Working with episodes and series

Episodes works with both drama screenplays and  AV scripts for any kind of series. A few suggestions:

• any production that needs more than one episode
• TV-series shooting in ‘blocks’
• mix script formats in a feature film or short film production, and let the feature is one episode, and you use other episodes for the behind the scenes documentary, trailers, promos and web video specials.
• use the AV scripts and episodes to storyboard certain sequences in the feature film for creative clarity or insurance requirements

You either add episode functionality when you set up your production,or you can add it afterwards. To set it up afterwards, just go to Production, click the edit menu in the orange toolbar and then on Edit production in the right hand toolbar menu.

The episode setting is just below the production title at the top. To change the setting from single episode, just click on “multiple episodes”. If there are no episode settings, you have already added the multiple episode functionality.

If you want different teams handling different episodes, also add more teams below the episode setting by clicking on the teams you want to add. Save your new settings.

Now you will see that “episodes” have been added to the Script menu to the sidebar menu of your production.

 

To start using episodes, you need to set up the different episodes. Click on Scripts & episodes in the sidebar menu, and then on the “Add Episode” button in the upper right of the page.

Start filling out the required information. Note that if you are not doing a traditional series, but rather using the episode feature for promos, trailers and other content you do not need to fill out a short name that contains an episode name. Instead you can write Trailer#1 or similar.

You need at least one team tied to the production. If you only have one team in the general production settings, only that team will show up in the episode settings. If you add more teams in the general production settings as shown above, you can let different episodes be produced by different teams. It might be different teams in different locations or different teams for different kinds of content.

If you do a TV drama series, it’s also common to produce in blocks with different teams assigned to different blocks, and you can set this up here by using the team functionality.

If you work with a production that will have a large number of episodes, like a daily talkshow or a telenovela, filling out correct production periods become more important, as they are not only information to the team but also helps you and your team members to easier view which are the current episodes without having to search or scroll through long lists of episodes.

If you do a production with a limited number of episodes, they can match the general production periods if that is easier for you. Save your new settings.

The episode listings makes it easy to find your episode depending on production status. All current episodes are found directly on the page, divided into pre-production, production and post-production respectively.

Note: If you can’t find an episode, look under “All episodes”.  An episode before its pre-production period or past its post-production period will be found there.

To add a script to your episode, just click on the blue Add script button.

Now you can either add a drama screenplay,  a non-fiction AV script or a multi-camera live/studio script. You can mix script types in the same production. The only rule is one script per episode.

A tip: You can use AV scripts to storyboard sequences in a fiction film and mix those into planning and call sheets.

If you have a single episode production that already have a script, and you want to add more episodes, do the following:

• Add episode functionality in the production settings as described above
• Add a new episode or episodes as described above
• Click on Create script in the episode where you want the existing script
• Now you will be asked to which episode you want to add the existing script to. You must add the existing, unlinked script to an episode before you can add any new scripts to other episodes.

In the scene list, you can select to view only scenes from a specific episode. Click on Scenes in the sidebar menu to go to the scene list. Then click on Filter scenes. In the first dropdown menu, you can select the episode you want to view. You find the same episode filter in other features.

In the scheduling, you can filter both on episode and teams. This means that you can either schedule each episode on their own, or mix episode scenes based on set, character and / or time of day for instance.

Click on Planning in the sidebar menu, and then on Scheduling in the toolbar. Underneath “Scenes” in the scene column, you find Filter scenes. Click on it and you can filter the unscheduled scenes on Season (S) and Episode (E) amongst other things. Learn more about scheduling in the tutorial.

Call sheets accepts the scenes you put in them, and therefore you can mix scenes from different episodes, and even different script types; should you need that.

Since each team can have their own call sheet, different teams can work on different episodes on the same shooting dates.

You easily switch team call sheets, by clicking on the team colours.