Script to storyboard.

Four decisions between a script and a board

It is tempting to think of the problem as translation: words in, pictures out. It is not. Between a screenplay and a storyboard a production makes four distinct decisions, and each one is where a particular kind of mistake is either caught or baked in.

What the scene needs. The breakdown: who is in it, where it is, what time of day, what is handled. A frame drawn before this is settled will put the wrong people in the wrong room. The script breakdown page covers this stage; Script is the room that does it.

How it is covered. The shot list: which beats get their own shot, at what size, from what angle, in what order. Two people at a table might be a master, two over-the-shoulders and an insert on the letter; or a single slow push. That decision is the director's, and a tool's job is to propose a sensible default and make the change cheap. The shot list page is about this stage.

What each shot looks like. Now a frame: the composition the shot size and angle imply, in the location, with the cast, under the look the production has chosen. This is the stage people mean by generating a storyboard, and it is the easiest of the four to do badly, because an engine will happily produce a handsome frame for a shot that was never designed.

Whether it is still the same film. Continuity. Frame twelve has the lead in a different coat from frame three; the kitchen has gained a window. On a drawn board the artist's hand holds it; on a generated board nothing does unless something is built to. This is the stage that separates a storyboard tool from a picture tool.

The workflow, step by step

Import and parse. Bring the screenplay in as a PDF, a Fountain file or plain text. Scenes separate; characters, locations and props extract into an editable list. Fix the scene list first — a split slugline or a merged montage propagates into every stage after it.

Lock the cast and the places. Before any frame exists, decide what the lead looks like, what she wears in this scene, what the kitchen is. In PREVIZ a lock is made from a reference — one image can be enough — and from then on it is attached to every generation in every room. This is the step most workflows do last, as a fix, and it is the step to do first.

Build the shot list at the density you need. A pitch wants three shots a scene; a shooting board wants every setup. Script builds the list from the breakdown at the density you set, with coverage templates — single, over-the-shoulder, master plus coverage, oner, montage — as the starting grammar. Then edit it: this is a proposal, and the director's changes are the point.

Generate a frame against every shot. Storyboard numbers, frames and grades the shots together. Each frame is made under the locks and the project's look, so the lead in shot one and the lead in shot forty are made from the same reference. Selects carry forward; rejects stay on the record, with what each was made from, so a client's question — why does she look different here? — has an answer.

Check continuity, then time it. Every locked render is scored against its lock and marked pass, warn or fail. Fix the warnings before the board is shown, not after. Then the timeline view lays the board out as duration-proportional time so the sequence can be felt — the animatic's job, done on the same cards.

Export something a crew reads. PDF, PNG or CSV from the board; or the whole production as a package with the scene index, the breakdown, the cast sheet and the shot list beside the frames. A storyboard that cannot leave the tool is not finished.

What goes wrong

Frames without coverage. A tool that reads a scene and returns six beautiful images has not made a storyboard; it has illustrated a paragraph. Ask whether each frame has a shot size, an angle and a number. If not, there is no plan under the pictures.

Drift. The same prompt gives a different face, a different coat, a different room on every attempt. The failure is invisible frame by frame and obvious in the sequence. The only durable fix is a lock that is applied before generation and checked after it; a reference image pasted into each prompt is a lock held by hand, and hands get tired by shot thirty.

A camera that cannot be repeated. The frame is lovely and the director asks for the reverse, and the reverse comes back as a different room. Storyboard's step-in reshoot answers the common case — move a real camera inside the frame you already approved. For a shot that must be built, stage it in CineForge, where the camera is a height, a lens and a target as numbers; the 3D previs page says when that is worth it.

The pitch board mistaken for the shooting board. Three generated frames per scene are a fine way to sell an idea and a terrible way to schedule a day. Decide which board you are making before you set the density.

Where PREVIZ does it

Script and Storyboard, in that order, with the Continuity Lock underneath both. Script reads the screenplay and builds the breakdown and the shot list; Storyboard puts a frame against every shot, grades the frames together, holds selects and rejects on the record, times the board, and sends an approved frame on to Keyframe to be signed off or to Director to be put in motion. Both rooms are open on every plan and priced by credits. The character consistency page explains the lock in depth; the workflow overview places these two rooms among the six.

Questions people ask