For award-winning film Mountains, payroll used to be a steep climb.
Overview
For Robert Colom, a Miami-born writer and producer, filmmaking is—at its best—a reflection of home. In addition to being an artist deeply rooted in his hometown’s vibrant, collaborative film community, Colom serves as a programmer for Third Horizon Film Festival, an annual event celebrating diverse voices in cinema.
Colom’s passion for Miami is one he shares with his collaborator, writer and director Monica Sorelle, whom he met while working as a production assistant on Moonlight. Inspired by the rapidly changing landscape of Miami’s neighborhoods, the pair dreamt up the idea for their award-winning film Mountains, a film set in Little Haiti against the backdrop of encroaching gentrification.
Told primarily in Haitian Creole, Mountains follows a demolition worker dismantling the very streets he calls home, exploring themes of identity, community, and the American dream.
But when it came to getting Colom and Sorelle’s vision from script to screen, payroll proved daunting. Colom needed a payroll provider that could make the process of getting his team paid easy and hassle-free, freeing him up to focus on his creative vision.
He needed Wrapbook.
The Problem
As Mountains marked Colom’s debut as a feature film producer, he was eager to find any tools that could support him in navigating the complexities of production. Pre-production began in 2021, followed by filming in 2022, and while Robert was excited, he faced a steep learning curve.
“I didn’t know what I didn’t know,” Colom says, and the process of handling SAG-AFTRA Ultra Low Budget paperwork proved to be particularly daunting.
“The SAG process was very tricky for us. It was nerve-wracking, because we had never worked on a union feature before at this level. I was really nervous about making mistakes.”
On top of that, managing the requirements for tax documents, payroll, and crew onboarding further added to Colom’s stress. “I was worried about unknowingly breaking rules or missing critical details,” Colom admits. Knowing that these elements were essential to the film’s success, Colom needed a payroll system that could take the guesswork out of compliance and simplify the paperwork.
That’s when he found Wrapbook.
Why Wrapbook?
When Colom began exploring his options for Mountains, he considered several legacy payroll providers, but quickly found they didn’t offer the functionality or modern technology he needed for his project. Traditional payroll solutions felt outdated, and he needed something more intuitive and user-friendly.
“The user experience at Wrapbook was leaps and bounds ahead of anything else. Everything else seemed just a step behind.”
The Solution
One of the biggest advantages Colom found in using Wrapbook was the integration of production insurance alongside payroll. “It was super helpful to have insurance in the mix,” he says, “It’s in the same portal, everything together, everything coming from the same place.” Managing production insurance is often a separate and cumbersome process, but Wrapbook’s platform allowed Colom to handle it seamlessly within the same system he used for payroll and crew management. “I was pleasantly surprised at how competitive the rates were, too,” he adds.
Wrapbook also made it easy for Colom to manage his SAG-AFTRA obligations, greatly diminishing the anxiety he felt going into the process.
“Wrapbook made it really easy to keep all of our SAG-AFTRA paperwork organized and helped me understand that process from a different angle.”
Instead of juggling physical paperwork and worrying about compliance, Colom used Wrapbook to keep all contracts, forms, and startwork in one place. Not only was this easier to manage, it also reduced the risk of costly errors. Plus, since Wrapbook made it possible to manage and assign multiple versions of startwork, getting the right paperwork to the right people was easy.
The cherry on top? Wrapbook’s mobile app, which brought an extra layer of convenience to Colom and his team. “The app was incredible,” Colom recalls. The app streamlined critical tasks like hours reporting and receipt tracking, which used to feel like a huge lift.
“The functionality—letting everyone on the team create accounts, sign their startwork, and log their hours…It just made things so easy.”
Business Impact
Colom quickly found that Wrapbook significantly streamlined operations for everything from logging hours, to handling startwork, to managing reimbursements on set. Even better, his crew took to it like fish to water.
“When someone would hand me a receipt, I would ask if they could do it in the app instead, and they'd do it easily and immediately”
The streamlined process didn’t just make the production run smoother—it also gave Colom peace of mind. “Because everything was so detailed and built in, I could really trust it,” he says. Wrapbook’s all-in-one platform helped the production team stay organized, allowing Colom to focus more on the creative aspects of the film rather than worrying about paperwork or payroll errors. The sense of reassurance he felt, knowing that all aspects of payroll and documentation were handled efficiently, was invaluable to Mountains’ success.
And that success is considerable. So far, Mountains has racked up awards from Tribeca, the New Orleans Film Festival, the Miami Film Festival, and the Film Independent Spirit Awards—and Colom and Sorelle are just getting started.
The Future
Looking ahead, Colom continues to make strides in the film industry. His latest short Ana y la Distancia premiered at this year’s New Orleans Film Festival, while his upcoming feature film Three Islands, written and directed by Juan Luis Matos, and produced alongside Sorelle, was a featured project at The Gotham Project Market in New York earlier this fall.
But no matter where his journey takes him, Colom is positive that Wrapbook will remain his go-to payroll partner. When asked what he’d say to someone considering Wrapbook, Colom’s advice was simple:
“Do it...you can’t really go wrong. It’s really easy to use. It’s great.”
See what Wrapbook can do for you.
Ready to see how on-demand payroll can transform your productions?
Get pricing