# Animatic maker: storyboard to timed cut | AIM Previz

https://aimpreviz.com/learn/animatic-maker

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# The animatic maker.

An animatic maker turns a storyboard into a timed cut: each frame held for the length of its shot, played in order against scratch dialogue or a temp track. It settles rhythm — whether the scene plays at that length — before anything is shot. It does not settle the camera, because a held drawing has no lens.

Updated 4 Oct 2026by the PREVIZ team

A storyboard can be beautiful and the scene can still not play. The animatic is where that is found out — each frame held for as long as its shot will run, cut against scratch sound — and it is where a great many sequences are quietly shortened before anyone is paid to shoot them long.

## What an animatic settles

A board is read at the reader's pace. The eye lingers on the frame it likes, skips the insert, gives the establishing wide three seconds of attention when the shot will hold for eight. So a board can feel right and be wrong by a third, and the error is always in the same direction: the sequence on the page is shorter than the sequence on the screen. The animatic removes the reader's pace and substitutes the film's. Each frame is held for the duration its shot will actually run, the cuts land where they will land, and for the first time the scene can be felt rather than inferred.

What it finds is rhythm. The joke that lands on the page and dies on the cut because the reaction shot is a beat too long. The chase that reads as four shots and needs nine. The dialogue scene that is a page and a half of script and four minutes of screen because nobody read it aloud. A spot that is thirty seconds in the brief and forty-four in the board. These are the cheapest mistakes in filmmaking to find at this stage and among the most expensive to find later, because a scene that runs long is shot long, and the day that was planned for it is gone before it is cut.

What it does not find is the camera. An animatic made from drawings, or from generated frames, has a composition per shot and no lens, no height, no distance, no path. It can tell you the push-in should last three seconds; it cannot tell you whether a push-in from that position is possible in that room. The [what previs is](https://aimpreviz.com/learn/what-is-previs) page draws the line between the four planning documents; the animatic is the second of them, and it is complete in itself only for sequences the camera will not have to be designed for.

## Making one: timing, sound, the cut

**Start from a board with a number on every frame.** An animatic is a timeline, and a timeline needs rows. Each frame has to belong to a shot with a stable number, a size and an angle, in cut order. A folder of pictures without a shot list is a slideshow, not an animatic. The [script to storyboard](https://aimpreviz.com/learn/script-to-storyboard) page gets a board to that state.

**Give every shot its duration.** Start from a sensible default and then retime by reading. Dialogue sets a floor: say the line at speaking pace and that is the minimum the shot can hold. Action sets a ceiling: a door opens in a second, however important the door. In Storyboard the timeline view lays the whole board out as time — every shot across every scene, each panel as wide as its duration, scene runtimes on the dividers and the total reading out live — and a shot is retimed by dragging its edge in half-second steps. The same durations feed everything downstream, so retiming here retimes the presentation and the exports.

**Put sound under it.** Scratch dialogue, read by whoever is in the room, is the single most useful thing an animatic can carry, because it makes the length honest. A temp track sets the cut's rhythm and tells you where the picture wants to change. On an Infinitum board, the cut room plays a sequence as the cut rather than as the strip — the order, the exclusions, the trims, the held stills — with a score bed that ducks under the scratch dialogue lines, so a sequence can be heard as well as watched.

**Play it, and cut.** Watch it at length, with other people, and expect to shorten it. The hold that felt generous on the page feels dead at speed; the reaction that seemed necessary is covered by the next line. A screening room lets a group watch the same cut together, each seat following the host, so the notes are about the same moment.

**Hand the timing to the edit.** The animatic's durations are the first version of the edit. Storyboard exports the board as an FCPXML, a Premiere XML or an EDL with each shot's hold in place, so the editor opens a timeline with the cut already made and replaces frames with footage as it arrives. The animatic's job is done when the edit inherits it.

## When an animatic is enough, and when it is not

An animatic is enough when the question is *when* and the answer to *how* is already known or does not need designing. A dialogue scene in a real location with conventional coverage; a montage; a commercial whose shots are all achievable on a stage with a standard kit; a performance sequence in a music video timed to a track — for these the board gives the composition, the animatic gives the rhythm, and the camera department will solve the rest on the day because the rest is ordinary. Spending previs on them is spending money to confirm what everyone knows.

It is not enough when a shot has to be designed. A move that has to be rigged — a crane, a track, a gimbal through a doorway; a set that has to be built to fit a lens; a location where the sun has to be in a particular place at the call time; a volume shoot where the wall and the camera have to agree; a set piece with vehicles, stunts or effects where a wrong camera position is a wasted day or worse. For these the animatic tells you the shot lasts three seconds and nothing else, and the production needs a camera in a room with dimensions: [3D previs](https://aimpreviz.com/learn/3d-previs-virtual-production), and techvis after it.

The useful habit is to make the animatic first for everything, and then read it for the shots that are still questions. Most will not be. The handful that are go to CineForge, where the camera becomes numbers a crew can rig to, and the frames that come back replace the drawings in the same timeline, with the same durations. A production that does this has an animatic where an animatic is enough and previs where it is needed, and has not paid for either where it was not.

In PREVIZ the animatic is not a separate tool but a view of the board: Storyboard's timeline, its presentation mode and its editor exports, and the Infinitum cut room with its bed and its screening seats, all reading the same durations off the same shots, each made under the [Continuity Lock](https://aimpreviz.com/product/continuity-lock) so the person in shot one is the person in shot forty. Every room is open on every plan, [priced by credits](https://aimpreviz.com/pricing); timing a shot costs nothing, and a frame that is remade is quoted first. What the platform does not do is cut the film: the animatic is the first draft of an edit, made to be shortened, and the editor's judgement about where is theirs. For a sequence that needs to move rather than hold, the [storyboard to video](https://aimpreviz.com/learn/storyboard-to-video) page is the next step; the words used here are in the [glossary](https://aimpreviz.com/glossary).

## Questions people ask

### What is the difference between a storyboard and an animatic?

A storyboard is a sequence of frames with notes; it settles what is in each shot and what comes next. An animatic is the same frames given time — each held for the length of its shot, cut in order against scratch dialogue, a temp track or a metronome. The board says what; the animatic says when, and whether the scene plays at that length.

### Do I need audio for an animatic?

You need time, and audio is the easiest way to be honest about it. Dialogue read aloud at speaking pace sets the floor on a scene's length; a temp track sets the rhythm of the cut; even a metronome stops the eye from holding a drawing for as long as it is interesting rather than as long as the shot will run. Silent animatics run short.

### Can an animatic be made from generated frames?

Yes, and it is the same discipline with a better picture. The frame per shot comes from the board, made under the production's locks so the lead is one person across the cut; the duration is set per shot; and the cut plays. What the generated frame adds is the look; what it still lacks is a camera, which is what previs is for.

### How does an animatic get into the edit?

As a timeline, not a video. In PREVIZ the board exports as FCPXML, Premiere XML or an EDL with each shot's duration, so the editor opens the cut with the holds already in place and replaces each frame with footage as it arrives. The animatic becomes the first version of the edit rather than a reference clip beside it.

[Time a board](https://aimpreviz.com/signup) [Next: storyboard to video](https://aimpreviz.com/learn/storyboard-to-video) [What previs is](https://aimpreviz.com/learn/what-is-previs) [The rooms, in depth](https://aimpreviz.com/product/rooms)