The production workflow

Start with the eight-stage Creator journey at the top of this page; this chapter only maps it to the detailed evidence reference. Use this document as the decision and evidence reference behind each stage. Execution prompts: library · Higgs team case study: What we have done in the Higgs AI Film Festival · rationale: evidence.

Full companion guidance: Prithu skill integration. Its mode examples, compact templates, role passes and twenty-action playbook complement the existing records; the integration map preserves our gate IDs.

Creative intent and proportionate controls

Follow the eight-step creator path. Use the creative brief and creative scene card as compact entry forms; the full brief/canon and timed packet expand the same project records, not separate copies. Narrative, advertising and other forms share the controls below. The detailed phases are the operational reference behind the creator path, not a competing navigation sequence.

Choose the smallest useful production depth

Runtime is a guide, not a threshold. Increase only the controls justified by continuity, spend, team conflicts, permissions or delivery requirements. Every depth retains applicable preflight, source rights, review, exact-master verification and recovery. Use the operating actions to select the next output; these actions sit inside the eight-stage path.

Character, message and editorial development

Narrative briefs establish want, pressure, private contradiction, observable behaviour and change. Track each key relationship as incoming relationship → choice/reaction → outgoing relationship. Dialogue, blocking, objects, reaction and silence should reveal what matters; narration need not repeat it. Time these beats before visual generation.

Advertising briefs instead establish audience problem → product promise → supported demonstration → next action. Keep actual product results distinct from illustrative screens or hypothetical outcomes. For sensory or abstract work, define the intended progression of attention or feeling.

Edit as a second writing pass. Ask what each scene changes in information, emotion or action; test order, hold, reaction and silence before regenerating. Re-spot music against the intended turn rather than forcing a scene to match a premature score choice. A change after picture lock reopens affected sound, captions and finishing reviews, not unrelated approvals.

Ownership and authority

Detailed role contracts, nineteen functions, scalable crew modes and the authoritative gate/RACI map are in Roles and handoffs. Agent dispatch and composition are defined in Multi-agent studio. Phase labels below describe contributors; the role map assigns the single accountable decision owner.

A solo creator may hold all roles, but must make each decision explicitly: producer owns scope/budget/delivery; director owns story and canon; generation operator owns composer accuracy and job records; continuity reviewer owns shot/state checks; editor owns joins and pacing; sound editor owns sync/mix; delivery reviewer owns the actual exported and uploaded artifact. Automation prepares evidence; it does not invent approval.

Keep a versioned brief, script, canon, asset registry, clip ledger, edit decision list and delivery ledger. Each status change records owner, timestamp, version and supporting evidence. User authorization persists within its stated model, cost and attempt limits; do not repeatedly ask for an already approved unchanged action.

References have scoped authority: the approved face controls identity, the location controls geography, and a selected approved boundary frame controls the incoming pose. Resolve conflicts before rendering. A negative sentence cannot reliably cancel a visible feature in a reference. An asset's existence in a project does not establish its attachment to a job.

The 31-area department playbook deepens each phase without expanding mandatory headcount. Compile selected department decisions into the timed scene packet. Use the filmmaker practice map for sourced inspiration and the specialist modules for concrete prompts and checks.

Adapt checks to the approved film

Community edition: save one starter draft in this browser, download its text packet, and use the blank CSV ledger. For separate browser-local projects, revision checks, checklist JSON and full ZIP backups, open My projects at /projects/. Nothing is uploaded or synchronized. Keep production records in your own project folder.

Causality must be understandable according to the approved intent; it need not always be shown as literal on-screen mechanics. Deliberate offscreen action, ellipsis, animation and stylized physics are valid when planned and legible. Hold a clip for missing explicit contact/action only when that visibility is actually required by its brief. Character/prop/mechanism checks may be inapplicable to an empty environment, graphic or abstract shot, with a recorded reason. Select delivery mode at intake: platform publication, competition entry, or private/local handover. Upload and submission controls apply only to the relevant mode; actual final-file review and evidence-backed handover still apply.

