Film Production

Story first, pictures second. Blender does everything: previs, render, edit, encode. No subprocess, no network, no ffmpeg binary: the mp4 comes from Blender's own FFmpeg.

Order of operations

1. Concept: one idea a stranger can retell in two sentences.
2. Beats: 4-8 beats, each causing the next ("and because of that..."), with timings that sum to the target runtime. See references/story-to-shots.md.
3. Shot list: id, frame range, camera, lens, motion, beat, description. Apply it with scripts/shot_list.py.
4. Previs: block the scene, characters and lighting; render previews.
5. Preview-inspect-fix loop (below) until every shot passes.
6. Final render (guidance below).
7. Edit with audio using scripts/assemble_edit.py.

Do not start step 4 before the user has seen the beats and shot list. Skipping them is the main cause of rejected cuts.

Scripts

All scripts read JSON ARGS, return a JSON-safe dict, and are idempotent. Use forward slashes in paths.