Importing Scripts

FilmBase supports importing scripts in three formats:

• FDX (Final Draft): Best option. Preserves all metadata, formatting, and can import existing breakdown tags.
• PDF: Parsed using built-in text extraction. You can select specific page ranges. Formatting may vary.
• Plain Text / Fountain: Simple text-based screenplay format.

How to Import

1. Navigate to Script > Script Breakdown in the sidebar.
2. Click the Import New Script button in the toolbar.
3. Browse and select your script file (.fdx, .pdf, or .txt).
4. Wait for parsing to complete: you'll see a scene count summary.

Revision Imports

When importing a revised script, FilmBase uses scene matching to preserve your existing scheduling data (stripboard assignments, breakdown tags). Locked scene numbers are preserved, and new scenes receive suffix letters (e.g., 5A, 5B).

Script Editor

The Script Editor provides a formatted view of your screenplay with full editing capabilities.

Formatting

Standard screenplay elements are displayed with industry formatting: scene headings, action, character, dialogue, parenthetical, transition, and dual dialogue. Use Ctrl/Cmd+B, Ctrl/Cmd+I, and Ctrl/Cmd+U for bold, italic, and underline.

Scene Numbering

Scenes are automatically numbered, and inserting or deleting a scene keeps every number correct on the spot. When your script goes to production, use the lock button in the editor toolbar to freeze the existing scene numbers.

While locked, a scene you insert is numbered off the scene before it with an A/B suffix — add a scene after Scene 2 and it becomes 2A, the next 2B — so your locked numbers never shift. The lock also governs revision imports: matched scenes keep their numbers and genuinely new scenes pick up suffixes. Click the lock again to unlock and allow normal renumbering.

Revision Tracking

Revisions follow the industry-standard color order: White, Blue, Pink, Yellow, Green, Goldenrod, etc. Mark paragraphs as revised to track changes across drafts. Each revision is color-coded in the editor.

Title Page

A WYSIWYG title page editor is built in. Fields include: Title, Written By, Based On, Draft, Draft Date, Contact, and Copyright. Toggle between the script and title page from the toolbar.

Find & Replace

Full find and replace with options for case-sensitive and whole-word matching. Navigate matches with find next/previous, replace single occurrences, or replace all.

Scene Navigator Panel

A collapsible panel on the left lists all scenes in your script. Click any scene to jump directly to it in the editor. Use this for quick navigation through long scripts.

Script Notes

Attach notes to any paragraph in the script. Notes appear as expandable indicators alongside the text and are color-coded for easy identification. Click the note indicator to view, edit, or delete notes.

Other Features

• Full undo/redo support
• Character name autosuggest when typing character paragraphs
• Scene heading suggestions (INT./EXT., locations, time of day)
• Reformat mode to change paragraph types
• Zoom controls
• Right-click for cut, copy, paste, delete, and select all

Script Breakdown

Script breakdown is the process of identifying and tagging all production elements in each scene: props, wardrobe, vehicles, special effects, extras, and more.

Manual Tagging

1. Highlight text in a script line that represents an element (e.g., "Red Sports Car").
2. A tagging popup appears near your selection.
3. Select the appropriate category (e.g., "Vehicles").
4. The text is underlined in the category color and added to the element list.

Auto-Tagging

FilmBase includes auto-tagging that runs entirely on your device. No internet connection is needed. There are two modes:

• Understand: Fast, lightweight entity extraction. Good for quick passes.
• Reason (Hybrid): Combines keyword matching with deeper, context-aware analysis.

Suggestions appear inline. You can accept or dismiss each one individually. A confidence threshold (default 0.5) filters low-confidence matches. Character names and common camera directions are automatically excluded.

Element Categories

FilmBase supports 20 breakdown element categories:

Scenes Panel (Left)

The collapsible left panel lists all scenes in your script. Each entry shows the scene number, story day, page count, and estimated duration: all editable inline. Use the search bar to find scenes by name or number, and the shoot day dropdown to filter to a specific day's scenes. Click a scene to load it in the breakdown view.

