About
By a spark, for the crew.
TimeMachine started in the notes app. Best boying a shoot means keeping the department’s timesheets, and for years that meant eight or more crew’s call, lunch and wrap handwritten into a phone at the end of the day, then every rate, overtime hour and penalty worked out by hand, one person at a time. Building the calculator was easier than staying the calculator.
I’m Declan Patrick Duffy, a best boy in the lighting department, over five years in the film industry across long form and commercials. TimeMachine is the tool I needed on my own jobs.
Where the figures come from
The rates on this site are the APA card figures, taken from the published Recommended Crew Terms. Where TimeMachine’s defaults differ from the card, the rate page says so in the open: Best Boy carries the Programmable Lighting Desk Op figure because the card has no Best Boy grade, Lighting Trainee is an app default because it is not an APA grade at all, and rigging follows the Bectu rates because that is what riggers actually take. I keep the terms current, track the changes as they land, and stay in contact with union representatives.
When something breaks
A bug report here goes to the person who wrote the code, and gets fixed. That is the whole pipeline. The address is feedback@timemachineapp.co.uk.
On your data
I’m just not interested in your data. That is the whole privacy position: no accounts, no tracking, your shoots on your phone and nowhere else. The privacy page has the long version, and you can check the short one in your browser’s developer tools.
TimeMachine is an independent tool for UK film and television crew, built and run by one person. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Advertising Producers Association (APA), and it references the publicly available APA Recommended Crew Terms as a rate reference only. This is general information, not legal or financial advice.