Shot Lists, Storyboards & Animatic Export

Dead Tired is scheduled, broken down, budgeted and locked. This episode is about what the director and DOP do with it: building camera shotlists, getting storyboards out of them without drawing, and exporting both a printable deck and a timed video animatic.

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Step 1: Create Shotlists and Set Camera Card Fields

1. Select Shotlist in the left sidebar under Script for Scene 1.
2. Click Add Shot to create Shot 1.
3. Double-click the shot number field to change "1" to 1A.
4. On Shot 1A’s card, click the parameter field buttons to open visual flyout pickers:
   • TYPE: Close-up
   • MOVE: Pan
   • ANGLE: Eye Level
   • EQUIP: Gimbal

There are LENS, AUDIO, and VFX fields alongside them.

Watch the thumbnail at the left of the card while you set the type. The shot arrived with a small drawing already in it, and that is not a placeholder: it is a diagram FilmBase draws from the shot’s own settings, and it redraws as you change them. It is also what your storyboard is made of.

Filling these in is what lets the camera department work out the gear list and the 1st AD estimate setups per day.

Right-click for the rest

Right-click the shot card and you get:

• Characters in Frame, Subject Pose, and Environment — these shape the drawing further. Set two characters and a seated pose and watch the thumbnail follow.
• Shot Color — for reading a long list at a glance: master blue, coverage red, VFX purple, B-roll green, inserts yellow.
• Display Options — which fields appear on the card at all, so you can strip it back to what your department needs.

When you have your own artwork, drag it onto the thumbnail and it replaces the diagram. Right-click again and the diagram options are gone, because there is no longer a drawing for them to shape.

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Step 2: The Storyboard Is the Same Artwork, Shown Large

Select Storyboard in the left sidebar under Script.

Your board is already populated. These are not new drawings: it is the same artwork that was in your shotlist thumbnails, shown large. The shotlist is the list view of your shots and the storyboard is the picture view, and both read from the same place.

The drawing comes from the shot’s type, angle, subject pose, character count, lens, and whether the scene is interior or exterior. Change any of them and it redraws in both places at once.

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Step 3: Timeline View, Frame Durations & Animatic Playback

1. In the top view bar, switch from Cards view to Timeline view.
2. FilmBase places your still storyboard images onto a visual timeline, displaying each frame’s hold duration in seconds.
3. Click and drag the edge of Shot 1A’s frame to extend its duration from 2 seconds to 4 seconds for slower pacing.
4. Click and drag Shot 1B to reorder shot sequence.
5. Click Play on the toolbar. FilmBase plays back your still storyboard frames sequentially at assigned timeline durations.

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Step 4: Export Printable Storyboard Decks & MP4 Video Animatics

The toolbar gives you one export button, and which one you get depends on the view you are in.

1. In Cards view it is Export, and it makes the printable deck. The export dialog opens on its layout and content options: set your page layout, click Export, and save the grid into your Dead Tired project folder.
2. Switch to Timeline view and that button is replaced by Export Timeline, the video one. FilmBase renders your frames at their timeline durations into an MP4, suggesting a filename like Timeline_Scene1_20261013.mp4.

Use the MP4 when pacing is the point. Note that Export Timeline exports the scene you are currently working on, not the whole project, so run it once per scene you need.

Requires FFmpeg. MP4 export encodes through FFmpeg, which ships bundled with FilmBase. If you see an “FFmpeg not found” message, install FFmpeg and make sure it is on your system PATH.

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Your boards are drawn and your shots are planned. Dead Tired went in as a screenplay and has come out scheduled, broken down, budgeted, tracked against what it really spent, and boarded, all in a single project file that never left your computer.