Fake bank app for film: a working prop on the actor's phone

First, the line you don’t cross

A bank balance is the screen people are asked for when it matters, so this prop has one rule above the rest. Showing it to anyone as a real balance, to borrow money, to get credit, a loan or a lease, or to close a sale, is fraud, whichever tool drew the screen. Showing it to a date or to followers as what you really have is the same lie, and it is prohibited too. This app is for film, skits and parody, in front of an audience that knows it is watching fiction, and for a prank that ends in its own reveal. Our acceptable use policy prohibits the rest, and accounts used that way are closed.

The app is built to stay a prop. It can’t pay another person, or show that money was sent to one or arrived from one. It sends no notifications. It never shows a whole account number, only the last four digits. It makes no statement, letter or PDF, and its editor has no button to save a screen as a picture. Those things are missing on purpose.

And if you are here because someone showed you a banking app on their phone as a reason to trust them with money or goods: don’t rely on it. Check your own account, or ask for something their bank issues itself.

A bank app that is no bank’s

A fake bank app for a short film, or a fake bank balance for film production, sounds simple until you try the obvious answers. The actor’s real banking app shows a real name and balance to everyone who watches, and its numbers will be different on the day of a reshoot. A screenshot can’t answer a thumb. A copy of a real bank’s screen puts a real company in your film.

Pozer’s bank account app is a prop made for the job: an original design that follows no one bank, with no bank’s or card network’s name or logo on it. It connects to no bank and holds no money. You fill it in in a browser, where the template is called Teller. It takes the owner’s name, a checking account, a savings account and a credit card, their balances, and up to 30 transactions. Then you publish it and get a link. Opened on a phone and added to its home screen, it runs fullscreen from its own icon, under the name you gave it. Building it, installing it and filming it are free.

Find the screen by the script beat

Start from what the script says happens. The bar along the bottom moves between Accounts, Transfer, Cards and Profile, so any of these screens can be on the glass before the camera rolls.

• “She checks her balance.” The app opens on Accounts: a greeting with the character’s first name, then Total balance in the largest figures on the screen. Under it sits each account, with its nickname, type, last four digits (Checking ••4821) and balance, and the credit card with what it owes against its limit.
• “It isn’t enough.” Type a small balance, or a negative one: checking is the one account that can go below zero. Overdrawn, its balance prints in red with a minus sign, and its own page adds an Overdrawn badge.
• “We don’t see the number until she does.” The eye at the top right of Accounts swaps every figure on that screen for dots, and a second tap brings them back. An account’s own page still prints its balance.
• “He goes back through what he spent.” Tap an account and its transactions open: Pending ones first, dimmed, then the rest under the dates you typed, each with a signed amount. Tap a line and a sheet slides up with its Status, Date, Type, Account and a Reference.
• “She empties her savings into checking.” Transfer: From, To, an amount, Review, Confirm transfer, and a receipt with both new balances. It is worked through below.
• “He pays the card down.” Pay card, on Accounts or on the card’s own page, opens the same form pointed at the card and ends in Payment complete. What the card owes comes down, and its bar shortens with it.
• “She tries to move money she hasn’t got.” Key more than the account holds and the figure turns red over a line such as “That’s more than your available balance of $312.48”. Review stays dimmed and won’t press.
• “She locks her card before he can use it.” On Cards, the Lock card switch dims the card under a Card locked badge, and the three switches below it go off and stop answering.
• “He signs out and puts the phone face down.” Sign out, at the foot of Profile, leaves the app’s icon and name over “You’re signed out” and a Sign in button. One tap on Sign in returns to Accounts: there is no passcode or face scan to act.

The transfer, performed

What has to be true when the scene starts is typed in the editor. What changes during the take is tapped by the actor, and it goes the same way every time.

Take a scene where Riley, short this month, empties her savings. You type 312.48 as the Available balance of Everyday Checking and 1,640.27 for Rainy Day Savings, so Accounts opens on a Total balance of $1,952.75. On camera:

1. She taps Rainy Day Savings, then Transfer on that account’s page. The form opens under the words Between your own accounts, already set From Rainy Day Savings To Everyday Checking. Opened from the Transfer tab it starts From checking, and the round button between the two rows swaps them.
2. She keys 1640.27, and Review lights up.
3. Review reads You’re moving $1,640.27, with From, To, When and Fee beneath it and, last, Savings available after $0.00.
4. She taps Confirm transfer. A tick draws itself over Transfer complete and $1,640.27. The receipt lists Type, From, To, Date and Confirmation, then both new balances: Savings available $0.00 and Checking available $1,952.75. It stays up until someone taps Done, Make another transfer or a tab.

