For your crew
This page is written for the people you bring on to help shoot or edit — second shooters, assistants, editors, retouchers — not for you. Send it to anyone you’re adding to the workspace so they know what to expect before their first login.
What you see depends on how your studio set you up: some crew see the whole workspace, others only the shoots they’re actually assigned to. Read the section that matches how you were added — your studio can tell you which, or you’ll simply notice which one describes your screen.
Getting in
Your studio invites you by email. Open the link — it’s addressed to you, not a code you type in.
- Already signed in with that email, say from another Tobren workspace? One click — Accept invitation — and you’re in.
- New here? Sign in with Google or Apple, or choose “Prefer a password? Create one instead”. Either way, you’re offered the invitation to accept as soon as you’re signed in.
- Signed in as a different account on this device? The page shows both addresses and lets you sign out, so you can sign back in as the one your studio invited.
Once you’re signed in you’ll see a sidebar with Customers, Shoots, and Calendar — the same three surfaces every crew member gets, whether you see the whole studio or only your own bookings. If your studio shares revenue information with crew, you’ll also see Orders; if not, that item simply isn’t there. There’s no separate “crew” login — it’s the same workspace your studio’s admins use, scoped to what your role can reach.
Two ways a studio can set you up
Every crew member is either:
- Limited to shoots you’re assigned to — you see exactly the shoots someone has put you on, nothing else. Every contractor is set up this way; it isn’t optional for that role. Other team members can be set this way too.
- Able to see the whole workspace — every shoot, every customer, the same view an admin has.
Either way, this is enforced on the studio’s servers, not just hidden in the menus — if you’re scoped to your assignments, a shoot you’re not on isn’t reachable by guessing its address either.
If you’re scoped to your assignments, Customers and Calendar only ever show people and dates connected to shoots you’re actually on.
Being added to a shoot
An admin adds you to a shoot and picks the job you’re doing on it:
- Lead
- Second shooter
- Assistant
- Editor
These describe the job on that particular shoot — they’re separate from whatever your studio calls your role generally, and being Lead on one shoot doesn’t carry over to the next one.
The email you get
When you’re assigned to a shoot that already has a date, you get an email
with the shoot’s details and a calendar invite (a .ics file) attached, so it
lands straight on your phone or laptop calendar.
If a date gets added later to a shoot you’re already on, you’re told then — the first email couldn’t attach a date that didn’t exist yet.
If you’re taken off a shoot, you’re told that too, and you lose access to it going forward.
If the shoot gets rescheduled, you get an updated invite. Calendar apps handle updates differently — some replace the old entry, some add a second one — so if your calendar looks off after a reschedule, check the studio’s own Calendar page rather than trusting whatever your phone shows.
How long you can reach a shoot
Being assigned to a shoot doesn’t necessarily mean you can open it forever. Each assignment has an access window, set by whoever assigned you:
No end date (the usual case) : You can reach the shoot for as long as the assignment stands — no date attached at all.
Follows the shoot date : Access opens a set number of days before the shoot and closes a set number of days after — commonly 30 days either side, though your studio can change that. Reschedule the shoot and your window moves with it automatically.
Fixed window : Access opens and closes on exact dates your studio chose, independent of the shoot date.
If a shoot has no date at all, you can always reach it — there’s nothing for a window to measure against.
If your window has closed, the shoot disappears from your list rather than showing an error. If you think you should still have access, ask your studio — they can see and adjust it.
What you can do on a shoot you’re assigned to
You can view the shoot’s details, its media, and upload or work with photos on it. Job labels like Second shooter or Editor describe the work, but they’re not a finer-grained permission switch — what actually gates what you can see and touch is whether you’re assigned to the shoot at all, plus whether your studio has scoped you to your assignments or to the whole workspace.
If your studio shares pricing and revenue with crew, you’ll see it on shoots you can reach; if not, those numbers simply aren’t there. This is a studio-wide setting, not something you can turn on yourself.
A planning-view calendar subscription
Near the bottom of the sidebar, alongside Your account, you can get a private calendar URL to subscribe to in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook — so your shoots show up next to everything else in your day.
This is a planning view, not how you find out you’ve been booked. The assignment email above is what tells you immediately; the subscription is for glancing ahead later, and how current it stays depends on your calendar app’s own refresh schedule rather than on Tobren.
You get your own assigned shoots in this feed — never the whole studio’s calendar, even if you’re set up to see the whole workspace elsewhere. Only admins can subscribe to everything.
The link is shown once, when it’s created. Treat it like a password: anyone who has it can see your shoot schedule without signing in, which is exactly what lets a calendar app that can’t log in on your behalf keep it current.
If something’s wrong
Ask your studio — they can see your assignments, adjust your access window, or change what you’re scoped to. Tobren is the software they use; we don’t know what was agreed between you and them.