Shot list and storyboards — from script to shooting plan

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Learn with your AI

Open this lesson in your favourite AI. It'll walk you through the why, explain the demo, and quiz you on the try-it list.

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Why this matters

A shot list is the numbered inventory of every shot you intend to capture. A storyboard is the visual companion — rough drawings or AI-generated keyframes showing each shot's composition. For AI-film, the storyboard doubles as a reference: you can use those rough keyframes directly as image-to-video inputs. This discipline — list every shot, lock composition, THEN prompt — collapses a wandering generation process into a linear pipeline.

Demo

A 2-minute short has ~20-30 shots. Numbered: 1A, 1B, 1C for scene 1's three setups. Columns: slug, shot type (MS, CU, WS), duration, description, reference image, model, retry count. Track the retry count — it tells you which shots are fighting you and need rewrites, not more generations.

# Shot list — "The Last Window" (abridged)
 
 #   Slug             Shot    Dur   Description                  Model     Retries
--   ---              ----    ---   -----------                  -----     -------
1A   INT TOWER        ELS      3s   Tower in landscape.          Veo 3      1
1B   INT TOWER WINDOW MS       6s   Lena by window. Slow push.   Runway     3
1C   INT TOWER CU     CU       2s   Lena's eyes, reflection.     Runway     5
2A   INT STAIRCASE    LS       4s   Child climbs.                Kling      2
2B   INT STAIRCASE CU CU       3s   Small hand on wall.          Runway     4
3A   INT TOWER        OTS      3s   Lena sees reflection.        Runway     6  ← hard
3B   INT TOWER INSERT XCU      2s   Hands meet on glass.         Runway     7  ← hard
4A   INT TOWER        WS      10s   Window shatters.             Sora       2
4B   EXT TOWER        ELS      4s   Tower flooded.               Veo 3      1
 
Total shots: 18. Estimated generation time: 4 hours. Editing: 3 hours.
Hand-to-glass shots (3B) are fragile — plan a backup: cut to Lena's face if shot 3B keeps failing.

Try it yourself

Take the script from Task 3 and produce a full shot list with every column above. Do not skip the retries column; it becomes your quality signal.

Draw each shot as a 30-second sketch on paper or in a whiteboarding tool. These sketches become your storyboard and your image-to-video reference inputs.

For each shot, decide: keyframe-driven (you generate one still you love, then animate it) or prompt-driven (pure text-to-video). Keyframe-driven is higher-fidelity; prompt-driven is faster.

Pick ONE shot and iterate 5 times with varied prompt wording. Notice: by iteration 3 you know whether the shot is achievable with your current tools. If not, rewrite the script to avoid it.

Estimate: 4 hours of AI generation + 3 hours of editing for an 18-shot short. That's realistic. If your schedule claims 2 hours total, you're planning to disappoint yourself.

Prompt your AI

Use these three in order. Each builds on the one before.

1. Basics & terminology

In one paragraph, explain what a shot list is, what a storyboard is, and why an AI-filmmaker should treat both as hard requirements before generating any footage.

2. Why it works (the mechanism)

Walk me through the shot-list-to-generation workflow: how do I prioritise which shots to generate first (the hardest), which shots become reference-image-driven vs prompt-driven, and how do I know when to abandon a shot and rewrite?

3. Advanced — application & what's next

I'm working with a 3-person team on a 10-minute AI-film. Walk me through how to structure the shot list in Notion or Airtable so roles (producer, director, editor) can each own columns, and how to set a weekly cadence that surfaces blocked shots early.