Import a screenplay and build your breakdown
Upload a PDF or Final Draft script and SceneMatch builds the scenes, characters and locations for you — then keeps them through every revision.
Every production in SceneMatch starts from its script. Rather than typing scenes and characters in by hand, you upload the screenplay and the app reads it: each slug line becomes a scene with its location and time of day, and every character who speaks becomes a character on the production.
For a feature that is usually 90 to 120 scenes and 20 to 40 characters created in a couple of minutes, which is the difference between starting your breakdown today and starting it next week.
What you can upload
PDF and Final Draft (.fdx) files both work. A PDF exported from any of the standard screenwriting apps is read reliably, because the parser looks for the shape of a screenplay — scene headings, character cues, dialogue — rather than for one program's particular output.
If your script has a title page or a cast list before the first scene, tell the importer how many pages to skip so those pages are not mistaken for content.
What gets created
- Scenes — numbered as they are in the script, with interior/exterior, location and day/night read from the slug line
- Characters — everyone with dialogue, deduplicated across spellings
- Script days — the timeline you group scenes into, ready to fill in
You can choose not to create characters on import if you would rather add them yourself, which is worth doing on a script with a large crowd of one-line parts.
Revisions do not start over
When a new draft arrives you upload it as a revision rather than a new script. SceneMatch compares it to what is already there and shows you what changed — new scenes, removed scenes, renumbered scenes — and you keep everything your team has attached in the meantime. Photos, notes, looks and continuity stay on the scenes that survive.
This is the part worth understanding before you start: importing again is not destructive, so there is no reason to delay the first import until the script is final. Scripts are never final.
Episodes
On a season, each episode imports its own screenplay and carries its own revisions. Create the episodes first, then import into each one — the characters are shared across the production, so a character who appears in three episodes exists once.