Scene Tags Panel (Right)

The collapsible right panel shows all breakdown tags for the currently selected scene, organized by category (color-coded cards). From this panel you can:

• Click + Add Tag on any category to manually add a tag without selecting text
• Add or remove tag categories from the panel
• Edit tag names inline by clicking on them
• See the tag count per category at a glance

Right-Click Menus

Right-click a tag in the Scene Tags panel for:

• Edit Tag Name: Rename the tag
• Apply to All Occurrences: Find and tag every instance of this text across all scenes
• Promote to Element: Add this tag to the Elements Manager
• Link to Existing Element: Connect this tag to an element already in the manager
• Unlink from Element: Remove the element connection
• Remove Tag: Delete the tag from this scene

Right-click an auto-tag suggestion for:

• Change Category: Move to a different category (Props, Wardrobe, Set Dressing, etc.)
• Accept Tag: Confirm the suggestion
• Dismiss: Remove the suggestion

Characters

The Characters view lists all characters extracted from your script. Each character shows their dialogue count, scene count, and assigned actor. The character's avatar shows the assigned actor's photo from their contact card, and details save on their own — no Save button.

• Actor Assignment: Assign cast contacts to characters via a searchable dropdown. Primary actor assignment is tracked.
• Cast Tier: Set Lead, Supporting, Day Player, or your own tiers right in the header. The tier feeds the cast budget.
• Reordering: Drag-and-drop to reorder characters. Auto-numbering updates based on position.
• Scene Presence: See which scenes each character appears in at a glance.

Connected Elements

Use Connect an element to link the props, wardrobe, and vehicles that belong to a character — their gun, their coat, their car. Connections are anchored to the character, so they work whether or not the script has been tagged yet, and they also appear under Connected Characters on the element itself.

Each connection has a small used in picker — a mini magic sheet for that one element. Pick the scenes a prop is carried in, or the story days an outfit is worn on. Wardrobe defaults to story days (one look per day); other elements default to scenes.

Reference Images

Build a visual board on any character — look, wardrobe, casting. Images sync with the project, and the same gallery is available on elements and locations.

Elements Manager

A centralized view of all breakdown elements across your script. Filter by category, search by name, and edit element properties.

Budget Integration

Elements can be linked to budget line items. Enable Auto Sync on an element to automatically keep the budget line item's rate, quantity, and multiplier in sync. Changes in either direction are reflected bidirectionally.

• Import elements to budget (creates corresponding line items)
• Usage days are calculated automatically based on shoot day assignments
• Vendor assignment from contacts flagged as suppliers
• Default rate, unit, and quantity per element

Connected Characters

When you connect an element to a character (from the Characters page), it appears here under Connected Characters — chips showing which characters use the element, and in what relationship (uses, wears, drives…). A reference-image gallery is available on every element too, syncing with the project.

Location Elements

Real-world locations created on Schedule > Locations appear here as elements in the Locations category. Their shoot days come from the scenes whose headings are assigned to them — no tagging needed. Selecting a location element shows a location form: address, Google Maps link (GPS is read from it), location contact, and availability dates, kept in sync with the Locations page both ways. Set a rate and import a location to the budget like any other element.

Sides

Sides are the specific script pages needed for a given shoot day. Select a shoot day from the dropdown, or pick scenes manually to preview and export sides.

• Selection modes: Choose by shoot day (auto-selects scenes) or manual scene selection
• Preview: Live preview with proper screenplay formatting and page count
• PDF Export: Standard screenplay formatting with scene numbering, revision color stripes, and page numbers
• Zoom controls for comfortable previewing

Shotlist

Plan individual shots for each scene with detailed metadata.

