Storyboards and animatics

Each SHOT in the script has a storyboard strip with camera settings. Before you add frames, open the new shot once in the editor to assign its ID.

• Add frame: select or drop a JPEG, PNG, or WebP.
• Blank frame: start with a white frame to draw on.
• Take photo: use your camera where supported.

Frames have labels such as 1.2a, captions, notes, and an optional hold time in seconds. Use the arrows to change frame order. Select a frame to open it at full size.

Select 16:9, 2.39:1, 4:3, 1:1, or 9:16 in Script settings. Thumbnails, full views, animatics, and PDFs use that frame shape.

Open full size

Open a frame and select Draw. The drawing workspace supports eight named layers. Each layer has visibility, opacity, and lock controls. Blending modes are normal, multiply, and screen.

• Tools. Pressure-sensitive brush, pencil, ink, marker, airbrush, hard or soft eraser, fill, eyedropper, shapes, and text. Rectangle and lasso selections can move, scale, rotate, flip, copy, paste, or align to the frame.
• Color. Select from eight inks, a full color picker, and recent colors.
• Guides. Rulers, grid, thirds, safe areas, camera frame, and one-, two-, or three-point perspective. Drag vanishing points, snap to guides, or hold Shift to constrain a stroke. Onion skin previews neighboring frames.
• The view. Pinch or Ctrl-scroll to zoom. Pan with two fingers, the wheel, or Hand. Rotate and flip the view as necessary.
• Keys. Use tool letters to select tools. Use [ and ] to change size. Press ⌘Z to undo or ⌘A to select all. Press Enter to complete a move. O controls onion skin. G controls the grid. Use ⌘0, ⌘1, ⌘=, and ⌘− for view controls. Use ⌥← and ⌥→ to change frames.

Layers save shortly after drawing stops. The saved layers update other devices, guest links, and PDFs. If two people edit the same layer, the later save replaces the earlier changes.

Each layer has a 10MB limit. Layers share the 200MB image limit for the script.

Open Picture to crop, adjust brightness and contrast, or switch to grayscale. Drag the crop edges, keeping the script's aspect ratio or choosing a free crop. Reset restores the initial picture.

The strip, Board, animatic, guest links, and PDF all show the same adjusted picture.

Board view shows frames two, three, or four across, grouped by scene or shoot day. Unscheduled scenes come last. Click a frame to start the animatic there. The landscape PDF includes scene banners, labels, notes, and an optional title-page cover.

• Playback: Space starts or pauses playback. Use ← and → to move between frames.
• Timing: drag a block's right edge to set a hold from 0.5 to 120 seconds. Untimed frames share the remaining duration.
• Sound: add MP3, WAV, or M4A, up to 20MB and 10 minutes. Its waveform shows below the frames.
• Duration: audio sets the length. Longer frame sequences continue without sound. Without audio, set a duration or use the sum of frame holds.
• Subtitles: add timed cues, or use From captions to create a cue for each captioned frame.

Loop, thumbnail visibility, and Board column count are device preferences. Video export is not available.

Animatic

During a table read, frames follow the current shot in a small panel and clear at the next scene. Turn this off with Show storyboard in the Voices panel.

The mood board is a freeform canvas for the look of the film. Open it from the Production menu or the File menu, beside Storyboard. Each item on the canvas is a tile. Move, resize, and rotate a tile with the pointer. A tile has a caption.

• Picture: an image that you add to the board.
• Reference: a picture that is already in the script. The tile shows the current picture.
• Text: a note.
• Swatch: a color.

Select Add to add a tile. A picture tile has four sources:

• Upload picture: select an image file on the device.
• Take photo: use the camera.
• From script: select a storyboard frame, a breakdown, character, or location picture, or an image file from Files. This adds a reference tile.
• Generate with Cloud AI: describe the picture, select a style and a shape, and use the result. Refer to Cloud AI for the credit cost.

Text adds a note. Swatch adds a color. The new tile appears at the center of the view. Select a tile to open a small panel below it. Use the panel to change the caption, the text, or the color, or to remove the tile.

Scroll to pan. Hold ⌘ or Ctrl and scroll to zoom. Hold Space and drag to pan with the pointer. Fit shows all tiles. Reset returns to 100%. Select a tile and use these keys:

Share creates a read link. Guests can pan and zoom the board. Guests cannot change tiles or leave notes.

Guest links share the board and animatic, including sound and subtitles. Comment links let guests enter a name and leave frame notes that show alongside your team's notes.

Storyboards are available with Production. Find related tools in Sides, shots & call sheets. Frames belong to SHOT elements in your script. Refer to shot lists for how to create them.