink your project. One missed clause in a music license can prevent distribution. One poorly written investor agreement can tie up your film in legal battles for years. One unsigned location release can force expensive reshoots.
The 90% Rule That Changes Everything
Here’s a statistic that might surprise you: Over 90% of contracts executed on our platform have zero negotiation. They just get signed.
This mirrors what I see happening in independent film. Most of your contracts – crew deals, equipment rentals, location agreements – are standard. They don’t need three weeks of back-and-forth. They need to be clear, professional, and signed quickly so everyone can get back to the creative work.
This is where modern contract lifecycle management software shines. Instead of starting from scratch with each agreement, you build a library of templates. Hiring a new grip? Pull up your crew deal memo template, customize the rate and dates, send it for signature. Done in minutes, not hours.
From Chaos to Clarity
Remember that filmmaker friend I mentioned? She’s prepping her second feature now, but this time she’s using cloud-based contract management. “It’s like switching from typewriter to computer,” she told me. “I can’t imagine going back.”
She showed me her dashboard: Every contract for her new project organized in one place. Green checkmarks showing what’s signed. Yellow alerts for agreements expiring soon. Red flags for anything that needs attention. Click any contract to see its full history – who viewed it, who commented, who signed, when.
But here’s what really excites her: She can share specific contracts with her investor without giving them access to everything. She can collaborate with her entertainment lawyer on distribution agreements without endless email attachments. She can pull up any agreement on her phone to reference during a production meeting.
The Future Is Already Here
Just as my grandmother doesn’t need to understand how her iPhone works to video call her grandchildren, filmmakers shouldn’t need law degrees to manage their contracts professionally. The technology exists today to transform contract chaos into organized efficiency.
This isn’t about replacing lawyers – you’ll still need them for complex negotiations and specialized agreements. It’s about freeing filmmakers from administrative burden so they can focus on what they do best: telling stories.
I spent six months of my life managing contracts manually, and it nearly drove me to quit the business world entirely. No filmmaker should have to go through that. In an industry where time is money and creative energy is precious, every hour spent wrestling with Word documents is an hour not spent making movie magic.
The tools exist. The transformation is happening. The only question is: How much more time are you willing to waste before making the switch?
Matt Lhoumeau is the co-founder and CEO of Concord, a contract management platform trusted by over 1,500 companies. After spending six months manually managing contracts at a telecom company, he founded Concord to ensure no one else would have to endure that experience. Originally from France, Matt now lives in Austin, Texas, where he continues to advocate for making professional tools accessible to everyone.
