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Projects and doors

Start from New project, Upload draft, Upload still, Start from ending, Start from constraint or Start a bible. Three fields: the sentence or seed, where you are in it, and what must not be betrayed. You can attach a still, a draft or a spoken note there too. Open the matching mode creates the project and opens the desk that fits.

Upload a take and Brainstorm sit beside the six doors, not in their grid. Each has its own section below.

The project list shows every project with its stage, format and last update. Search filters by title, logline, seed, stage or format. Pin keeps a project at the top in this browser. Remove asks first, then deletes the project with its thread, files, stills and clips for good.

Brainstorm with another brain

Brainstorm is a talk with another brain about the idea before it is a run: say it rough, hear it pushed back, keep the line that is worth working on. The talk is kept as talk, not page evidence. No desk treats something said in Brainstorm as established by the pages.

Open Brainstorm on the projects page and choose the Session: one of your projects, or Scratch session if there is no project yet. Press Talk with the other brain to start a live voice call, and allow the microphone when the browser asks. While the call is live the panel shows the time left, and what you both say lands in the talk list as You and Other brain lines. The microphone is muted while the other brain is speaking, so let it finish before you answer. Press End the call when you are done.

A call holds 56 credits for each 5 minutes before any audio flows, and each block is charged only for the seconds actually used; the rest is released. Before a block runs out the desk asks for the next one and checks your balance again. If there is not enough credit you get a warning about 30 seconds before the call stops. Every call stops at 20 minutes; start a new call to keep going. A call also ends after two quiet minutes or if the connection drops, and you are charged only up to that point. If the other brain is busy, try again in a minute.

You can also type or dictate into Add a note and press Add note; a note joins the talk as your line. The talk stays in this browser until you send a beat, and Clear talk removes it from this browser only.

To work on a line, pick it in the talk list (it shows as the selected beat), then choose where to send it: Develop, Ending record, Bible, Constraint, Market or Pitch. Develop tests the beat as story; Ending record proposes it as a new version of the ending stance without replacing the current one; Bible places it in the working bible as hypothesis; Constraint opens it in Produce as a cost with a cheaper mechanism; Market reads it for audience and misread risk; Pitch compresses it without revealing a withheld turn.

Every Send asks you to confirm (Confirm and send to the desk you chose) and then runs as a normal Ask on that desk, with the usual hold and the usual credits. The talk is filed on the project as a talk file, marked talk and not page evidence, and the desk opens with the Ask running.

From a Scratch session the first Send makes the project first, from three fields: 1 Form, 2 Sentence (filled from the beat; edit it), and 3 What must not be betrayed. Press Make the project and send. Later Sends from that session go to the same project.

Performance and Upload a take

Upload a take sits beside the six doors. Rehearsal help. Pace from the recording. Feeling is a read, not a score.

Bring two things: the sides (paste the scene as written, or Attach sides as PDF, Final Draft, Fountain, Word or text) and the audio of the take, up to 8 MB. A longer recording is refused before upload; trim it or export it as m4a or mp3. Choose an existing project or New project from these sides, then press Read the take in Performance.

The recording is transcribed with word timestamps, and the recording itself is deleted once the transcript is back. The sides and the timestamped transcript are filed on the project as reference files, not as the draft. Performance then opens and runs one Ask on the take, which spends normal credits; the transcription is metered as use.

The answer keeps three lines apart, in this order. Page: what the sides say, quoted, never rewritten. Transcript: what was said, with its timestamps; dropped, added or changed words and the pauses are each cited by time. The timestamps are the fact, and pace (words a minute while speaking, the longest pauses) is measured from the recording, not guessed. Read: the feeling line, labelled a read. Emotion is never scored, graded or given a number. Then come actions to try on the next take. The scene is never rewritten and no replacement lines are offered.

Performance still does page work without a take: ask for a character dossier, rehearsal notes or hazard notes, or flag illustration-acting and unearned breakdowns. Actors play actions, not themes. A table read of text you supply is labelled READ · not cast, and Spoken pitch · READ not cast is on Performance too (see Spoken pitch below): a read, not casting.

Building a bible

The bible is the project's working book: a document the room can hold, with what the pages establish kept apart from what is still hypothesis. Bible view shows it; Export downloads it as MD, DOCX or PDF.

