Create and track scenes

On an imported production the scenes are already there — numbered, described, and with their characters linked from the script. A feature typically lands somewhere between thirty and a hundred and fifty.

What follows is mostly maintenance: adding what the parser missed, tracking progress through the shoot, and keeping the record of what actually happened.

Creating one by hand

A scene needs a number and a description. The number decides where it sits in the list — see how scenes are ordered.

The description does more than describe. Mention a character by name or alias and they are linked automatically, and you can create a character straight from the text if they do not exist yet. So typing the scene properly is also how the cast list for that scene gets built.

Filming states

Each scene tracks three states: not filmed, partially filmed, and fully filmed. Set it from the card as the shoot progresses.

Partial matters more than it looks. A scene split across two days, or one where coverage was abandoned at wrap, is the exact thing that gets lost between departments — and it is the state that tells the schedule something is still owed.

These states survive a screenplay revision, so progress tracked before new pages arrive is still there afterwards.

Omitting a scene

When the script cuts a scene, do not delete it. Omit it.

Omitting keeps the scene, its number and everything attached to it, and marks it as cut — the card dims and shows an omitted marker. It is a toggle, so a scene omitted in one draft and restored in the next can simply be un-omitted.

This mirrors how scripts handle it: an omitted scene keeps its number so the numbering around it does not shift. Deleting the scene instead would free the number and lose the continuity, which is almost never what a cut means.

Photos and notes on the scene

A scene carries its own photos and notes, separate from anything on the characters in it. This is the place for the room, the setup, the state of things — what the scene looked like, rather than what someone in it looked like.

Notes can be edited and removed individually, and the scene card shows what it has, so the list tells you at a glance which scenes have a record and which do not.

For what a specific character looked like in a specific scene, see scene continuity — that lives one level in, on the character within the scene.

The character chips

Each scene card shows chips for the characters in it. They are not decoration: opening a chip takes you straight to that character's continuity for that scene.

The card menu

Beyond editing, each scene card offers:

• Clone — for a variant like 105A, which lands in its numbered place, not beside the original
• Omit — as above
• Move — reorder against the neighbouring scene without renumbering
• Export — the scene breakdown as PDF
• Delete — which is rarely what you want; see below

The thing that is not obvious

Delete and omit are not the same decision. Deleting removes the scene, its number, its photos, its notes and every character's continuity within it. Omitting keeps all of that and marks the scene as cut.

If the script cut it, omit. Delete is for a scene that should never have existed — a parser mistake, a duplicate — not for one the writers removed. The difference matters six weeks later when someone asks what was in the scene that got dropped.