National brand · Agency-led
Enbridge
A national brand's spot, produced in Utah through an agency — the exact motion this page describes.
Production Services · Salt Lake City, Utah
Production services in Utah.
You bring the concept, the director, and the client. We bring a line producer who runs the shoot, a crew built for the job, grip and lighting in town, the locations, the permits, and twenty years of knowing exactly how a day in this state goes.
We know how this is made. So nothing surprises us — and nothing surprises you.
Cinema Forte is a motion picture company in Salt Lake City. We came out of the 2022 acquisition of The Brute Squad and carry more than twenty years of production in this state. Most of the year we're making our own commercials, branded films and documentaries. The rest of the time we're the local partner for companies who've flown in.
Those are the same job. A production that can hold its own vision can hold yours, and the reason to hire a local partner who also produces is that they've already made every mistake this state has to offer.
20+
Years producing in Utah, through the Brute Squad lineage
16
People on staff across production, post and photography
14–40
Crew on the ground for a full shoot day. Size isn't the constraint
1 hr
Salt Lake City to Park City or the Wasatch back
Who we've done it for.
Global brands, national accounts and government work — produced here, most of it for agencies and teams who flew in.
What we supply.
What you bring.
Precision is the point. We'd rather tell you what we don't do than have you find out on a Tuesday.
We supply
- A line producer running your shoot end to end
- Local crew, booked and vouched for
- Grip, lighting and electric from an affiliated inventory in Salt Lake City
- Location scouting, options and negotiation
- Permits, road closures and municipal coordination
- Production insurance and payroll through our back office
- Trucks, expendables, catering and craft
- State film incentive guidance and paperwork, for long-form productions
- Post and finishing, if you want it here
You bring
- The concept and the boards
- Your director, and your DP if you have one
- Your agency and client contacts
- Principal talent and casting direction
- Wardrobe, art direction and product
- Final approvals, on your schedule
That's the usual division, not a fixed one. Any line in this column can move to the other — including the director and the DP.
Crew.
The question every producer actually asks is how many people we can put on the ground and in what disciplines. Here's the honest answer.
- Full-day capacity
A crew of fourteen or a crew of forty. Size isn't the constraint here, and it hasn't been for twenty years — tell us the day and we'll tell you what it takes to run it.
- Disciplines
Camera, grip and electric, sound, art, hair and makeup, wardrobe, production assistants, transport and stills. If you need them, a director and a director of photography as well — the far end of this is a client who flies in, shows up on the day, and hands us the whole thing.
- Who you get
Crew we've worked with, not a database pull. Booking happens once the budget is approved, and you'll know exactly who's on your set well before the call sheet goes out.
- Where they come from
Almost all Salt Lake City and the Wasatch Front, which means no per diems and no travel days on the top sheet for most of your crew.
What a big day
takes, and where
it comes from.
A national commercial needs eight or nine departments standing up at once. This is the whole list, department by department, and what each one looks like when it's run out of Salt Lake City.
- Lighting & electric
Full HMI and LED packages, distribution, cable, generators and tie-ins, run by a gaffer and a best boy who work here every week. Sourced from an affiliated rental house ten minutes from downtown, which is why the truck shows up when it says it will.
- Grip & rigging
Grip trucks, carts, stands, overheads, frames, condors and rigging hardware. Rigging crew for pre-light and strike days so your shoot day is a shoot day.
- Camera bodies
Alexa 35 and 35 Xtreme, Alexa Mini LF, Alexa Mini and Amira. Sony Venice 2 and Venice 1, with Rialto for the shots a body can't fit into. RED, and Freefly Ember when you need 600 frames a second at 5K. All of it on the ground here.
- Glass
ARRI Signature Primes, Zeiss Supremes, Master Primes and Ultras, Cooke Panchros and S4s. Six anamorphic sets — Atlas Mercury and Orion, Xelmus Apollo, Kowa Prominar, Optica Elite. Signature Zoom, Fujinon Premista, Angenieux Optimo. And a deep vintage and rehoused shelf when the boards call for character: Super Baltars, Canon FD, Leica-R, Iron Glass, medium-format Mamiya.
- Camera support
Dollies and track, remote heads, technocrane, car rigs, gimbals and high-speed. Filtration, wireless video and a digital loader.
- Art department
Production design, art direction, set decoration, props, scenic and paint, build and fabrication, greens and set dressing. Small builds through full set construction, and the shop space to do it.