From nothing: press Start a bible on the projects page. Put world notes or a premise in the sentence field (or attach them as a draft or a spoken note), say where you are (it starts at 6 Package) and what must not be betrayed, then press Open the matching mode. The project opens in Bible mode. Press the Draft the bible chip, or type your own instruction, and send.

On a project you already have: open Bible from the modes list and press Draft the bible. It reads everything the project holds, including the uploaded draft, the logline, characters, Do not show and the ending stance. Run Develop or Coverage first if the project is thin; the bible is only as good as what is on the desk.

From Brainstorm: pick a beat and send it to Bible. It is placed in the working bible as hypothesis, never as law, with the open questions it raises.

What goes in it: the promise and dramatic question; world and institutions; characters (desire, fear, contradiction, playable behaviour); tone grammar; visual motifs and camera stance; the metaphysics stack (fact, hypothesis, belief, inference, fear, interpretation); rules established versus rules believed; the withhold map and Do not show; the ending stance; production constraints that are already choices; and open questions. Use the Metaphysics stack and Rules believed vs established chips to work on those parts on their own. Keep frames from Selects can be adopted into the bible and show in Bible view.

A chapter that already has text keeps it; a later bible run fills the chapters that are still empty and refreshes the rules and open questions. Every mode reads the bible's rules established, rules believed and open questions with each run, alongside the logline, Do not show, ending stance and characters, so a clear bible keeps the other desks consistent. At Pitch status a hypothesis is never promoted to established law.

Modes

Modes are jobs on the same project, listed on the left: Ask, Develop, Coverage, Scene, Performance, Direct, Visual, Bible, Pitch, Cast, Produce, Board, Money, Finance, Post, Market, Release, Legacy and Decision. Finance, Release and Legacy are marked First pass: a framework, not a finished service.

Each mode keeps its own thread. The header selects (stage, format, worldview, sequel) save as soon as you change them. The project rails on the right show what the audience knows now, the Do not show list (collapsed), irreversibles and the next decision.

When an answer belongs in another mode, a Jump to button takes you there, and the Jump to list in the mode header goes to any other mode at any time. A proposed logline comes with Adopt; adopting it makes it the project's logline and keeps it in the version history. Decision mode always ends with a decision card: the options and what each costs, what can still be undone, and what must be solved on the page. Elsewhere the card appears only when you ask the desk to decide between options.

Sending, Stop and Continue

Type in the composer and press Send (or Ctrl/⌘ + Enter). The chips above the composer send a ready-made instruction for that mode. File composer as draft saves the pasted pages as the project's draft without sending them.

While the desk works you see Listening to the page… and Stop. Stop ends the wait; the desk still finishes the run, the page shows “Still finishing in the background” and the answer appears in the thread when it is saved (charged once, and only if it is saved). If the connection drops, the desk recovers the saved answer.

When a long answer hits its length ceiling or times out, Continue finishes it from the last complete section and appends only the new text, so it reads as one answer.

Attach, Drive and Dropbox

Use the paperclip on the composer. It reads stills, PDF, Final Draft (.fdx), Fountain, Word (.docx), plain text and spoken notes: up to 6 files per instruction, 40 MB each (8 MB for audio). A PDF longer than the reading limit says how many pages were not read, and a scanned PDF with no selectable text is refused. Video clips and other file types are refused with a reason rather than sent unread. There is no standalone Audio file button: spoken notes go through the paperclip too.

Drive and Dropbox sit beside the paperclip. The first click connects your account; after that it opens a picker, and picked files go through the same path as Attach.

Dictate and spoken notes

Dictate is the microphone on the composer (and on the first-run fields and the still prompt). Speak an instruction and it is written into the draft for you to check before sending. A spoken note attached as a file is transcribed into the composer the same way. Transcribing a recorded clip or an attached note needs you to be signed in.

Stills and Selects

Visual and Pitch have Imagine: write a prompt, a beat name and the camera morality, tick On the page if the frame is from the script, then Generate to Selects. Each ask makes 3 frames, wide (16:9), and holds about 17 credits; you are charged for the frames that are kept. A prompt that touches a Do not show item is generated as Sketch only, and a request for a real person's likeness as attached cast is refused.

