What the engine needs from a board
The frame. A take that starts from the approved frame starts from the composition the director signed: the size, the angle, the placement, the light. A take generated from the shot's description alone starts from the engine's idea of it, which is a different shot wearing the same number. Image-to-video from the board is the whole reason the board was made first.
A duration. Engines render fixed-length takes, and a take that is the wrong length is either padded with motion the shot does not want or cut before the beat lands. The duration comes from the animatic: each shot was already held for as long as it needs, and that number is what the take should be asked for. A board that was never timed gives the engine nothing to be right about.
A camera move, as a move. "Tense" is not an instruction a camera can follow; "slow push in, ending on a medium close-up" is. The move should be the one the shot list specified — static, pan, push, track, tilt — with its direction and its end frame, because an engine given an adjective will invent a move and the invented move will be a different shot. Where the move has to be exact rather than plausible, it belongs in previs with a placed camera, not here.
The lock. The person on the board has to be the person who moves. Nothing in a video engine holds identity across a take or between takes unless something is built to: a locked cast, wardrobe and world reference attached to the generation, and a score against it afterwards. The character consistency page explains why a style prompt is not that mechanism and a lock is.
The beat. What happens in the shot — she turns from the window; the car passes; he does not answer — in a sentence, from the script. Not the mood, not the theme: the action the take has to contain for the cut to work.
Board to take, step by step
Approve the board before anything moves. Shot list settled, frames selected, locks in place and the drift warnings fixed, the animatic shortened. Animating a board that is still being argued about pays per second to make the argument prettier. The script to storyboard page gets a board to approved.
Decide which shots need to move. Not all of them. A static medium of a line of dialogue is the same shot as a frame held for four seconds; a crane rise, a reveal, a chase beat, a product turning in light are not. Animate the shots whose motion is the point, and let the rest stay held in the sequence.
Write the take. Frame, duration from the board, the move from the shot list, the beat from the script, the locks attached. In PREVIZ this is Director's job: it starts from the approved frame and the locked references rather than from a sentence, and it states the take's duration and its price on the control before the take runs.
Run it, read it, score it. A take comes back; the locked render is scored against its reference and marked pass, warn or fail; the composition is checked against the board it came from. Keep selects and rejects on the record. A failed take is information about the shot — the move was too much, the beat too long — and the fix is usually in the writing of the take, not in a new setting.
Extend or re-perform where the take is nearly right. A take that lands the beat and ends early can be extended; one with the right camera and the wrong performance can be re-performed from the same frame. Both are cheaper than starting again and both keep the shot's identity.
Cut it into the sequence. The takes drop into the same timeline as the held frames, at the same durations, so the moving board plays as one cut; the sequence is what a client or a crew watches. The selects that will be shown large go to Post to be upscaled to the screen they will be shown on, and only those.
Where it stops, and where PREVIZ does it
Performance. An engine moves a person convincingly for a few seconds and performs them poorly: dialogue, a reaction with timing, a look that means something are where a take reads as previs rather than as film, and that is the right place for it to stop. The actor is hired to do this.
Interaction and physics. Hands on objects, two people touching, water, cloth under force, a car that has to corner — the places engines still invent, and where a take that looks right in a thumbnail is wrong at full size. Read these at full size before anyone sees them.
The exact camera. A move written as a move is plausible, not placed. If the shot will be rigged, the crew needs a camera that is numbers — position, height, lens, path — which is 3D previs, not a moving board. The moving board shows the feel of the move; previs shows whether it can be made.
Length. Takes are short by nature. A long take is a sequence of them, cut, and the joins are where identity and geography slip. That is a reason to lock and to score, and a reason to keep the animatic as the spine rather than animating the whole film end to end.
In PREVIZ the board is Storyboard's and the motion is Director's, with the Continuity Lock under both and the animatic's durations carried across. Director starts from the approved frame with the locked references attached, states duration and cost before a take runs, scores what comes back, extends or re-performs a take that is nearly right, and places the result in the sequence beside the held frames. Every room is open on every plan and plans differ by credits. What it does not do is make the film: a moving board is a plan with motion in it, for a client to feel and a crew to read, and the shoot is still the shoot. The rooms page describes Director beside the other five; the workflow overview places motion as the fifth of six stages.
Questions people ask
What does a storyboard-to-video tool actually need from each board?
Four things: the frame itself as the first image of the take, so the composition the director approved is where the shot starts; the shot's duration from the animatic, so the take is as long as the cut needs; the camera move written as a move — a slow push, a pan left, a static — rather than a mood; and the locked cast and world references attached, so the person who moves is the person on the board.
Will the person in the video look like the person on the board?
Only if something holds them to it. A take generated from the frame alone will start as the board and drift as it moves; a take generated with the production's lock attached is made under the same reference as the frame and scored against it afterwards, with a pass, a warning or a failure you can read. Drift is a measurement here, not a hope.
Can it make the whole film?
No, and that is not what it is for. It makes moving previs: short takes, one per board, cut together so a sequence can be felt with motion in it. Dialogue performance, long takes, complex choreography and physical interaction are where engines are weakest and a shoot is strongest. The result is a plan a crew can read, not a deliverable.
How is the cost controlled?
Each take states its duration and its price before it runs, and the production decides take by take. The habit that keeps the bill sane is to animate the approved board — after the shot list is settled and the animatic has been shortened — rather than every frame that was ever generated, and to upscale only the selects.