Pre-production software.

The jobs the software has to do

Pre-production is a chain of documents, each made from the one before it. The script is read as structure — scenes, sluglines, characters, page lengths — because everything after depends on the scene list being right. The breakdown inventories each scene: cast, extras, locations, props, wardrobe, vehicles, effects, time of day. It is the document a schedule and a budget come from, and the script breakdown page covers what a good one contains. The schedule groups scenes by location and cast into days, which is the first number a producer wants and the one that moves the budget most.

Then the creative plan. The shot list decides coverage: which beats get a shot, at what size and angle, in what order — the shot list page is about that. The storyboard puts a frame against each row so composition and continuity can be seen, and the animatic gives the board time so rhythm can be felt; the animatic page says when that is enough. Previs puts a camera in a room with dimensions for the shots that have to be designed rather than described, and techvis turns the settled camera into what a crew rigs. Under all of it sits continuity: the same lead, wardrobe, room and look across every frame, which is held by an artist's hand on a drawn board and by nothing at all on a generated one unless something is built to hold it.

And last, the handoff. Everything above exists to be read by people who were not in the room when it was decided: the first assistant director, the camera department, the production designer, the client. A plan that cannot leave the tool as documents a crew reads — shot list, boards, cast sheet, schedule, sequence — has not finished.

How to judge it: seven questions

Where does the record live? Cut scene four. Does the shot list lose its rows, the board its frames, the schedule its strip — or does someone have to go and do each by hand? A set of tools that share nothing but a PDF export is six records, and the shoot will be planned from whichever one was updated last.

Can the breakdown be argued with? An automatic breakdown is useful exactly to the degree that a person can correct it — an implied element added, an invented one struck — and the correction is kept when the script is re-read. A breakdown that regenerates from scratch throws the producer's afternoon away.

Is the shot list a proposal or a verdict? Coverage is the director's decision. The tool's job is a sensible default and a cheap edit, with stable shot numbers that survive the edit.

Does continuity exist as a thing you can measure? Ask to see the frame for shot forty beside the frame for shot three. Then ask how the tool knew they were the same person — a prompt that said so, or a lock the frames were graded against, with a result you can read. The character consistency page is the long version of that question.

Is the cost of a shot visible before it is made? On a generating tool, every frame and every take is a spend. If the price is not on the control, the production discovers its budget at the end of the month.

Can a client or a colleague review without becoming a user? A board that needs an account to see is a board the client will see as a screenshot in an email, and their note will come back about the wrong frame.

Who operates the engines, and under whose terms? A generating tool is routing your script, your cast references and your client's product to a model somebody runs somewhere. A production with a confidentiality agreement, or a client with a jurisdiction policy, needs to know which, per frame, and needs the tool to refuse rather than route when the policy says no. The how to choose previs software page works this and the other criteria into a checklist for the previs stage specifically.

Where PREVIZ fits, and what it leaves to others

PREVIZ is the creative half of that chain, from the script read as structure to the handoff, as 6 studios on one record:

• Infinitum. The on-ramp: a director agent on an infinite canvas, working across the other five studios from conversation.
• Script. The intent layer — what we are making and for whom.
• Storyboard. The plan — order, beats, coverage, structure.
• Keyframe. The hero still — high-fidelity image with full continuity.
• CineForge 3D. The space — 3D scenes, props, camera blocking.
• Director. The output — animation, video, deliverable.

The record is what connects them. A breakdown edited in Script changes the shot list; a shot added in the list gets a frame in Storyboard; the Continuity Lock is attached to every frame in every room and every locked render is scored against it; when a lock changes, the work made under the old one is marked stale wherever it is. Every generating action quotes its price on the control before it runs, and plans differ by credits alone — every room is open on every plan. A client review link opens without an account. And the production package is the handoff: scene index, breakdown, shot list, boards, cast and continuity sheet with its pass-rate, sequence and schedule estimate, as a crew-ready document or a link.

What it leaves to others is the producing half. Script's shooting-days planner estimates how many days a script needs by grouping scenes by location and cast, and it stops there: a stripboard with crew and equipment constraints, a budget with fringes and rates, call sheets, payroll and clearances are producing tools' jobs, and the package is written to sit beside them rather than replace them. It also does not replace the specialist 3D department on a feature's hardest set piece, or the shoot. The toolkit page describes the rooms as a product; the workflow overview walks the six stages a production moves through inside them; and the glossary defines the words this page has used as if everyone knew them.

Questions people ask