Finding the sentence
Force one sentence and five committed answers out of thirty images you already love, before you write a word about your world.
FRAMELOCK LEARN / CURRICULUM PREVIEW
FROM FIRST RULE
TO FINAL CUT.
Six gates organize the production process: LOCK, PLATE, BOARD, SHOOT, CULL, and CUT. Preview the 48 lesson topics and their intended outcomes.
Curriculum in development
This is a title-and-objective preview of the wider production curriculum. Full lessons are not available here, and this outline is separate from the 12-chapter Animation Station setup video.
01LOCK
7 LESSON TOPICS / PREVIEWOutline
Six decisions and a fence
Answer, in writing, the six physical questions that define how your world looks, then write the one line of bans that fences it in.
The reference wall: calibrating your eye, not your model
Build a wall of 15 to 30 images you actually love and extract their working mechanics in physical language, so your own taste becomes a spec you can paste.
Writing the style block: one line you will paste two hundred times
Compress your world and your counted wall clauses into a single short line in a fixed slot order, then name, date and version it so every generation is traceable to the rules it was made under.
Frame shape is a Gate 1 decision
Choose the frame's shape now, test it against your own wall, and write it at the top of style-block.txt beside the version header.
Killing the default look
Measure what your own tool adds for free when you underspecify, then write counter-clauses that occupy those slots instead of arguing with them.
Lock check: the three-image proof
Test whether the style block holds across three subjects that share nothing, repair it by the cheapest route that could work, and stamp it LOCKED so it stops changing.
02PLATE
6 LESSON TOPICS / PREVIEWPicture beats prose
Measure, on your own subject and your own tool, how much identity a written description actually carries and how much a reference image carries.
The hero plate
Generate one flat, boring, complete image per recurring subject that a model can read without guessing, and repair it by clause rather than by re-rolling.
The plate set and the detail sheet
Decide which additional plates your piece actually needs, and name the two or three physical details that carry identity.
The location plate
Lock a place — or, for a piece with no place, a field — so it stops changing between shots, using the fewest angles the board will actually shoot and one anchor.
Props, wardrobe and text
Lock every object that appears in more than one shot, plate colour against the ground it will be seen against, and decide where every readable word in the piece comes from.
The substitution test, versioning, and the retirement rule
Decide whether a plate is finished using a test that cannot be passed by writing a better prompt, and set the version discipline that stops a project splitting in half.
03BOARD
9 LESSON TOPICS / PREVIEWThe spine: subject, change, and the one image
Turn a vague idea into six framework lines and four to eight plain-sentence beats, with no camera language anywhere in the document.
One idea per shot
Split every overloaded draft row into rows that each carry exactly one action and at most one camera behaviour, before any of them cost money.
A camera vocabulary small enough to remember
Learn what each shot size, angle, movement, lens feel and composition tool does to the viewer, then choose five for the whole piece and write down what each one is for.
Direction, eyeline, and the invisible line
Assign every shot a screen direction on paper, so two shots generated independently still agree about which way the world faces.
The purpose line: what is this shot FOR?
Give every draft row a one-line answer to what the viewer knows or feels afterwards that they did not before, and delete the rows that cannot answer.
Screen direction: the geography lock
Decide which way everything in the piece moves and looks, write it as a column on the board, and make every row obey it.
The board document: fields, numbering, plates, runtime, coverage
Build the actual board file with seven fields, number the shots permanently, verify every plate exists, make the seconds sum to your target, and read the coverage pattern.
Boarding to a locked track: voiceover, music and hard slots
Board a piece whose duration is set by something other than you — narration, a music track, or a fixed ad slot — by locking the track first and allocating seconds against it.
Board check: the read-aloud test
Read the board out loud in shot time, recorded, and act on what the playback tells you — before anything is generated.
04SHOOT
9 LESSON TOPICS / PREVIEWThe generation recipe: thirteen slots, nine already filled
Assemble every generation from the same thirteen slots in the same order, so a failed take points at one slot instead of at a paragraph.