Every still and clip is saved in the desk's own private storage the moment it lands, so nothing in Selects expires. Only you can open or download what you made.

The Selects tray marks each frame Keep, Maybe or Kill. Only Keep frames can be adopted into the lookbook, the deck or the bible; once any frame is adopted into the lookbook or deck, that export uses the adopted frames only. Frames adopted into the bible show in Bible view.

Under each pick: Use as reference (stills), First frame (stills, to start a clip from that frame) and Edit this clip (clips). The Imagine panel shows what you picked; Clear picks empties it.

References

Use as reference on a still in Selects, or Add reference in the Imagine panel to bring your own file. With references picked, Generate to Selects makes 3 new frames that copy from them, guided by the Prompt: "same room, but at dawn", "this character, now in a raincoat", "match this palette". Stills use up to 5 references. One reference keeps its own shape; two or more make a wide (16:9) frame.

Add reference takes a JPG or PNG image up to 10 MB (other image types the browser can open are turned into a JPG first), or an MP4 clip up to 15 MB and 8.7 seconds to edit. You confirm you have the rights to the file and that it shows no real, identifiable person without consent. It lands in Selects as UPLOADED, already picked, and is kept privately.

A reference that is Sketch only keeps everything made from it Sketch only, and it cannot be put into motion. A clip cannot be used as a style reference for stills or new clips; it can only be edited.

Reference credits: a frame made from references is billed as an edit, at a higher rate than a plain frame, plus a little for each reference it reads. 3 frames from 1 reference hold about 27 credits; from 5, about 33.

Clips and the mood reel

Mood reel sketch · clip sits under the stills. Clip from picks how it starts: From the prompt (text only); From a frame (a still you marked First frame becomes the opening frame, and the clip takes that frame's shape); Guided by references (1 to 7 stills you marked Use as reference keep a character, place or look consistent); or Edit a clip (a clip you marked Edit this clip is changed by the Prompt).

Length runs from 1 to 15 seconds (default 6). Aspect offers 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, 4:3, 3:4, 3:2, 2:3, 21:9, 5:2 for prompt and reference clips. An edited clip keeps its source's length and shape, and the source can run 8.7 seconds at most. Clips render at the standard (480p) size and come with sound; an edit keeps its source's size, up to 720p.

Credits scale with length and are shown before you confirm: Make clip opens a confirm with the exact hold. 1 second holds 12 credits, 6 seconds 68, 15 seconds 168. A clip also pays for each picture it reads: 6 seconds from a frame holds 69, and from 7 references 77. An edit pays for the seconds it reads as well as the seconds it makes, and holds up to 101. Nothing is charged until the clip is saved in Selects; a failed clip, one that cannot be saved, or one still unfinished after 20 minutes is released at 0 credits.

A clip renders on the server. You can leave the page or close the tab: the desk keeps checking, saves the clip to Selects when it is ready, and the next time you open the project it shows as Rendering until it lands. A clip prompt that touches a Do not show item, or a request for a real person's likeness, is refused.

Writing a good still prompt

Only the Prompt box (and any references you picked) goes to the image model. The project, the bible, the tone grammar and the draft are not added for you, and Beat name, Camera morality and On the page only label the frame in Selects. So put everything you want seen into the prompt itself.

A strong prompt names, in plain words: who or what is in frame (type and energy, not a named actor), where and when (place, period, time of day, weather), what is happening at this exact moment of the beat, the camera (distance, angle, lens feel, what is in focus), the light (source, colour, hardness) and the texture (film stock, grain, palette). One moment per prompt. Without references the frame is always wide, so compose for 16:9.

Weak: “A tense scene in a kitchen.” Strong: “Night, a narrow 1970s kitchen lit only by the open fridge. A woman in her sixties stands with her back to camera, one hand flat on the counter. Her adult son is a blur in the doorway behind her. Low angle from the floor, 35mm, deep shadows, cold blue spill, heavy grain.”

Weak: “Poster for my thriller.” Strong: “Poster concept: an empty two-lane highway at dawn seen from high above, one car stopped across both lanes with its driver door open, long shadows, desaturated greens, lots of empty sky for the title.”