Per-Shot Data

• Shot type: Wide, Medium, Close-up, etc.
• Shot movement: Static, Pan, Tilt, Dolly, Crane, Handheld, Steadicam, etc.
• Shot angle: Eye level, Low angle, High angle, Dutch, Bird's eye, etc.
• Lens: Specific lens specification (e.g., "50mm f/1.4")
• Equipment notes: Additional gear requirements
• Description and estimated duration
• VFX / Sound flags: Mark shots requiring visual effects or special sound work

Automatic Shot Diagrams

Any shot without its own image shows an automatic, hand-drawn diagram of the framing, so the list reads like a board before anything is drawn. The diagram follows the shot: the shot size sets how tight it frames, and the camera angle re-stages the whole frame (high and low tilt the view, Dutch cants it, and a bird's-eye looks straight down). Attach your own image any time to replace it, and diagrams export at a clean 16:9.

Script Context Panel (Right)

Open the collapsible right panel to see the current scene's script text alongside your shot list. This is essential for lining: it shows the script paragraphs with a zoom slider for comfortable reading.

Script Coverage (Lining)

Enable Lining Mode to select script paragraphs covered by each shot. Coverage is visualized with color-coded lanes alongside the script text, showing exactly which dialogue or action each shot covers. Export to PDF or Excel.

Right-Click Menu

Right-click any shot card for:

• Display Options: Toggle which fields show on cards: Thumbnail, Type, Movement, Angle, Lens, Equipment, Description, VFX Notes, Sound Notes
• Shot Color: Assign a color category: Master (Blue), Coverage (Red), VFX (Purple), B-Roll (Green), Insert (Yellow), Special (Pink)
• Characters in Frame: How many people the diagram shows (1–5)
• Subject Pose: Standing, Sitting (at a table), or In a car
• Environment: Auto (from the scene heading), Interior, or Exterior
• Delete Shot: Remove the shot

The Characters, Pose and Environment options appear only while a shot is using the automatic diagram (no uploaded image).

Storyboard

Visualize your shots as storyboard panels with two viewing modes:

• Cards View: Grid of shot cards with images, descriptions, and metadata
• Timeline View: Horizontal sequence showing shots in order

Animatic Playback

Watch your storyboard as a movie with play/pause/stop controls. Playback runs at 24fps with the current shot highlighted. Supports seeking, looping, and total duration tracking.

Automatic Shot Sketches

Panels without an uploaded image show an automatic 16:9 sketch drawn from the shot's size, angle and subject, in a loose hand-drawn pencil style with shaded figures and grounding shadows. The angle restages the frame (a bird's-eye becomes a true top-down view of the scene), several characters are blocked with depth rather than lined up flat, and interiors and exteriors are detected from the scene heading and drawn with depth. Right-click a panel to set the characters, pose and environment. Change a shot's pose or cast count on the Shotlist and the Storyboard sketch updates at once — it's the same shot in both places.

Image Management

Upload your own image per shot panel to replace the sketch; the upload control appears on hover so it never hides the art. Images are stored locally in your project's media folder. Export storyboards to PDF (at a clean 16:9) or generate an MP4 video of your animatic timeline.

Panels & Right-Click

In Cards view, the left panel shows a scene navigator and the right panel shows the script context (same as the Shotlist view). Drag the script panel's edge to resize it and the width sticks; close it and the board reflows to fill the space. Switch between Cards and Timeline from the toggle on the left of the toolbar. Right-click any storyboard card for Display Options, Shot Color assignment, and Delete Shot: identical to the Shotlist context menu.

Magic Sheet

The Magic Sheet is a matrix view showing which elements and characters appear in which scenes. Rows are elements (grouped by category), columns are scenes.

• Click any cell to toggle a tag on/off for that scene
• Filter by category: Cast, Props, Wardrobe, Extras, Vehicles, and more
• Filter scenes with the toolbar box: scene numbers (8), ranges (1-5), or heading text (INT, NIGHT), combined with commas. Elements outside the visible scenes drop out of the rows
• Switch the columns between Scenes and Story Days with the toolbar toggle — Story Day view collapses each day's scenes into one column, and every scene header carries a story-day chip
• Tagging works in Story Day view too: a cell stands for the whole day, so clicking it tags the element across all of that day's scenes at once (or clears it from them all)
• Shows total occurrence count per element and per scene
• Cast assignments automatically create character-scene links