These two products overlap on one document. SetHero was started by a former 2nd AD and is built around the last mile of prep: the call sheet that goes out the night before, the texts and emails that carry it, and the production report the next evening. Storiara starts earlier, at the script, and the call sheet is the last thing it produces. Which one fits depends on where your paperwork starts.
Who each one is built for
SetHero fits a production that already has a schedule somewhere else. A 1st AD who boards in Movie Magic Scheduling, or a commercial producer working from an agency's shooting board, can open SetHero and build tomorrow's call sheet without re-creating the whole project. Its pricing reflects that. You buy a single project by the number of shoot days, or a subscription sized by how many projects you run a year, which suits agencies turning over short jobs.
Storiara fits the person who is holding a PDF of the script and nothing else yet. A student director, an indie producer doing their own line producing, or a small company that can't afford a separate breakdown, scheduling, and budgeting tool uploads the script and works forward from there. The call sheet is useful because the scenes, cast, and locations are already in the project.
Where SetHero is ahead
Call sheet delivery is SetHero's whole product, and it shows in the details:
- It sends call sheets by SMS as well as email and PDF. Storiara only emails them or gives you a link.
- It tracks who received, opened, and confirmed their call time, flags bounced emails and failed texts, and lets you resend to people who haven't opened it. Storiara has no read receipts or confirmations, so you still chase stragglers by phone.
- Every person can get their own call time, and you can add a precall to a whole department at once. The mobile version of the sheet is laid out for a phone, with map links for company moves, weather, and sunrise and sunset times.
- It builds a daily production report from the call sheet, with cast time logs in the style of an Exhibit G, crew clock times, overtime, and meal penalties. Storiara has no production report at all.
- Crew never make an account or install anything.
If your pain is 11 p.m. texts asking "what's my call," SetHero addresses that more directly than Storiara does.
Where Storiara covers more ground
Storiara handles the work that comes before the call sheet. You upload a PDF, Word, or Final Draft file, and Storiara splits the scenes from the headings, measures each one in eighths from the page layout, and extracts locations, characters, props, wardrobe, and music and effects. You check the results against the script in a side panel and tag anything it missed.
From there you board the shoot on a drag-and-drop stripboard. It won't let a day run past the hours you set, but it doesn't choose the order for you. The cast Day Out of Days fills in from the board, and the budget uses those paid days along with the rates on your cast and crew records. SetHero has none of this, and says so.
Tomorrow's call sheet, built both ways
Take a fictional indie, THE LONG DRIVE, on Day 6 of 18. Tomorrow is two locations: Rosie's Diner in the morning for Scenes 14 and 15 (2 3/8 and 1 1/8 pages), then a company move to EXT. PARKING GARAGE - NIGHT for Scene 42A (7/8 page). Four cast, 31 crew, and six background.
In SetHero, the 2nd AD opens the project, which already holds the cast and crew contacts. They type the three scenes into the schedule section, or pull them from data exported out of Movie Magic Scheduling. They set a 6:30 a.m. general call, give the lead actor a 5:45 pickup and the camera department a 6:00 precall, and let SetHero load the weather. Then they publish by text and email. By 9 p.m. they can see that two grips haven't opened it and resend to just those two.
In Storiara, the scenes are already on Day 6 of the stripboard, so the call sheet for that date comes up with the scenes, page counts, cast, and locations filled in. The 2nd AD adds call times, types the nearest hospital (Storiara doesn't look it up), and sets the email to go out at 7 p.m. The shareable link works for anyone who loses the email. There is no way to see who opened it, so confirming the grips means a phone call.
The Storiara version involved less typing because the schedule existed. The SetHero version gave the AD far better information about who actually got it.
What the cost looks like
Storiara's price doesn't change with shoot days. On THE LONG DRIVE, a producer on the Producer plan with a 1st AD and a line producer added as collaborators pays $39.99 plus 2 x $19.99, or $79.97 a month. Over two months of prep and one month of shooting that's 3 x $79.97 = $239.91.
SetHero prices a single project by the number of shoot days and project size, so an 18-day feature and a two-day commercial land at very different numbers. Its calculator is on the pricing page, and long-form projects can pay weekly while shooting. The first project is free up to 75 cast and crew and five shoot days, which covers a lot of short films outright.
Moving from one to the other
Nothing imports directly in either direction. Storiara reads CSV and Excel files for cast, crew, locations, and equipment, so a contact list exported from any tool can come across, and the column mapping is handled on import. Scenes can't come in that way; they come from the script.
Going to SetHero from Storiara, you'd retype the day's scenes and cast. If your schedule actually lives in Movie Magic Scheduling 5 or 6, SetHero's separate exporter turns an MMS breakdown PDF into Excel and JSON for $10 a conversion or $35 a year. It doesn't work with Movie Magic Scheduling 10, according to SetHero.
How to choose
Use SetHero if you already schedule somewhere else, run many short shoots a year, or care most about confirmations and production reports. Use Storiara if you need to get from a script to a board, a cast DOOD, and a first budget without buying three tools. Some productions will reasonably use both: Storiara through prep, SetHero for distribution once shooting starts. See how other tools compare on the compare hub or the full list of SetHero alternatives, and grab a free call sheet template if you only need the document.