Build a season out of episodes
On a season, episodes hold the scenes and the script while characters and script days stay at the production level — so a returning cast is entered once and tracked across the whole run.
A season is not a long film. Its scenes belong to episodes, its cast recurs across them, and the questions people ask are episodic — which block is she in, what do we still owe on 104.
SceneMatch splits a season accordingly: episodes own the scenes and the script, the production owns the cast and the script days.
Episodes
An episode has a number, and optionally a name. Numbers must be unique — creating or renaming an episode onto a number already in use is rejected rather than silently allowed.
Open one and it has its own sections: scenes, characters, screenplay and script days. Everything about the episode lives there, which is why most day-to-day work on a season happens inside an episode rather than at the top level.
Episodes are indexed by search, so an episode can be found by name or number from anywhere.
Characters are production-level
This is the part that saves the most work, and the part people expect to be otherwise.
Characters belong to the season, not to an episode. Import two episodes from scripts that share a cast and you get one set of characters, not two — the same seven people, now appearing in two episodes.
Open a character and its Episodes section shows every episode they appear in. That is the answer to "which episodes is she in", and it is also what makes a per-character breakdown across the season possible.
The consequence: continuity built on a character — their general looks, their looks, their wardrobe — is built once and applies across the run. You are not rebuilding the detective's coat every episode.
Script days span the season too
Script days live at the production level, and each episode contributes its own. Generate them for one episode and the production has that episode's days; generate for a second and the production's list grows to hold both.
So the season has one continuous timeline made of each episode's days, which is what you need when a story day runs across an episode boundary.
Scenes and filming states
Scenes belong to their episode and behave exactly as they do on a feature: numbered, uniquely, with not-filmed, partially filmed and fully filmed states you set as the shoot progresses. Scene numbers must be unique, and a duplicate is rejected.
Exports
- An episode breakdown — everything in one episode, as a PDF.
- A character breakdown across episodes — from the character's Episodes section, showing where they appear across the season.
Series
A season belongs to a series, which is what links one year to the next. Series names must be unique to you: trying to create a second series with a name you already have is rejected.
That link is what makes a returning season able to find last year's characters — see importing episode screenplays.
The thing that is not obvious
Deleting an episode does not delete the characters that appeared in it. They belong to the season and stay, along with everything built on them, ready for the next episode they appear in.
What goes with the episode is its scenes and its script — which is usually right, but does mean the continuity attached to those scenes goes too. If an episode is being restructured rather than dropped, work on its scenes rather than deleting and re-importing it.