Pre-Production

Overview

What the Pre-Production panel covers and how it connects to the rest of Thenema Writer.

The Pre-Production panel is where your screenplay becomes a production plan. It reads the script you wrote in the Script Editor, breaks it down into scenes and production elements, builds a shooting schedule from those elements, and organises all the department-level information a film crew needs to go to camera.

Everything begins with a single button: ▶ Run Breakdown. From that one action, Thenema Writer populates the Stripboard, the Schedule, the Call Sheet, the Art Department tracker, and the Top Sheet overview simultaneously.

Opening Pre-Production

Click the Pre-Production card on the World Builder page, or use the dedicated button in the Script Editor toolbar (Send to Pre-Production). When opened from the Script Editor, your current script text is passed in automatically and is ready for breakdown.

If you open Pre-Production without a script, you can paste or type script text directly into the Scenes section, or load a saved project file from File → Open Project.

Navigation Sidebar

The Pre-Production panel is organised around a left-hand sidebar with five sections. Click any item to navigate to that page.

A Theme switcher at the bottom of the sidebar lets you switch between Light, Dark, and System colour schemes for the Pre-Production panel.

Top Sheet

The Top Sheet is the first page you see when you open Pre-Production. It shows four key production statistics at a glance:

• Total Scenes — the number of scene headings parsed from the script.
• Script Pages — an estimate derived from the script's line count.
• Shoot Days (est.) — the number of shooting days calculated from the stripboard.
• Cast Members — the number of distinct character names extracted from the script.

Below the statistics tiles, a Production Overview section describes the current state of the breakdown and provides navigation hints for new projects. All four statistics update automatically whenever you run a breakdown or rearrange the stripboard.

Script Breakdown

Extracting production elements from the script text.

Running the breakdown

1. Navigate to Breakdown → Scenes in the sidebar

   Confirm that the Scenes list shows the scene headings from your script. If it is empty, make sure you opened Pre-Production with a script loaded.

2. Click ▶ Run Breakdown

   Thenema Writer parses the full script text and extracts five element categories from every scene.

3. Review the results

   The Stripboard is populated automatically. Navigate to Stripboard, Schedule, or any Department page to see the extracted elements.

What the breakdown extracts

Live Breakdown Tagging

The Scenes page shows the script text in a taggable script view alongside a Live Breakdown sidebar. You can select any word or phrase in the script and right-click to tag it as a specific production element.

Tagging an element

1. Select the text you want to tag

   Click and drag to highlight a word, name, or phrase in the scene view.

2. Right-click the selection

   A context menu appears showing five tagging options.

3. Choose a tag type

   Select 🎭 Tag as Character, 📦 Tag as Prop, 📍 Tag as Location, 👔 Tag as Wardrobe, or 🔊 Tag as Sound.

4. The text is highlighted and the sidebar updates

   The selected text gains a background colour matching its tag type. The Live Breakdown sidebar immediately adds the item to the correct category list.

Tag colours

Removing a tag

Right-click on already-tagged text. If no text is selected but the cursor is inside a tagged word, the context menu shows a ✕ Remove Tag Here option. Selecting it removes the highlight and removes the item from the Live Breakdown sidebar.

Live Breakdown sidebar

The sidebar on the right of the Scenes page lists all tagged elements grouped by category, each in a collapsible section. Right-click any item in the sidebar to remove it. The sidebar also shows a total item count at the bottom.

Stripboard

A colour-coded board of draggable scene strips — the foundation of your shooting schedule.

The Stripboard is the central tool for shooting-order planning. After running the breakdown, every scene from the script appears as a horizontal strip on the board. You can drag strips to rearrange them into the most efficient shooting order — typically grouping scenes by location and time of day to minimise company moves.

Strip colour coding

Rearranging strips

Click and drag any strip to a new position in the board. The schedule is recalculated automatically whenever you move a strip — the Shoot Schedule, Call Sheet, and Art Department pages all update to reflect the new order.

Locking a strip

Right-click a strip and select Lock to prevent it from being accidentally moved. Locked strips are displayed with a greyed background. Unlock by right-clicking again.

Page counts in eighths

Every strip shows the scene's page count in eighths format (e.g. 1 3/8 pages). The industry standard is 1 page = 8 eighths; a standard shoot day = 8 pages = 64 eighths. Page counts are estimated from the scene's line count and are shown on each strip to help you judge how many scenes fit in a day.

Shoot Schedule

Navigate to Scheduling → Shoot Schedule to view the day-by-day breakdown of your shoot. The schedule is built from the stripboard order and groups scenes into shooting days based on the eighths-per-day limit (64 eighths = 8 pages per day by default).

What the schedule shows

Each shoot day card shows the day number, the date (if set), the scenes to be shot that day grouped by location, the total page count for the day, and a summary of cast members required.

Exporting the schedule

Click 📄 Save PDF or 📊 Save Excel in the schedule header to export. Both formats include a Thenema Writer watermark in the top-right corner of every page or sheet. The PDF is formatted for printing and the Excel file can be edited in spreadsheet software.