Phases, gates and handoffs

State machines

Assets: exploratory → picked → approved → active → superseded/archived; rejected remains recoverable and cannot become continuity authority. Clips: planned → preflight-passed → submitted → processing → generated → reviewed → approved/repair/rejected → in-edit. Delivery: exported → file-verified → uploaded → platform-verified → published → submission-confirmed. Record these separately.

Timing and model decisions

Use short controlled units, commonly 3–5 seconds, where available and suitable. A project's approved longer takes override that default. Separate physical action time, requested render duration and retained edit duration. A normal-gravity short drop cannot be stretched to 15 seconds without changing its physics or using explicit slow motion; use a brief action and a hold, or trim. Do not copy historical 480p/1080p settings or credit prices as universal rules. Validate current controls before each spend.

Choose narration-first timing for presenter/explainer work; picture/performance-first for observational drama; score-led timing for intentional montage. Dialogue must be timed to an approved performance. Plan every destination's framing and caption safe areas; do not assume automatic cropping works. For a 2.39 crop inside 16:9, the retained vertical band is approximately 74.4%, centred unless editorially reframed.

Review and rating gate

The requested Divinium rubric is unresolved. The following is a proposed operational rubric, not a recovered or attributed rating system.

Hard gates: correct story outcome; approved identity/prop/geography; physically readable action; intended start/end state; usable picture/audio; required delivery compliance. Any failed hard gate blocks approval regardless of aesthetic score. Unknown is not pass.

Rate each dimension 0–4 with timestamp evidence: story clarity, continuity, physical performance, camera/editability, sound, technical quality. 0 unusable, 1 major repair, 2 material limitations, 3 usable as intended, 4 particularly strong. Proposed release threshold: every dimension ≥3 and all hard gates pass. “Not applicable” needs a reason; unheard audio stays unverified. Director may accept a minor deviation only with its visible effect and downstream implications recorded. Ratings apply to the retained interval and its joins, not merely a flattering still.

Review in passes: full-motion story; identity/geography; first/last frames and every cut; audio-only listening; uninterrupted cold viewing; technical decode/metadata. Sampling is useful triage but does not certify mechanics or listening. Finding one reference flash triggers an audit of all similar boundaries.

Completion and learning

Archive exact job metadata and approved boundary frames, source media, trims, edit project, stems, text/captions, master, alternate crops, provenance and submission receipt. Record defect → evidence → cause hypothesis → smallest change → tested result → scope where the lesson applies. Update the checklist at each real state change, never only at the end of a session.

Anti-drift change control and deadline triage

At intake configure a maximum attempt count and credit ceiling per shot, a protected edit/QA/upload time reserve, a picture-lock cutoff and a pivot checkpoint. Choose their values from the actual deadline and platform turnaround; never inherit them from a past film.

A change to identity, geography, a hero prop, causal action, dialogue or delivery format creates a new canon/card version and an impact list of dependent shots. Pause only those shots until the director resolves the change. A minor accepted visual deviation must be recorded with its allowed scope; it does not silently rewrite canon. Repeated failure after the authorized attempt limit stops retries, even when a new prompt sounds promising.

At each checkpoint estimate remaining critical-path generation, editing, review and upload time with uncertainty. If it exceeds time left after the protected delivery reserve, freeze optional polish and choose: simplify coverage, use a previously approved fallback, remove a nonessential beat with a coherent story revision, or pivot to a smaller complete story. A required causal beat cannot be removed merely to make the schedule appear green. If no compliant coherent cut can be delivered within the reserve, explicitly abandon/defer that entry rather than continue uncontrolled spending. Pivot requires a new brief and controlled assets, not reuse of incompatible canon.

Historical contrast only: the user reports abandoning The Apple at the Door after substantial drift shortly before deadline, then completing and submitting The Night Watch. Retrieved AatD defects support the drift diagnosis; Night Watch's later submission record supports completion. This does not prove a particular genre or clip length guarantees success.