Auteur Prep
Turn a script, treatment, or book into evidence-linked coverage, breakdowns, department packets, and production-ready project intelligence.
The production binder, made honest: every breakdown sheet, tab, and stamp traces back to the exact line in the script it came from.
Who it's for
Producers, ADs, directors, department heads, and AI-film teams who need to read an outside script or book and turn it into something a production can actually work from.
“Analyze this screenplay and identify every location. Create three visual directions for each scene and arrange them on the Visual Canvas so the location scout can print the complete packet in the morning.”
What it solves
A first-pass breakdown usually means retyping the script into someone else's spreadsheet. Prep parses the source instead, preserving it, and builds a scene-addressable project where cast, locations, props, and risks each carry the evidence they were drawn from, ready for a human to correct and approve.
How it works
Prep produces a source-preserving breakdown: cast, locations, props, and risks stay linked to the exact lines they came from, and your original is never overwritten. Automated extraction is a proposal, approved production truth is review-controlled and stays versioned.
“Break down act one: every location, prop, costume, and speaking role, cross-referenced to the chapters they came from, in a packet the line producer can actually read.”
Workspaces included
- Reading Room, evidence-linked script coverage on the material you bring, at development-desk scale: the whole pile read, recommends argued, and breakdowns for budget, setting, and cast in the same pass.
- Production Office, breakdown, the human-reviewed Production Graph, department dossiers, location scout packets, and the director's visual bible.
- Budget scenarios, low, expected, and high planning cases from assumptions you can edit.
- Shot planning, reviewed scenes become shot concepts and storyboard candidates, with a mandatory approval gate before anything goes to video.
Budget the film before you spend a dollar
Prep is also where an AI-era production gets its budget honest. Memory and eval remember what the last project actually took, which providers, how many takes, what each accepted generation really cost, and the studio keeps careful receipts of every spend as you work. Built-in estimation tools read that history to forecast what your film, advertisement, or campaign will take before you commit, and the running ledger tracks actuals against the plan as generations land. The guesswork ends: you plan from your own receipts, not from a vendor's brochure.
For the AI filmmaker, this changes the conversation entirely. Prep lets you discuss, with confidence, what an actual production based on your script is going to cost: which AI generation pipelines are worth investing in for this project, and how much leeway your budget gives you in generations per scene. The tool grows more accurate with project experience. The more you use it, the more it learns your generation habits, what things cost you in practice, and what you actually choose as final pixel. So regardless of which model you are using this month, the software engineering under the hood gives you more understanding, and receipts, around what you wind up with.
What a department packet holds
A department packet is an immutable, versioned dossier cut for one audience: directors, producers, casting, costume, hair, and makeup, art and props, locations, cinematography and storyboards, effects and safety, sound and voice, AI-production provenance, or executives and clients. Each version carries the scenes and elements that department needs, cited to the script; a declared list of assumptions and omissions; a confidence and readiness summary; confidentiality markings; and checksums on the source and every file, so a packet in the wild can always be traced to the exact draft that produced it. Delivery formats include PDF, self-contained HTML, CSV, XLSX, and an offline ZIP. Safety-critical elements, stunts, intimacy, children, animals, vehicles, and effects, always require human review before a packet moves.
From breakdown to wrap, without gatekeepers
Auteur Intelligence™ plans to integrate with Movie Magic Scheduling, Movie Magic Budgeting, and the other scheduling and budgeting tools the industry already runs on, building automation workflows that take you directly from script breakdown and redline to production and into post. These integrations are planned, and the foundation is already here: the studio analyzes your screenplay, turns scenes into storyboards, and acts as the production’s permanent memory hub, creating and controlling assets that stay consistent from the first read to the final delivery.
Who this serves:
- Line producers streamlining breakdowns, day-out-of-days thinking, and the paperwork that eats prep weeks.
- Location scouts communicating looks and logistics straight to producers and directors, with the project as the shared source of truth.
- Directors building a visual vision for the film, scene by scene, before a dollar of production is spent.
- AI filmmakers going from first pixel to last right inside the platform, using the tools of their choice, without asking permission.
NO MORE GATEKEEPERS.
Embedded from other products
Prep does not fold another paid product inside it. Prep itself is also included inside Auteur Film, the same coverage and breakdown, not billed a second time when you already have Film.
Moving up
Approved breakdowns, graphs, and shot plans carry directly into Film and Game, and generated media can be finished in Edit. Studio bundles them.
On the deck
Coverage reads well on a couch: review and approve packets from the Control Deck Reading Room.
Where it runs
Depending on the posture you choose, your script and its breakdown live locally or in your cloud studio account, with the same gates either way.
Demonstrated
By 2026-08-28, first-pass breakdowns had run with source evidence attached and a human review step, and scene indexing had run over text, Fountain, and Markdown, with broader formats handled through Intake.
Current limitations
Automated extraction is a proposal, not approved production truth: cast, locations, props, and risks stay for a human to correct and approve, and the original script is never overwritten.
Related products
Story · Film · Game · Edit · Studio
Questions
Will it overwrite my script? No. The source is preserved and checksummed; Prep works from a parsed copy and leaves your original untouched.
Is the budget a real bid? No. The scenarios are preliminary planning support built from editable assumptions, useful for shaping a plan, not a substitute for a professional budget.
Do I need Film to use Prep? No. Prep stands alone as its own product.
Take the next step
Apply for the Founding Beta, /founding-beta/. An application to work alongside us; this starts a conversation with us, and seats, when offered, are paid.
Proof
Every claim on this page traces to the product status registry, with evidence in code, manuals, and current standalone catalog, last verified 2026-08-28. The receipts behind it are claims PREP-001–009.