Binding: making the plate outrank your words
Bind a plate so the image outranks the text, and stop your own words from competing with it.
Directing the action
Write the one action so a model performs it, detect the take where nothing actually happened, and escalate in the right order when it does not land.
Two characters in one frame
Decide before you generate how a two-character shot gets made, and treat identity splitting as a board fix rather than a prompt fix.
Motion: four layers, and the one nobody writes
Write movement as four separate layers, and spend the secondary layer, which is the cheapest realism in this system.
Requested seconds, handles, and your own drift ceiling
Measure your own drift ceiling per framing, and set every requested length from that number rather than from the board.
A refused shot is a board problem
Replace a refused or filtered shot with a boarded substitution instead of trying to get the same shot past the filter.
Coverage, batch axis, and the shot log
Set stopping rules before you generate, choose a batch axis on purpose, and log every take while you make it.
Closing the gate: material, not opinions
Close the gate with every board row covered or flagged, nothing judged, nothing repaired, and a take ledger the next gate can divide.
05CULL
6 LESSON TOPICS / PREVIEWJudge alone, and write the verdict before the next file opens
Judge every take on its own — full screen, delivery size, silent — and record a three-state verdict before you open anything else.
The kill list
Replace "something's off" with thirteen ordered lines that name the failure and the gate that owes the fix.
Three legal repairs, and everything else is a rescue
Repair a take only in the three ways that survive a second viewing, and name every other fix as a rescue and refuse it.
Watching properly: frames, not vibes
Find the failures playback hides, using five inspection passes that each defeat a different masking mechanism.
Routing: sending the failure to the gate that owns it
Convert a failed line into a route, and do the routed gate's work before generating that shot again.
Survivor rate: the number, the multiplier, and the distribution
Compute your survivor rate and multiplier, then split the rate by shot and by shared input until the split names a gate.
06CUT
11 LESSON TOPICS / PREVIEWMake the pieces agree before you cut
Set one frame rate, one resolution and one audio sample rate for the sequence, conform every source to them, fix the upscale position once, and prove it with a phone test before you edit anything.
Assembly: getting it into an order
Build a first timeline in board order from selects only, watch it once with your hands off, then trim every clip to its usable core and log planned seconds against actual seconds.
Rhythm: shot length and where the cut sits
Build pace out of the relationship between adjacent shot lengths and the placement of the cut, not out of camera moves, speed changes or transition effects.
The first frame, the opening, and the last beat
Build an opening whose first frame survives being looked at as a still, an opening state the piece actually resolves, and an ending that lands and holds instead of stopping.
Sound: one continuous audio field
Choose the right kind of continuous audio field for the piece you are making, run it unbroken under every cut, and place a small number of spot effects on physical or state changes.
When someone has to speak
Decide at BOARD whether a line exists and whether the speaker's mouth is on screen, then produce it by the most reliable route the shot allows.
Grade, surface and frame: making the takes agree
Match every clip to one named hero clip, unify the stack with three defensible adjustments and one shared surface treatment, hold the frame decided at Gate 1, and export a file that survives compression.
Titles and on-screen text
Produce every readable word in your piece as a plated object or an edit-stage asset, and treat unreadable generated text as a kill rather than as texture.
Cut check: the cold watch, then ship
Leave the piece at least twelve hours, watch it once cold with your hands off, fix only what you flagged, decide consciously about anything that cannot be fixed here, then export one file under one stable name and stop.
Borrowed eyes
Get one uncontaminated outside viewing of the finished piece, collect exactly four answers, and route each answer to the gate that owns it.
What you keep
Sort everything the project produced into persist, archive, retire and re-run, then set the next project's take budget from your own measured survivor rate and state one falsifiable prediction about it.
START WITH WHAT IS AVAILABLE
Put one shot under review.
The free shot review, Frame Notes guide, prompt pack, and browser depth tool are available now. Choose one exercise and make a draft you can return to.