SceneItAll Docs

Reports

Generate sides

Sides are the script pages actors hold on set — a shooting day’s scenes, in reading order, formatted for the page. SceneItAll generates sides for a shooting day or an individual character, with optional surrounding scenes for context. This article covers opening a selection from the sides library, reading it, adjusting the reader, and exporting.

Sides are a live report: shoot-day and character sides always reflect the active scenario and latest production-ready script — there is nothing to create, sync, or refresh manually. They do not follow an older revision selected in Scripts. Cast, breakdown-element, shoot-day, and strip-order changes refresh an open reader automatically. The script text is read-only. Exporting renders the current document. The separate Full script tab remains revision-specific so you can deliberately open a complete historical draft. See Snapshot reports versus live reports.

Before you start

  • You have a project with an episode, a parsed script, and a scenario that is active or locked.
  • Any project member can open and read sides. Exporting sides requires the Admin role.

Open a selection from the sides library

Open Reports and select the Sides card. You land on the sides library, a card index with three tabs:

The library header summarizes the available shoot days and characters.

  • By shoot day — one card per shooting day, with the date, page count in screenplay eighths, scene chips, cast pips, and a status pill. Sort Chronological or By pages, and use the filter button to hide wrapped days.
  • By character — one card per cast element. Sort A-Z or By size.
  • Full script — one card per script revision in the episode’s revision chain, with its page count shown in screenplay eighths.

Search by date, scene number, or Set (days) or by character or actor (characters). Select a card to open the reader with that selection pre-applied. A back arrow at the top of the reader returns you to the library with your tab, search, and sort preserved.

[SCREENSHOT: The sides library on the By shoot day tab, with day cards and the sort controls]

Read sides

  1. Open the day or character you want sides for from the library.
  2. The sides render in reading order from the current schedule and latest production-ready script — there is nothing to create, sync, or refresh.

Each page is headed by a slate that names the side — Character Sides: NAME for a character, or Day Sides: N of M, date for a shooting day — with the page index (Page 1 / 7) on the right. Turn on Project name in Display Settings to prefix the production’s name.

If the schedule has no matching scenes for the selection, you see “No scenes found.” Because sides are live, any change to the script or the stripboard shows the next time you open the reader.

What a side block shows

Each scene shows:

  • A screenplay-formatted heading (scene number, INT/EXT, location, time of day).
  • One character roster directly beneath the scene’s first heading. It shows only the Characters in that scene, with headshots or silhouette fallbacks when images are enabled. Repeated or split chunks of the same scene do not repeat the roster.
  • The page count and optional synopsis on one metadata line. Page count uses screenplay eighths in the reader; the synopsis is the same summary you write on the breakdown.
  • The full script text in screenplay format.
  • Dialogue cues use the same screenplay alignment as the Scripts reader, including when a character headshot appears beside the cue.
  • The optional revision colour metadata.

Which metadata appears is controlled by Display Settings (see below).

Adjust the reader

When the reader is open, the Reports left rail holds the view controls. These only affect the on-screen reader, never the script:

  • Reader controls — a Text size stepper with A− and A+ buttons (11 px to 24 px, saved per project).
  • Context Scenes — Show previous and Show next checkboxes pull in the one scene immediately before and/or after the selected scenes for context, rendered in a faint, crossed-out block so it reads as context rather than part of this side. A shared Lines dropdown sets how much of each neighbouring scene to show — Whole scene (the default), or a limited excerpt. Previous context keeps the end of its scene; next context keeps the beginning. SceneItAll may include a few extra visual lines to keep a dialogue or dual-dialogue block intact, and an ellipsis marks the cropped edge. Omitted scenes are skipped: the window walks back (or forward) to the nearest scene still in the script, so an omitted scene is never shown as the prior or next. Omitted scenes never appear on sides as a main scene either.
  • Display Settings — checkboxes for the per-block metadata: Synopsis (the scene’s summary, on by default), Page Count, Revision Color, Project name (off by default — prefixes the page header with the production’s name), and Character images (on by default). Turning Character images off hides roster, Characters-panel, and dialogue-cue images without hiding character or actor names. The same choice is used by PDF exports. Admins persist these settings per scope; defaults apply when a scope is incomplete.

The side panel lists every scene in the bundle under Scenes — select one to jump to it — and lists the Characters in the bundle, where selecting a name focuses that character’s lines. Per-scene identity is tied to the scene itself, so two distinct scenes that happen to share a scene number still get their correct rosters. In the page roster, linked Cast appears with the actor name and canonical #N — CHARACTER NAME; unlinked Cast shows only the actor name. Characters without a headshot, including unassigned characters, use a person silhouette in the page roster and Characters panel; dialogue cues stay text-only when no photo is available.

Export

The side panel’s actions:

  • Export PDF: opens the Export Sides dialog. Leave Watermark a copy for each recipient off to download one plain PDF. Turn it on to pick which cast members get a copy (use All / None). Linked recipients are identified as Actor Name · #N — CHARACTER NAME; unlinked recipients show only the actor name. Select Export to download a single ZIP holding one PDF per person, each watermarked with their own name. Use this for actor-specific delivery; the watermark discourages leaks.

To distribute the result, open Crew → Mailing List, copy the relevant addresses or open a draft in Gmail, Outlook, or your default mail app, and attach the PDF or ZIP.