Type reads Between your own accounts: the receipt says on its face that nobody was paid. Confirmation is a new code on every take. After Done the app is back on Accounts, and each account’s page has a new line at the top of Today: Transfer to Everyday Checking on one, and Transfer from Rainy Day Savings, +$1,640.27, on the other.

That second caption is the thing to know before you plan the shot: Total balance did not move. It is checking plus savings, so money passing between the two leaves it at $1,952.75. If the story needs a number to fall, put the camera on the account’s own figure. Paying the card is different: the card is not part of the total, so a $300.00 payment from the same start takes it down to $1,652.75.

The app won’t invent money. A transfer for more than the From account holds is refused, and so is a payment for more than the card owes. Money only ever leaves checking or savings: the card can be paid, never drawn from.

Type the account the scene needs

After the app’s name and icon, the editor’s fields come in six groups: Owner, Checking account, Savings account, Credit card, Theme and Transactions. These are the ones that decide whether the screen survives a close-up.

• Balances and transactions are typed separately. Adding a line to the list doesn’t change a balance. Only a transfer made in the app writes its lines and moves the balances together. So do the sums yourself, across the whole story. If she has $312.48 in scene 3 and is paid $1,420.00 before scene 9, the phone in scene 9 says $1,732.48, with a Direct deposit line to show for it. Viewers who see a balance twice will subtract.
• Available balance is the figure on screen. The page of a checking or savings account works out Current balance from it by taking the Pending lines back out. With one pending purchase of $2.90, an Available balance of $312.48 shows a Current balance of $315.38 and Pending of −$2.90.
• Dates are words you type. A transaction’s Date takes up to 16 characters: Today, Yesterday, Oct 10, or whatever the story’s calendar says. Lines with the same date gather under one heading, in the order you list them.
• Every line has a type. There are nine, from Card purchase and Direct deposit to ATM withdrawal, Refund and Fee. Money in is a switch on the line, and it gives the amount its plus.
• One checking account, and up to two more. Savings and the credit card each have a Show switch. With savings off, Accounts leads with checking’s Available balance in place of a total, and with both off there is nothing to transfer between. The app can’t hold two checking accounts or a second credit card.
• Currency. USD $, GBP £, EUR € or IDR Rp. Dollars, pounds and euros are written with commas for thousands and a point before the cents, which suits Dublin better than Berlin. Rupiah has no cents, and points between the thousands: Rp4.286.400.
• Light or dark. Background, under Theme, takes any colour, and the text turns light when it is dark. On camera a white screen lights the face and burns out first; a dark one holds its detail and shows every reflection and fingerprint.

The editor’s preview works like the app. Its tabs switch, and the whole transfer can be run in it, receipt included, so the taps can be rehearsed before anything is installed. Change any field and the preview goes back to what you typed.

Clear what is on the glass

The design is original and names no real company. What you add is yours to clear, like anything else in frame.

• The bank’s name and icon. App name (home screen) and App icon are your fictional bank, and the name isn’t only under the icon: it is printed on the face of the card, on Profile and on the signed-out screen. The editor suggests four made-up words, Halvern, Norwyn, Tolmere and Brackwell. Whichever name you use, check that it isn’t a real bank’s where the film will be seen. A real bank’s name or logo is against our acceptable use policy, and it turns a prop into an impersonation.
• The owner’s name. Owner name is the character’s. Accounts greets them by first name, the card carries the full name in capitals, and Profile shows it beside their initials.
• Shops, employers and landlords. Every Description is a name in frame. The lines the app starts with are placeholders: replace them with your story’s own, and check each as you would any name on a prop. A real company beside an amount says the character paid it, or was paid by it.
• Account and card numbers. Only last four digits exist, printed masked: ••4821 on an account, •••• 5519 on the card. There is no field for a whole account number, a routing number or an expiry date, so there is no number to clear.