With references, say what to keep and what to change: “Keep the woman and the kitchen from the reference; make it morning, the window open, warm low sun.” Keep the withheld turn out of a prompt you want to pitch with: a prompt that names a Do not show item makes Sketch only frames. For people, describe age, build, wardrobe and attitude rather than a celebrity. Generate a few asks with one thing changed each time (the light, the distance, the moment), then Keep the frame that serves the beat and Kill the rest. Frames are hypotheses, not locked design.

Writing a good clip prompt

A clip prompt describes motion over time, not a single frame. Name the subject, the one action that happens, how the camera moves, the light, and the sound you want. Keep it to one shot: one place, one continuous move.

Order it as it plays: the opening image, what changes, how it ends. Use camera words: slow push in, pull back, pan left, handheld follow, locked off, crane up. Give the pace: slow, sudden, drifting.

Weak: “A car chase.” Strong: “Locked-off wide shot of an empty dawn highway. A single car crests the hill and slows to a stop across both lanes; the driver door swings open and nobody gets out. Long shadows, desaturated greens, wind noise only.”

From a frame: describe what moves, not what is already in the picture. “The son steps out of the doorway into the fridge light; she does not turn. Slow push in on her hand.” Guided by references: name which reference is who or where, then the action. Edit a clip: say the change only. “Make it night and raining; keep the camera move.”

Short clips (3 to 6 seconds) are cheaper and hold together better; make the longer ones once the look is right. Keep withheld beats and real people out of clip prompts: both are refused.

Downloads

Every still and clip in Selects has a download icon in its corner. It downloads the original file from the desk's own storage, named from the project, the beat and the kind, for example kitchen-turn-still-ab12cd34.jpg or kitchen-turn-clip-ab12cd34.mp4. Only you can download your files; a link shared with someone else does not open for them.

Spoken pitch

Pitch and Performance have Spoken pitch · READ not cast: a synthetic read of the newest 60-second verbal (or one-pager, Pitch answer or adopted logline) so you can hear its length and rhythm. The line beside the button says what it will read, or what to run first. It is a read, not casting.

Board, Money and Bible view

Board and Produce show the scene board. Break down uploaded draft reads the latest attached draft into scenes: INT/EXT, day or night, location, cast, pages and flags. Page counts stay blank unless they are on the page, and a draft with no scene headings leaves the board as it was.

Money shows the cost-drivers table the Money answers fill in: sequence, function, driver, band, a cheaper mechanism and what is lost if cut. Bible shows the working bible as a document, with the metaphysics stack and rules established versus believed (see Building a bible).

Web search

Cast, Market and Finance can search the web for current facts (availability, comps, incentives) and should date what they find. When the search returns web pages, the answer ends with Sources: clickable links to the pages it cited (or, if it cited none, the pages it searched). Anything that matters still needs checking with the source, an agent, a lawyer or an accountant.

Export

The Export menu in the header downloads: Coverage (MD, DOCX, PDF) from the latest Coverage answer; Bible (MD, DOCX, PDF); One-pager (DOCX) and Pitch deck (PPTX) from the latest pitch; Lookbook (PDF) from Keep frames; Mood reel stills, clips + VO (ZIP: the still sequence and VO sheet plus every Keep still and clip as files, in order, not cut together); Board (CSV, XLSX); Cost drivers (XLSX); Decision (PDF) from the latest decision card; and the Logline sheet (MD). An export with nothing to draw on says which mode to run first.

Account and password

Sign in with email or create an account on the sign-in page. Forgot password? on the sign-in page emails a reset link for an email-and-password account. An address that signs in with Google has no password to reset; use the Google button.

Credits

Credits pay for work that lands. Each run holds an estimate first, then charges what the work actually used and releases the rest; a run that does not land is 0 credits. While a hold is open the header shows it apart, e.g. “… credits · 15 held” (hover for what held means). Opening this page does not use the tank.

A Brainstorm call holds 56 credits per 5 minutes and charges the seconds used. A beat sent from Brainstorm and a take read in Performance are normal Asks. Generate to Selects holds about 17 credits for 3 frames (more with references, see References). A clip holds 12 to 168 credits by length (68 for 6 seconds), shows the hold before you confirm, and charges only when the clip is saved, never more than the hold.