Tell us about what the Oracle is and what it aims to achieve
‘The Oracle’ is short for Oracleforecast.
We are a subscription business that provides on a monthly basis (1st of month) detailed information on Film & TV Productions in Pre-production & Development.
We list the Title, Dates, Locations, Director, Producer, LP, PM, Production Company and when possible point of contact for the company.
We used to list the email address of the people hiring but GDPA put a stop to this a few years back making it now illegal to make profit from personal email addresses. Generic production emails we can provide still but not personal ones.
People subscribe to our service from all walks of the the industry, from Crew of all departments, Agents, Caterers, Photographers, Chaperones, etc, anybody at all connected to the industry purchases ’The Oracle’ subscription from time to time. So people subscribe for just a month, so leave the subscription in place and let it roll over to the next month and on and on etc.
Who are the team that set the Oracle up and how did you come up with the idea?
Initially it was just myself at first that set it all up. Reason being is I was using a service very similar to ours and the details were often incorrect, old or the production had finished a while back.It became quite annoying as you can imagine and eventually I gave up using the service and began to think of how I could set up my own using the research and information I had grown used to acquiring when looking for my own work. I’m a HOD Make-up/Hair/Prosthetics Designers, Emmy winner 2022.I was very ambitious and the information I was gathering each month began to build up and up and I thought its tine to put it all together and make my own company and subscription service similar to the one I had been purchasing for a few years.This was 10 years ago this year. At first the business lies any business was very slow to take off but when it eventually did I soon released I need help because I could not keep up with both the making of ’The Oracle’ and working full time on a production as well. This were I began to ask around industry friends if anyone wanted to help. The response was great, and to this day I have 3 other people who help me out run and make the monthly subscription. They are what you call silent partners I guess.
How can this resource help people in the costume industry? And specifically, how can it help people going from theatre to film who don’t have as many contacts
Our service as I have mentioned is for any department let alone Costume.It’s all about how you sell yourself or how ambitious you are I guess from my own experiences.We sell the information bout what is gearing up out there to shoot over the coming year, it all about how you use that info to your benefit.We aren’t a careers service so to speak, but we do give advice from time to time when people ask us.It’s quite difficult because everybody is different and at different levels in their area of expertise.We or I can only try to explain how I go about using the info to my advantage. I’m a HOD so my requirements maybe different to somebody that isn’t a head of dept.There is a few questions that relate to this in our FAQ section on the website. People are best to read this part really for any advice on how to find work, we just provide the information only really.I guess it s a case of you have some info from a production you are interested in and you would need to make yourself known to whoever is in charge of what ever area your interested in and go down that route.I understand I’m being a bit vague here about this part but like I’ve mentioned we just provide the detailed information, its down to the individual to use that info to their advantage.
How much is a subscription to your site and where can people find more information?
The subscription is 20..00 pounds per month.People can subscribe and cancel straight away, they do not need to be subscribed over a long period, cancel whenever they like.Or, they can leave the subscription in place and on the following month that same date funds will be taken by Pay Pal and Pay Pal let us know and that months subscription is emailed out.There are two options to subscribe. Use your Pay Pal account, or use a debit/credit card as a guest purchase through Pay Pal.Once the subscriber uses the ’subscribe’ link on the website Pay Pay instructs you through the pages quite easily to subscribe or to un-subscribe, it’s all very straight forward.www.oracleforecast.co.uk
There is a FAQ page on the website that answers the majority of questions people have about the service. Plus, there is a sample download so you can see exactly what type of information is in the monthly subscription.
