Film Direction (stage 0)

Why a separate stage

The viewer of a film cannot say why it is good or bad. They feel pace, tension, and continuity, but they cannot name them. A product trailer viewer is the same: they either get the "aha — so that's what it does" moment or they don't. Everything that produces that feeling is a decision the director made before shooting. AI generation does not change this; it only makes the cost of undecided things visible faster.

So before a script exists, write down the decisions. The output is films/<slug>/direction.md.

1. Intent (write it in three lines)

• What kind of film: drama short / product trailer / music-video / documentary-style piece.
• What the viewer must feel or understand by the end. For drama: one emotional sentence ("a man forgives himself a little"). For a product film: the list of "aha" moments in the order they must land ("it understands a plain description → it builds a world → you step inside").
• Length and unit: total runtime; block length (15 s default because one Seedance generation = one block).

1b. The dramatic spine — see film-story/SKILL.md (stage 0b), which owns the full engine: spine, conflict ladder, loss, dilemma, setups/payoffs, emotion map, nested stories. Run it before the script. Summary of the minimum here so this file stays self-contained: