A futures trading app prop for film and TV

First, the line you don’t cross

On a set the prop is plainly fiction; the risk is what happens after it leaves. Stills and behind-the-scenes clips get cropped and reposted, and a clean screen of a leveraged win with a working referral code under it is exactly the image fake-results scams trade on. So give the prop nothing that works outside the story: an invented Referral code, an empty QR link (optional) and a made-up account line. Our acceptable use policy covers the rest.

A practical screen instead of a replacement

Screen replacement means tracking markers, a compositor and a screen that doesn’t react when the actor touches it. The futures terminal runs on the phone itself. Installed to the home screen, it opens fullscreen with your icon and name, and its buttons do what they say: Buy / Long opens an order sheet, the tabs switch, and the chart redraws on 5m, 1h and D. The actor can perform with it, and the camera sees real light from a real screen.

It’s a web app, so it loads over the internet. Open it where there’s signal before the scene and leave it open. With Live prices off, nothing on screen depends on the connection after that, but there’s no offline copy, so don’t close it anywhere the signal can’t reach.

Clearance: what’s on the screen

There’s no exchange to clear. The template is an original design — we describe it as Hyperliquid-style so people can find the kind of screen they need — and it carries no exchange’s name, logo or artwork. What’s on the screen is what you set:

• The app name and icon on the home screen: your fictional platform’s, with artwork you hold the rights to. Set both before installing; they’re fixed on the home screen from the moment it’s added.
• The account line in the header, 0x9c41…7ba2 by default. Make it the character’s, or plainly invented.
• The markets. BTC, ETH and SOL by default. A made-up ticker works too: the app draws its first letters on a plain disc, or shows a logo you upload, and it’s never priced live, which keeps the scene out of the real market altogether.
• The referral code, POZER by default, which is our name. Change it to the fictional platform’s.
• The currency, US dollars or euros.

Don’t upload another company’s logo; that’s against the same policy.

Continuity: what moves, and what doesn’t

Moves with the market

With Live prices on, the common coins are marked at the current price and refreshed about once a minute, so over a day of shooting every figure built on them drifts: PnL, ROE, equity and the whole chart. For anything that will be cut together, switch Live prices off. Each position then gets Mark price and 24h change % fields, and the screen holds exactly what you typed.

Moves when the actor taps

Orders change the positions, and the change sticks: a trade placed in a take survives closing and reopening the app. Two things clear it. Reset to published values, in the Edit sheet, puts that phone back to what you last saved, so reset between takes the way you’d reset any other prop. And publishing again from any device, the editor on a computer included, replaces the take on every phone the next time the app opens there. The Edit sheet opens on the saved values, never on the take, so an edit made after a take can’t publish the take by accident.

The view is the opposite: it doesn’t stick. Which panel is showing, the interval and the market the terminal is framed on are all forgotten when the app closes, so it always reopens on the chart, at 1h, framed on the first open position. If a scene opens on the Order Book or on ETH, someone taps there before every take — or make the market the scene needs the first row.

Never moves

Some things are fixed, and they show in a close-up. The chart’s time axis counts back from 15:00 on 20 September rather than from the phone’s clock: on 5m its labels end at 14:35, on 1h they step every eight hours, and on D the last date shown is 15 Sep. The Trades tape carries fixed times between 14:39 and 14:59. The funding countdown is text and never ticks. Meanwhile the phone’s own status bar — clock, battery, signal — stays at the top of the screen. If the scene is set at night, keep the time axis out of the close-up; if it’s set in another month, avoid D; and if the top of the screen is in shot, set the phone’s clock and charge for the scene.

One hero, one backup

Publish once and the same link works on as many phones as you need, each showing the numbers you last saved. Two things decide which phone does what.

Only the owner’s phones have an Edit button, and its sheet has the same fields as the editor plus Save changes and Reset to published values. In the installed app the button stays hidden while you film: hold two fingers still on the screen for a little over half a second and it appears for five seconds. One finger never brings it up, so an actor’s thumb resting on the glass can’t put it in shot. On iPhone the home-screen app keeps its own sign-in, so the first time, the same hold offers to sign you in instead. On a phone that isn’t yours, the button never appears.

Saving publishes. Every phone with the link shows the new numbers the next time the app opens there, and a take stored on a phone is replaced rather than kept. It isn’t always instant — a phone can show a cached copy for a moment — so check the hero before you roll.

So the hero can be a phone signed in to your account: its Edit button stays out of shot, and Reset to published values puts it back between takes that place orders. A backup that isn’t signed in simply follows whatever you last saved.

One app per state

Each published app is separate, with its own link, name, icon and numbers. When the story needs the same screen in several states — the good morning in one scene, the bad afternoon three scenes later — publishing each state as its own app is often simpler than editing between set-ups. Nothing has to be changed on the day: the hero phone opens the app the scene calls for, and with live prices off each one still shows what it was published with when the scene is picked up weeks later. Installed side by side, they can share a name and icon for the camera, so keep them in a known order on the home screen and label the order on the prop sheet.

Design the screen for the shot

The audience reads one thing per shot, usually in a second or two, so decide what it is before you set a number. For a character who’s winning, it’s PNL (ROE) on the position card; the default BTC long with live prices off reads +221.62%. In a wide shot it’s colour: a chart of mostly green or mostly red candles reads from across a room when no figure can.

For a character in trouble it’s the dashed LIQ line with the price closing in on it. The liquidation price is the entry moved against the position by one over the leverage — 67,830 for the default 20x long from 71,400 — so with live prices off, drag Price trend into a fall and set the mark a little above the line: at 68,150 the card reads −91.04%. Tap through every interval you’ll use on camera before you roll. A candle’s wick through the LIQ line says the position is already gone, and the wicks are longest on D.

Set the numbers the script implies and let the app work out the rest. You type the deposited margin, any realised PnL, the funding rate, and each position’s side, size, leverage, entry and mark; equity, PnL, ROE, the liquidation price, each position’s margin and funding, and account leverage follow from them. The one account figure that doesn’t is Margin used %, in the strip under the buttons: it’s typed on its own, so set it to suit the scene. If the script says he’s up $25,000 on Bitcoin, the default 3.2 BTC long reads +$25,318 with live prices off, and every screen agrees with it.

On the day

1. Switch Live prices off for anything that cuts together.
2. Open the installed app once before the shoot — on iPhone, signing in inside it — so the first launch’s Edit hint is out of the way.
3. Open the app where there’s signal, and leave it open.
4. Reset to published values after every take that places an order.
5. Turn on Do Not Disturb, and set the clock and charge if the status bar is in shot.
6. Keep a backup phone on the same link, already open.
7. Check the monitor for rolling bands: some phone screens flicker on camera at certain shutter speeds.