- Wardrobe, hair & makeup
Stylists, wardrobe supervision, fittings and steamers, hair and makeup stations, and the trailers or holding space to run them.
- Production supplies
Expendables, walkies, safety gear and first aid, pop-ups and canopies, weights and sandbags, heaters and cooling, sanitation, and the fifty small things a location day burns through. Nobody's driving to a hardware store at 6am.
- Production support & basecamp
Production trucks and cube trucks, passenger vans and driver crew, basecamp layout, honeywagon and rest facilities, craft and catering, and a client village with monitors and comfort — so the agency and the client have somewhere real to sit.
- Stills
Profoto and stills lighting, a full photography kit and a digital tech, when the shoot is pulling stills alongside motion — which most of them now are.
- Stages & post
Stages come out of the valley — we book the right one for the build, and we know which is which. Edit, color and finishing run here, or go back to your post house. Your call, and it doesn't change the shoot.
The short version: nothing needs to fly here. Bring your concept, your director and your client — everything on this page can be standing on a location in Utah on the morning you need it, and your DP can build the package they’d have built at home.
Who runs
your shoot.
Not "our producers." One person, with a name and a credit list, who is responsible for your days and answers the phone at 5am.
- Line producer
The named line producer or production supervisor who runs out-of-state productions, with the credits that back it up.
Needs from Brent: the name. This is the single biggest gap on the page.- What they own
Budget and top sheet, crew booking, schedule, locations, permits, safety, and the daily wrap report your production office actually reads.
- Who else you'll meet
A production coordinator from the first call, and a production manager on anything over a two-day shoot.
Locations, permits,
and the boring part.
The unglamorous facts a producer needs before they can put you on a bid list. If you can't find them on a partner's site, you assume the worst.
- What Utah gives you
Salt flats, red rock, alpine, high desert, ski towns, Great Basin, farmland and a downtown that plays as several other cities. Park City and the Wasatch back are under an hour from downtown, and the salt flats and west desert are under two. Moab and the southern red rock country are about four hours, so plan them as an overnight or a unit move, and we'll build the schedule around it.
- Locations
We scout, present options with stills, and handle the owner or agency relationship. State and federal land — which is most of Utah — runs through its own permitting process, and we've been through it.
Nice to have: a Utah locations reel or stills library to put on this page- Permits
Municipal, county, state park, BLM and Forest Service. Lead times vary by jurisdiction and we'll tell you the real one, not the optimistic one.
- Insurance
Every person we crew is covered under our workers' compensation — you're not chasing certificates from thirty individuals. We carry general liability and equipment coverage, and your production can be added to it for a fee. Certificates go to your production, your client, and any location, vendor or municipality that asks for one. Limits are set against the job, so send us what your client's contract requires and we'll confirm it before you bid.
- Payroll
Crew are contracted and paid through us. One vendor, one invoice — your client's accounts team isn't onboarding thirty individuals. If your production has to run through a particular payroll setup, tell us at the bid and we'll work to it.
- Union status
Utah runs largely non-union, and for most productions that's part of why they come here. When you need it union, we're a SAG-AFTRA signatory and can run your shoot under the Commercial contract or the Corporate/Educational contract. Tell us at the bid stage which way your client needs it and we'll structure the whole thing to match.
The Utah
film incentive.
The straight answer first: Utah's Motion Picture Incentive Program is built for narrative, documentary and episodic productions. Commercials and ad campaigns don't qualify. If you're here for a spot, the savings come from somewhere else: crew who live here, gear that's already here, and locations close enough together to get more of them into a day.
If you're producing long-form, whether a feature, a series or a documentary, the incentive is real, and it's worth building around from the first budget draft. The main program starts at $500,000 in Utah spend. We'll walk your team through what your production would need to qualify and handle the paperwork if you want us to. If it won't qualify, we'll tell you on the first call rather than after you've booked.
Proof we know
how it's made.
The fastest way to know what a company is like on a set is to look at what came off one. Three productions, all shot here.
Documentary
More Than Copper
A documentary shot on location across the state.
Film
LOIS
A narrative film, produced direct rather than through an agency.
We're a production company, not a crew broker.
The reason we're good at running your shoot is that we spend the rest of the year running our own. Commercials, branded films, documentary. Worth two minutes before you decide who's handling your days.
Start a shoot.
Send dates and a rough scope and you'll get a real answer — whether we can crew it, what's available, and what it costs to shoot here — not a brochure.
If your dates are inside three weeks, call instead. We'd rather pick up the phone than lose a day to email.