Call Sheet

Navigate to Scheduling → Call Sheet to build and view the daily call sheet. The call sheet is a professional-grade document in the style of StudioBinder and Movie Magic, covering everything a cast and crew member needs to know before arriving on set.

Sections of the call sheet

Navigating between days

The call sheet day selector at the top of the page lets you cycle through all the shooting days in the schedule. The call sheet for each day is built from the scenes and cast assigned to that day in the Stripboard.

Storyboard

Navigate to Production → Storyboard to access the interactive storyboard creator. The Storyboard page lets you plan the visual language of every scene before you go to camera.

Panels

The storyboard is divided into panels — one panel per shot. Panels are displayed as a horizontal filmstrip at the bottom of the page, with the currently selected panel filling the main canvas above it.

Drawing on a panel

Each panel has a drawing canvas where you can sketch or paste reference images. Available drawing tools include Pencil, Pen, Brush, Line, Rectangle, Ellipse, Eraser, and Fill. Select the tool from the toolbar, choose a colour and brush size, and draw directly on the canvas.

Panel metadata

Each panel stores the following fields alongside the drawing:

• Shot type — ECU, CU, MCU, MS, MLS, LS, ELS, OTS, POV, Insert, Two Shot, Aerial, Worm's Eye, Dutch Angle, Tracking, Handheld.
• Camera move — Static, Pan Left/Right, Tilt Up/Down, Dolly In/Out, Truck Left/Right, Boom Up/Down, Zoom In/Out, Handheld, Steadicam, Crane, 360° Orbit.
• Action — a brief description of what happens in the frame.
• Dialogue — any spoken line associated with this shot.
• Notes — lens choice, lighting notes, VFX requirements, anything else relevant.

Auto-generating panels from the script

When the Storyboard page receives the script (via Run Breakdown or the load_scenes method), it can auto-generate one panel per scene beat. Each panel is pre-populated with the scene heading and the first action line of that scene as the Action field. You then add drawings and complete the metadata.

Reordering panels

Drag any panel in the filmstrip to a new position to reorder it. The new order is reflected immediately in the main canvas.

Exporting the storyboard

Export the storyboard as a PDF (with or without drawings) or as a PNG image sequence. The PDF layout supports 4-up (four panels per page) or 6-up (six panels per page) print-ready formats at A4 or US Letter size.

Departments

The Departments section of the sidebar gives each production department its own page. Each department page shows the elements extracted from the script that are relevant to that department, plus a free-text notes field for department-specific information, contacts, and requirements.

All department pages update automatically after each Run Breakdown. Add custom notes in the Notes field at the bottom of each page — notes are preserved when you re-run the breakdown.

Art Department

The Art Department page is more detailed than the other department pages. It organises art department work into eight specialised tracking tables, each linked to the shooting schedule:

Each table row's Status field is colour-coded: Not Started (white), In Progress (blue), Camera Ready (light green), Complete (green), Blocked (red). Click any Status cell to type a new status — the colour updates automatically.

Budget

Navigate to Production → Budget to access the budget manager. The budget page provides a line-item budget structure pre-populated with the production categories from the Art Department tracker and other departments. Each line item has fields for estimated cost, actual cost, vendor, and payment status.

The budget page is designed for early-stage budgeting alongside the breakdown, not for final production accounting. Use it to establish top-of-sheet estimates for each department before approaching a line producer or unit production manager.

Export

Navigate to Production → Export to access all export functions from one place. Available exports include:

• Shoot Schedule (PDF) — day-by-day schedule with scenes, cast, and page counts.
• Shoot Schedule (Excel) — the same data in spreadsheet format for further editing.
• Call Sheet (PDF) — the daily call sheet for any selected shooting day.
• Storyboard (PDF) — 4-up or 6-up storyboard panels with metadata.
• Storyboard (PNG sequence) — individual panel images for use in animatics or presentations.
• Breakdown Report — a complete list of all extracted elements by category.
• Project File — saves the entire Pre-Production state (scenes, elements, schedule, notes) as a project file that can be re-opened and continued later.

Tips & Best Practices

Always run breakdown before touching the stripboard

The stripboard, schedule, and call sheet all depend on the data produced by Run Breakdown. If you open Pre-Production and go straight to the stripboard without running the breakdown, the board will be empty.

Group locations before grouping scene numbers

The most efficient shooting orders group all scenes at the same location together regardless of their script order. Drag the stripboard so that INT. COFFEE SHOP — DAY scenes are all adjacent, then look for other groupings. Page count and continuity are secondary to location efficiency for most productions.

Build the call sheet incrementally

Set the General Crew Call and the weather block first. Then fill in cast call times working backwards from the first scene's scheduled start. Leave advance schedule and emergency contacts until the call sheet is otherwise complete.

Use storyboard panels for complex sequences first

Do not try to storyboard the entire film. Focus storyboard effort on sequences that are visually complex, technically demanding (VFX, stunts, multiple cameras), or where the director and DP need to agree on coverage before arriving on location.

Save the project file after every session

Use Export → Project File to save the complete Pre-Production state at the end of every working session. Pre-Production does not auto-save. Re-opening Thenema Writer without a saved project file means starting the breakdown again from scratch.