Riel Labs is the personal product studio of Brendan Riel — a key grip turned tech-savvy founder building software, tools, and infrastructure for the working professionals he’s spent fifteen years alongside on set.
Career operations, scheduling, and money for freelance crew.
Free, focused tools for the everyday math of production.
Courses and resources built from real time on set.
One operator. Long horizons. No outside capital.
One clean workspace for the working professional — job tracking, time logs, invoicing, gear management, packages, and analytics in one place.
A career operations platform for freelancers — job tracking, time logs, invoicing, gear management, packages, and analytics in one clean workspace.
An education and resource platform for professional grips and film technicians. Courses, field guides, technical articles, interviews, and practical tools for working crew.
A fast pay calculator for film crew to estimate guaranteed pay, overtime, and double time — without digging through confusing rules or spreadsheets.
Convert hours and minutes into decimal time for timecards, invoices, payroll, and production paperwork. Small, fast, no-fuss.
Estimate guaranteed pay, overtime, and double time in seconds — without digging through spreadsheets.
Convert hours and minutes into decimal time for timecards, invoices, and production paperwork.
Clean package quotes and rate sheets for grip rentals and freelance bids.
Brendan is a Los Angeles-based key grip, entrepreneur, and product builder working at the intersection of film production, technical systems, and software.
He’s led grip teams on studio features, commercials, and technically demanding builds — and spent the last few years turning that experience into clearer tools, better systems, and more useful infrastructure for working creatives.
The best products come from people who’ve done the job — friction noticed in the moment, then engineered out.
Software made for actual work, not for screenshots. Boring on purpose, sharp where it counts.
One operator, no outside capital, no growth-at-all-costs. Built to last, shipped on a schedule that holds up.
A short note when something ships, or when there’s something worth reading. No funnel, no promotion.