The music-first route

When the film is a song, a jingle or a cut on the music, lock the track first and generate the pictures to it.

Cutting picture to a locked track is standard music-video and commercial practice [proven]; where it sits in this production chain is [best available, not yet validated].

When: the treatment's music is a song or a jingle (a sung voiceover included), someone sings on screen, or the edit is cut on the music (a beat-cut film, or a film with no voiceover that the music carries). Your shot plan marks the film music-first.

1. At the treatment's approval, beside the voices: write the music brief from the treatment's timings (provisional), and for a song write the lyrics (see Music → Sung lyrics and the real singer), passed by the dialect's sign-off.

2. Make and screen the options with the cap and the two-stage screen (see Music → Music takes and the shortlist). With no cut to judge against, judge them by ear, against the still animatic (the storyboard frames held for their scenes' durations) where one exists.

3. Lock the guide track: the chosen take, its lyrics and its tempo map. The map holds the measured BPM, the bar grid checked by ear, each section's starting bar and the hit points, written into your shot plan in frames. One 4/4 bar lasts 4 × 60 ÷ BPM seconds (2 s at 120 BPM), and a frame is round(seconds × fps). Measure the BPM with a beat detector (the free DJ app Mixxx shows the BPM and a beat grid), then check the grid by ear. The locked guide becomes one of the anchors.

4. Every shot window sits on the bar lines, so the pictures are generated to the track (see Planning, budgets and takes → Timing, grouping and trimming).

5. Book the singer for the finals now, with the cost in the estimate. The singer records over the Suno instrumental stem at the locked tempo, before the rough cut wherever their phrasing will change the timing of sung shots, and before finishing at the latest.

6. The edit cuts to the track. The guide sits on the first music track until the singer's vocal replaces it. On-screen singing is lip-synced to the isolated vocal (see Speaking shots and lip sync → Other speaking routes). Re-cutting the track to suit a picture is a deliberate decision of yours, never an edit-room shortcut.