Draft and finish

Draft every shot first (decided). Judge motion on the 480p draft and faces on the 1080p finish [official guidance].

1. Draft at the final length. The 1080p finish keeps its draft's duration.

2. On the draft: motion, staging, camera, cut placement, and the timing and size of the acting. Never faces, skin, hair, labels or lips.

3. No finish bought blind (decided): before you finish, check the draft's window (the part that will play in the cut) against the plan with a video-analysis tool (see Planning, budgets and takes → Draft small, then analyse). Then finish the keeper within seven days, nothing changed.

4. On the 1080p finish, at full size: faces, skin, hair, hands, labels, lips, and the eyes and blinks.

A draft plus its 1080p finish costs about 1.19 times a direct 1080p take, so drafting saves Higgsfield credits whenever more than about one direct take in five would have been rejected. If a finish loses the draft's motion, that attempt has failed; the shot's remaining attempts are direct 1080p takes within the same budget.

Do it yourself

Draft at 480p, then finish the same draft (Higgsfield app)

The app's screens change often, so these steps say what to do, not where each control sits.

1. Submit the draft as a Draft Mode job (480p), at the shot's final length. The finish keeps the draft's duration; a duration you set on the finish is ignored.

2. Review the draft, and read the video-analysis report on its window, before you spend on the finish.

3. Finish from that same draft job, within seven days. Change nothing: the same mode, prompt, media and aspect. The finish is always 1080p, billed at 16 cr a second for the draft's full duration.

4. Don't remake the shot as a new 1080p job instead. A new job is a direct take and a new attempt, and the finish is made only from a Draft Mode job.

5. If Draft Mode refuses a job, make it as a direct take at 720p (7 cr a second).

6. Log the draft and its 1080p finish as one attempt in your take log.

Sources

• From the platform's draft and finish settings.