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Version: 0.2.1

Breakdown

What the breakdown is for​

The breakdown is the pass where you read the screenplay once to tag everything the shoot must provide: roles, sets, props, costumes, and more. It sits between the Screenplay and the Shot list, because it is what fills the catalogues of the Resources mode: tagging a passage is how an element, a role or a set gets attached to a scene.

The breakdown mode, with tagged passages

The mode works on the selected episode, while the catalogues you fill belong to the whole production. Each scene also carries a progress status you set by hand — To do / In progress / Done — because a scene may need nothing yet still have been read.

The tag categories and their colours​

A tag points at one of three kinds: a role (character, soft violet), a set (place, teal), or an element. Elements are split into fourteen categories, each of a fixed colour (prop, set dressing, costume, make-up, vehicle, animal, special equipment, camera, lighting, sound, production, catering, extras, other…). A category's colour is the same in every project and every export, so the legend always reads the same way.

The script view (the tagging pass)​

The centre shows your screenplay typeset like a paper sheet. Every word is clickable, and tagged passages are highlighted in their category's colour.

To tag a passage:

  1. click a first word to open a selection, then a second word to close it;
  2. a tag popover opens, its search field pre-filled with the passage you chose; results are grouped by kind;
  3. click a result to link it — or click a category chip to create a new element in that category on the spot and tag it in one gesture.

Good to know:

  • The application tidies your selection: quotes, brackets, commas, full stops and emphasis markers hugging the ends are dropped, to keep only the thing itself.
  • Only elements and sets can be created here: a role comes from the screenplay itself. When the search names neither a role nor a set, the popover offers Create a set.
  • Tags never overlap. Clicking an already-tagged word selects that tag (and opens its sheet) instead of starting a new one.
  • If the same wording appears elsewhere, the application offers to tag those occurrences, but never does it for you.

Removing a tag does not automatically remove the underlying scene link (things can be linked by hand in Resources, with no tag): the inspector asks you about that as a separate confirmation.

The recap (the table)​

From the mode's header band, switch to the recap: a cross-table, one row per element, one column per scene. You see at a glance which scenes call for a given prop, character or set. The header search filters the recap's rows.

  • Creating a tag also creates, in the same gesture, the link it implies.
  • Renaming an element or a set from its sheet renames the actual catalogue entry: tooltips, legend, recap and the Resources mode all update together.
  • Each target's sheet offers Open in Resources, the application's single cross-mode jump: it switches to Resources and lands on the exact record.

The two documents​

  • Breakdown sheets (PDF) — one printed sheet per scene, the document you hand a department head.
  • Workbook (XLSX) — a two-sheet spreadsheet the production office reworks: a Scenes sheet and a long, filterable Breakdown sheet.

Neither asks any question: choosing its card goes straight to the save dialog.