Write the story

The Story opens on the film's block: its look, its cover and its notes (pitch, references, mood). Under it come the scenes. A scene is a place and a time ("INT. BACK ROOM, NIGHT"), the characters who are there (Add character) and its own notes, and it holds its shots. Notes, everywhere, are yours: they are never sent to an engine. Read the Story as a list or as a storyboard of cards, and zoom out (⌘ and the wheel) to see the whole film.

Shots

• A shot is one render: what happens (the prompt, with @mentions and the director syntax), the camera move, the length, and dialogue lines (a speaker, a manner, a line). Add element brings in a place or a prop; Enhance rewrites the shot as a director would, following the shot before.

• The scene's place and time and its cast ride every one of its shots: the slugline opens the prompt, the cast's look sheets go as references, and characters named as speakers speak in their voice where the engine renders dialogue. The shot's settings show "What the engine reads".

• A scene can change the film's look (a night scene in a day film) with Scene look, and a single shot can override it again: only what you change, the rest stays the film's.

Links between shots

Between two shots, a link says how the second one is made. Continue the shot starts it on the last frame of the shot before (on the engines that start from a picture). Same scene, new angle uses that frame as a reference, same place and people, another framing (on the engines that read references). No link is a new shot. A linked shot waits for the one before it to render. Shots are ordered in the Story; move them with the arrows, ↑ and ↓ jump from shot to shot.