SceneItAll Docs

Breakdown

Breakdown overview

The Breakdown section is where you analyze a parsed script scene by scene and tag every production element it needs — cast, props, vehicles, wardrobe, special effects, and more. This overview explains how the breakdown screen is organized and links to the task articles.

Before you start

  • You have uploaded at least one dated script and it has parsed scenes. Breakdown is episode-scoped and shows the latest production-ready revision automatically.
  • To edit anything, you need edit access. Project Owners and Admins must first switch the breakdown into Edit mode with the View/Edit toggle; other members with edit access can edit directly.

What you can do here

The two surfaces

The breakdown has two surfaces you move between:

The breakdown overview

A tabbed screen that opens on the Breakdowns tab — a stripboard-style table with one row per scene. Below the tab row sit the search field, the AI tools menu, the Bulk actions menu, and the scene-order and refresh controls. From here you can search and filter scenes, select scenes for batch operations, run AI element detection, and open any scene. See Navigate the breakdown overview.

The scene detail view

A two-panel screen reached by selecting a scene row. The screenplay text sits on the left and the breakdown detail panel on the right, where you tag elements, set scene metadata, and write a synopsis. See Break down a scene in the detail view.

[SCREENSHOT: The breakdown overview on the Breakdowns tab, showing the four tabs, the search field, the AI tools and Bulk actions menus, and the stripboard table of scenes]

Key concepts

Elements

An element is anything a scene needs that production has to plan for — a cast member, a prop, a vehicle, a costume, a special effect. Every element has a type and belongs to your project’s element library, so the same element can be tagged across many scenes. SceneItAll groups elements into 26 types, each with its own color. See Work with breakdown elements and the element type reference.

Scene status and review status

Each scene carries two independent states:

  • Scene status tracks the scene’s breakdown lifecycle: Pending, Scheduled, Shooting, or Done.
  • Review status tracks how far your breakdown work on the scene has progressed: Not Started, In Progress, or Complete.

See Break down a scene in the detail view.

Set and Location

These two scene fields are distinct and never interchangeable:

  • Set — the in-story place from the script’s slugline (for example, WALT'S HOUSE - KITCHEN), a Set entity the scene links to.
  • Location — the real-world filming address, a Location entity you link the scene to.

See Break down a scene in the detail view.

Where the breakdown fits

Data in SceneItAll flows downstream only: Script → Breakdown → Crew/Departments/Cast → Schedule → Reports. Each episode has stable production scenes shared by all revisions. A newer production-ready revision updates their screenplay fields, while breakdown tags, notes, crew links, and scheduled placements stay attached to the stable scene. The elements, cast links, sets, and scene metadata you build here feed the schedule and, beyond it, the reports. Reports are snapshots: they read the breakdown at the moment you refresh them, so re-snapshot a report to pull through changes you make in the breakdown.