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      Ryland Aldrich’s valuable and free application, FYCit, was created out of his stress during awards season a few years back. As a producer of independent films and a member of both the Producers Guild and the Television Academy, he often found it challenging to track all the For Your Consideration events.

      “I was frequently invited to numerous screenings during the FYC season and attempted to attend as many as possible, particularly in theaters,” he recalls. “However, it was extremely difficult to locate screenings that fit my schedule without spending hours searching through various studio websites. There was no central place for that information.”

      His wife, prominent publicist Emily Lu Aldrich, founder and owner of Accolade Publicity and Consulting, was well-acquainted with the FYC landscape. Her previous experience included leading the craft awards campaign for Bohemian Rhapsody, which resulted in three Academy Awards.

      She proposed, “Wouldn’t it be fantastic to have everything in an app?”

      “And we thought, ‘Definitely, someone should create that,’” Ryland Aldrich remembers.

      Then COVID hit, and the lockdowns provided him some time to reflect.

      “I had been quite busy with indie features until then, and we had just welcomed our first child. I started thinking about other opportunities aside from trying to push features forward and dedicating years to a single project,” he recounts.

      “I mentioned to Emily, ‘Remember that app idea you had? What if we just made it happen?’

      With in-person screenings on hold due to pandemic restrictions, they knew those events would return eventually. So he posed another question: “Okay, so how do you build an app?”

      Voter First

      Ryland Aldrich, with gratitude to FYCit.

      Aldrich had a solid technical background: Growing up in the Seattle area, he built and repaired computers in high school and worked at Microsoft while pursuing a computer science degree at the University of Washington.

      Eventually, he left school to travel, including a year in Japan dedicated to snowboarding, but he then returned to another passion: he attended UC Santa Barbara as a film major, launching his producing career. His credits include producing films like Enter the Dangerous Mind (2013), Folk Hero & Funny Guy (2016), It Happened In L.A. (2017), and A Hard Problem (2021).

      Developing the FYCit app became a perfect way to combine his interests. He began looking for an app developer and found Liam McMains, a friend's son who was in college at the time.

      “The two of us collaborated closely to design all the functionalities. I aimed for a voter-first approach: If I were the user, how would I want the app to function? We focused on compiling all this information and presenting it in a streamlined manner so users could search by movie, studio, or filmmaker, or simply view a chronological list of all the screenings available and decide, ‘I want to attend something on Friday; what can I RSVP for now?’”

      Users can also filter by location and venue. For instance, if you find yourself in Santa Monica wanting to check events at Aero Theatre, FYCit allows you to track happenings there.

      The app made its public debut during the 2021 FYC season and “caught fire immediately,” Aldrich shares.

      “A lot of dedicated individuals attending numerous FYC screenings recognized the value of this tool.”

      The app’s mission is to become essential for FYC voters everywhere, encapsulated in its motto, “Award Season Starts Here.”

      The FYCit app, courtesy of FYCit

      Available for free, the app is accessible to all voting guild members such as DGA, PGA, and SAG, alongside organizations like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Television Academy, Film Independent, the Critics Choice Association, and more.

      It currently boasts around 10,000 users and continues to gain thousands each award season.

      FYCit enables users to discover screenings and events in locations like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and London — with Aldrich estimating that about 60% of FYC events occur in Los Angeles, and 30-35% in New York.

      He also intends to expand to other U.S. cities holding more events, like Atlanta and Denver, as well as to Europe and Australia, reflecting the increasingly global nature of awards season.

      Since the app is free for users, it generates revenue through partnerships with studios and others competing for awards. They can pay to boost their visibility or add supplemental content. However, Aldrich emphasizes that the app lists all available events “regardless of whether they’re a partner.”

      “Our primary goal is to make this as helpful as possible for voters, and we are dedicated to keeping it free for them,” he states.

      The app is continuously being improved, with recent updates including guild verification for TV Academy members, which will provide special focus on TV FYC events. More guild verifications are on the horizon.

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