Create and manage characters

On a production imported from a screenplay you do not create characters at all: SceneMatch extracts them from the script and they are waiting when the import finishes. A feature-length script typically yields twenty or thirty.

What you do next matters more than the creating, because every other part of the breakdown — looks, continuity, per-character props, the schedule's cast chips — hangs off this list being right.

Adding one by hand

Characters that never speak still need to exist: a background artist with a costume note, a stand-in, a late addition not yet in the pages. Create those from the characters page: pick the type first — principal, double or background — and the form shows the fields that type has.

A character carries a name, a number and any aliases it is known by in the script. The number is the cast number the production uses on call sheets; the aliases matter because a script that calls the same person MRS. HOLLIS in one scene and MOTHER in another will otherwise produce two characters.

Principal, background or double

Every character is one of three types, and you can change between them at any time. Getting this right is worth the minute it costs: it is what separates the cast you are tracking continuity for from the crowd you are counting, and from the people who perform them.

• Principal — a character of the story you track continuity for.
• Background — supporting cast and extras, with a headcount.
• Double — someone who performs another character: a stunt, photo, body or hand double, or a stand-in. A double is not a character of the story, so it is listed apart from the cast, but it is scheduled on its own, has its own actor and its own looks.

Add a double from the page of the character it performs, with Add double, or from New Character with the Double type and the character it doubles. Pick the kind — stunt, photo, body, hand or parts, or stand-in — and, if it helps, a specialty such as riding or driving; the double is created already linked and named after the character, "Cara stunt double", until you type a name of your own. A double can perform more than one character — the same stunt performer for two characters in a fight — and a character can have several doubles. Each page links to the other, so you can go from a character to its doubles and back in one tap.

A double always performs a principal or a background character, never another double: a stand-in for the stunt double is still standing in for the same character, so link them both to it.

Changing a character's type

Choose Change type from … at the bottom of the character's ••• menu — on its card, or next to its name on its page — or tap the type under its photo. Most of a character comes along unchanged, but two changes do drop something:

• Becoming a double asks for the character it performs and the kind, and removes the character's relationships: a double is not a character of the story, so it has none.
• Leaving the double type removes its links to the characters it doubled. The dialog warns you first.

Converting is the way to tidy up a "Cara stunt dbl" that was created as a principal before doubles had a type of their own.

What the parser gets wrong, and why

Screenplay extraction is good but not clairvoyant. Expect to spend a pass cleaning up:

• The same person, twice — usually a name change through the drafts, or an alias the parser could not connect. Fix these by merging, which keeps both sides' work.
• Things that are not people — a heading the parser read as a cue. Delete those.
• Numbering — the script does not carry cast numbers, so they are yours to assign.

Do this early. Every scene photo, look and note attached to a duplicate is work you will have to reconcile later, and merging is much cheaper before the continuity exists than after.

Narrowing the cast list

Two independent sets of switches sit behind the filter, all on to begin with: wrap status — wrapped and not wrapped — and character type — principals, doubles and background.

They combine, which is where the useful views come from. Switch off wrapped, doubles and background and the list is the principals still in play, which on a long shoot is the only part of a fifty-name list anyone needs. Switch off principals and doubles and you have the crowd to count.

The list itself keeps the types apart: principals first, then Doubles and Stand-ins, each card naming the character it doubles, then background.

While anything is hidden, a warning under the page title says how many characters are filtered out, so a short list is never mistaken for a small cast. Show All Characters brings them back.

The filter stays as you left it, so a cast list you narrowed to the principals still in play is still narrowed next time you open it. It is remembered per production and in the browser you set it in — not on your account, so it does not follow you to a set iPad or show up on a colleague's screen. If a list looks shorter than you expect, the warning badge above it is the reason.

The same filter is on an episode's characters page, where narrowing to unwrapped principals answers "who do we still need for this block".

The card menu

Each character card carries its own ••• menu — edit, photo, merge, export, delete, mark as wrapped, and change type — so the tidying pass can be done straight from the list without opening each one. The same menu sits next to the character's name on its own page.

Exporting the cast

The characters page exports to PDF, which is the list most productions actually circulate. Doubles and stand-ins print in their own section between the principals and the background, each with the characters it performs and the kind of double. On a season there is also a character breakdown showing which characters appear in which episodes — the answer to "who do we need for the block" in one page.

The thing that is not obvious

Deleting a character deletes its continuity with it. The looks built on that character, the photos and notes attached to it inside scenes, its wardrobe and props associations — all of it belongs to the character and goes when it does.

That is why merging exists, and why a duplicate should almost always be merged rather than deleted. If you are unsure whether two entries are the same person, merge them: it keeps everything from both sides, and it is far easier to recover from than a delete.