A concept goes in and a shoot plan comes out — beats with their share of the runtime, the shot list and direction for each, and the pre-shoot paperwork checklist printed against the plan rather than against a generic list.
Nothing opens in this browser — this one takes a job and does the work on our own graphics cards in Oregon. The free allowance below is how you try it: 40 beats, no card and no payment, on the key you are issued.
A beat that comes back with fewer than two shots gets one retry and is then held back, uncharged. A beat with one shot is a paragraph, not a plan.
The problem
A concept gets agreed in a conversation, and the shoot happens on somebody's memory of it. Nobody has written down what the beats are, how long each should run, or what has to be in the can before the room is struck — so the day overruns on the first setup, the last beat gets four minutes, and the paperwork that had to be signed before anybody was on camera is chased afterwards, which is the version that does not count.
Per beat, checked in Python after the plan is written. A beat with one shot is a description of a mood; a beat with two is something a crew can execute.
Each beat carries its share of the total runtime, so the plan adds up to the title you intended rather than to twice it. Overrunning is a scheduling problem invented on paper.
The checklist is generated from this plan's own people and setups — not a generic list you tick. What has to be signed before the day depends on who is in it.
This is the whole difference between a shoot plan and a treatment. A beat that comes back as a single shot has not been planned, it has been described — and shipping it would put a paragraph in a column a crew is going to work from on the day. One retry, then it is held back with the reason, and you are not charged for it. A held beat is visible; a one-shot beat pretending to be a plan is not.
How it works
What the title is, the runtime you are aiming at, who is in it and what you have to work with. A paragraph is enough; more is better.
The plan comes back as beats, each with its share of the runtime, a shot list, and direction per shot. Every beat has at least two shots because the check in Python will not let one through.
Printed against this plan: who needs a release, which setups need a rider, what has to exist before the day rather than after it. Against the plan, not against a template.
What it will never do
A planning tool's failure mode is producing something that looks like a plan and cannot be executed. Three of these four are aimed at that.
Pricing
A beat planned is a beat that came back with its shots and passed the check. Held-back beats are not charged. Forty free on every key is roughly four or five whole plans, which is enough to judge this against the way you plan now.
Four or five whole shoot plans.
A year of shooting planned on paper first.
A studio planning every title.
Per beat planned, so a plan with eight beats costs eight units and a held-back beat costs nothing. The check that rejects thin beats therefore costs us, not you. Your licence key is emailed to you within two working days of payment.
Checkout is our own bitcoin server, not a card processor. The units you buy are added to your key: buy from the Buy more box inside the program and they arrive on their own once the payment confirms, or buy here and paste the invoice number from your receipt into that box.
Questions
Because one-shot beats are what a model produces when it has nothing to say, and they are invisible in a document that otherwise looks complete.
A crew reading the plan on the day finds out at the worst moment. The check costs us the occasional held beat and saves the plan from being quietly useless in two places out of nine.
No, and it says so. The checklist tells you what this plan will require. The gate that refuses to let an undocumented shoot proceed is in Backlot, and it asks as of the shoot date rather than as of today.
Planning and clearing are deliberately separate programs. A planning tool that also cleared its own plans would be grading its own homework.
It writes direction, not script. Voiceover is the program for words somebody has to say, and it has its own refusals about timing.
Direction is what a shot list needs — what is happening, from where, for how long.
No. It runs on Tower 1's own graphics cards in Oregon. An unreleased concept is exactly the kind of thing that should not be in a hosted provider's logs.
A key. One line of text, issued to you and shown exactly once — only its hash is kept here, so it cannot be looked up later and we could not tell you what yours is. Every key arrives with a free allowance already on it, which is the tier at the top of the pricing above, and the work starts the first time you send a job with that key on it.
Each job is metered in the unit named in the pricing, and a unit that fails — a file that will not read, a row the model held back — is not charged and is named in the job report rather than silently skipped. When an allowance runs out the next job is refused before any work starts, with the number it used printed on the refusal.
More units are bought in bitcoin. The checkout is a bitcoin server we run ourselves. Buy from the Buy more box inside the program and the units are added to your key on their own as soon as the payment confirms; buy from the plan buttons above and paste the invoice number from your receipt into that same box. Each payment adds its units once, to one key.
Then compare the runtime split against what the day actually took last time. That comparison is usually the thing that makes the case.