The Master Guide / 05 Planning, budgets and takes · The plan
The asset list and versions
List every asset the film needs, mark what is built rather than generated, and decide every version and ratio before anything is made.
List every asset the film needs, mark what is built rather than generated, and decide every version and ratio before anything is made.
The asset list
Derive it only from the treatment's department sheets. Anything no sheet names is an addition: flag it, get it approved, add it to the sheet, then to the list.
Give every asset a permanent ID by family, with wardrobe looks and states numbered under their character:
Family | What it is |
Character | The chosen casting face, or the chosen photos of a real person; the face source stays the reference every image of that face is checked against |
Wardrobe look; state | One character sheet per wardrobe look; one sheet per visible state (wet, torn, make-up smudged) |
Location | The master plate; a reverse plate wherever the camera crosses [proven]; coverage plates per shot direction; state master plates |
Product | The client's photos and artwork, which every product image is checked against; a sheet only when needed; each physical state; a texture anchor where the material is a hero |
Prop | Hero and handled props, emblems, detail locks |
Style | Stylised films only: the style anchor. A photoreal film's look is the treatment's look block, with no image |
Staging map | Positions only, for fragile staging (more than three acting characters). A position image. Option: use it when a position or path is critical, or after a spatial failure [single strong source] |
Internal frame | Only where the method column names one |
Voice; line; music cue; effect; graphic; VFX element | One voice per speaking character and the narrator; each line with speaker, shot and route; music at the film's real length with sync points; effects per shot; each on-screen line, end card and legal line per language and ratio, with reading time; each visual-effects element plate with its host shot |
A smiling close-up row. Option: use it when the script has a smile or laugh in a close or medium shot [single strong source]. Add the row for that character: without it, the video model invents the teeth and jaw.
What each row carries: the name exactly as on the sheet; its source (client, director, brief); the shots that use it; the anchor to make, with its tool and settings; expected attempts and credits; status and link.
The shot-by-asset check. Every person, place, product and prop visible in a shot has its ID on that shot. Attach every recurring character from the start, because a missing one gets invented. Every asset serves a shot. Reading down the shot list, each wardrobe look and product state runs in story order, with no gap and no stray look (a client once caught a mask that vanished between shots).
Builds [proven]. Mark every moment where a label or exact copy must be read (a packshot, an end card, a hero hold) "build" in the shot type and method columns. It is made in one of these ways: real photography; real photography animated in code; the client's artwork composited over the generated plate (the default for Arabic, legal or dense text); or a generated label, accepted only after the every-frame check. End-card words, wordmarks and legal lines are code graphics (how each is built: Graphics, captions, versions and delivery → Built label moments; the every-frame check: Video with Seedance → Product and labels in motion).
Edit effects and graphics: rough cut or finishing (decided defaults; a shot's row in the plan may change one, with its reason written). Each shot that needs one says what enters and when:
declared edit effects (a retime or ramp, a reverse, a modest scale or position change, a dissolve the treatment asks for): the rough cut, because they change what the client approves; never a retime inside lip-synced speech;
supers, claims, end card and legal lines: a timing placeholder in the rough cut wherever the window carries reading time, and the designed graphic in finishing. A super the story turns on enters designed in the rough cut;
overlays over picture: finishing, unless the shot reads wrong without them;
designed sound effects: finishing, except a hit the cut is timed to.
Versions and ratios, planned now
Each version is a list of master shots with new windows, each inside its shot's usable generated length.
Online versions (decided). What each online version is lives in Graphics, captions, versions and delivery → Versions. For the plan:
a vertical feed edit's opening shots (the first 5 s the client approved in the treatment) get their own native 9:16 generations, each priced;
the feed edit's remainder is reframed, with a crop row per shot;
a 6-second version is planned from its own idea in the treatment.
Each native ratio is its own generation set, never cropped from another film master; the feed edit's reframed remainder and the crops below are the exceptions. Design and block each master for its own frame, and re-stage where one frame can't serve both. Make internal frames at the delivery ratio.
Set crops and safe areas now. For each cropped version (1:1 from either master, 4:5 from the 9:16 master, a feed edit's remainder), write one row per shot: the version, its source master, the crop's centre offset as a percentage of the frame (x +0%, y −6%), and what must stay inside it. Record each platform's safe zone from its current spec, with the date read, and keep supers and the product clear of its overlays (the bottom and right edges of 9:16 feeds). Re-stage now any shot whose key element falls outside a crop.
Before you sign the plan off, check that:
the windows run gap-free to the film master's frames;
every shot has a purpose, a wardrobe look and product state, its asset IDs (builds and motion-graphics shots excepted) and an "edit and graphics" entry;
on-screen text fits its window;
every lock names its exception;
every generation has a method with a reason.
Then read the plan once against the treatment: every scene, line and product moment in order, nothing added, the shot count inside the treatment's range. An internal plan board image, three frames per row with a line beside each, is optional.