Put it on the hero phone

1. Build it in the editor, on a computer or a phone, and settle the name and icon first: an iPhone keeps the ones the app had when it was added to the home screen.
2. Press Create home-screen app and confirm your email with the six-digit code. The app goes live at its own link, free, with a QR code beside it.
3. Open the link on the phone the actor will hold. On iPhone, use Safari, then Share and Add to Home Screen. On Android, use Chrome and choose Install app. From the icon it opens fullscreen, with no address bar.
4. In the installed app your Edit button is hidden. Hold two fingers still on the screen and it returns for five seconds; one finger never brings it up, so an actor’s thumb can’t put it in shot. On iPhone the first hold asks you to sign in, so do it before the shoot day. On Pro, that sign-in is also what takes the mark off on this phone: the mark comes off where you are signed in, not wherever the link is opened.
5. It is a web app, with no offline copy. Open it where there is signal and leave it open.

Keep it in continuity

• Reset between takes. A transfer and a locked card are saved on that phone, rehearsals included, and survive closing the app. Before each take, hold two fingers on the screen, tap Edit, then Reset to published values.
• Know what isn’t saved. Hidden balances, the three switches under Lock card and the screen the app was left on don’t survive the app being closed: it opens again on Accounts, balances showing. If a take starts on hidden balances or the signed-out screen, set that up by hand before you roll.
• Change the story in Edit, not by tapping. The Edit sheet opens on the figures you published, not on what the last take left behind, and Save changes puts the new ones on that phone straight away. That is how a paycheck arrives between scenes: you add the line and raise the balance, because nothing in this app changes by itself.
• Watch Profile on your own phone. On a phone that knows you as the app’s owner, the one you published from or one you have signed in on, Profile carries an extra row under the name: Edit this app, Only visible to you. It opens the same Edit sheet, and it is in the shot if the scene visits Profile on that phone. Frame above it, or film Profile on a phone that doesn’t know you.
• The receipt’s Date is today’s. It is the phone’s own date and time at the tap, month first with a twelve-hour clock, so it agrees with the status bar and disagrees with a story set on another day. If the date matters, hold the insert on the tick and the amount.
• One app per character. Each published app is separate, with its own link, name, icon and numbers. Two characters who bank are two apps on two phones; a time jump can be two apps on one phone.

On the day

The camera work is the same as for any phone. Turn the brightness up and auto-brightness off before anything else. If dark bands remain, step the shutter speed, not the frame rate, while watching a monitor. Ripples and rainbows are moiré: move the camera slightly closer or further, or tilt the phone a few degrees. Switch auto-lock off and Do Not Disturb on, not airplane mode, because the app needs a connection if it has to reload. The guide to filming a phone screen has the full method. Then rehearse the thumb: the transfer is a keypad and three buttons, Review, Confirm transfer and Done.

What it won’t do

1. Pay another person, or show that money was sent to one or received from one. A scene where one character pays another belongs to the payment app, on the payer’s own phone; the guide to filming a money-sent scene has the shot list.
2. Send a notification, or change while the actor watches. Money arriving is a cut, with the new figures saved in Edit.
3. Show a purchase being declined. What it has is the overdrawn balance, the refused transfer and the locked card.
4. Show a whole account number, or make a statement, a letter or a PDF.
5. Copy a real bank’s app, or come with one’s name or logo.
6. Open without a connection, or fill a laptop or a monitor. It is drawn for a phone held upright.
7. Stand in for a real balance in front of anyone. That is the line at the top.

Free apps carry SIMULATED · POZER.COM in fine print on every screen, the transfer receipt included. A close-up will show it. Pro, which removes it, is US$4.99/wk, US$12.99/mo or US$79.99/yr. On a free app the fine print can be tapped, and a tap opens the upgrade offer. On the transfer form it sits just above the keypad, so rehearse the thumb away from it.

The same app works for a prank on someone who knows you, on the prank’s own terms: the reveal comes in the same scene, before anyone acts on what they saw; nobody is asked for money, a signature or a decision while they believe it; and you have their consent before you post. The guide to a bank balance prank has the script, the reveal and those rules in full. It was written around the payment app, and everything it says about the reveal holds for this one. For the other money screens a film might call for, a payment, a trade or a first sale, the guide to a prop phone app for film maps each to its script beat. Otherwise, start with the bank account app.