Writing a film in Cinema's script editor — scenes, dialogue and blocks

A film is written before it is rendered. That sentence is the whole design of Cinema's Script tab: a document you can think in — notes, lists, to-dos — that also is the storyboard, because every scene block in it is a scene the engines will render, in the order you wrote them.

This guide walks the editor top to bottom, then shows what the engine actually receives from a scene.

The document

Open a film at /studio/cinema and you land in Script. It behaves like a Notion page:

• Type to write a paragraph. / opens the block menu; the + in the margin adds a line below with the menu open on it.
• Blocks: paragraph, three heading levels, bullet and numbered lists, to-do, quote, callout, divider — and one that is Cinema's own, the scene, which carries its action and its lines of dialogue.
• Drag any block by its grip. Bold, italic, strikethrough and code inline.
• @ mentions your characters, places, objects and styles from Elements, as chips.

Everything outside a scene card is yours: production notes, a shot list, a to-do of props, a reminder that scene four needs a second take. None of it goes to an engine. A film holds up to 400 blocks.

Scene cards

A scene card holds everything that scene renders:

• Heading — the slugline, screenplay style: INT. LIGHTHOUSE — DUSK. Optional, but it does two things: it labels the storyboard card, and it opens the scene's prompt, so the engine knows where it is.
• Action — what happens. This is the text the engine renders. One subject, one motion, one camera idea; @Mina binds a cast member to her sheet.
• Dialogue — the lines said in this scene, written right under the action (next section).
• What the engine reads — fold it open to see the scene exactly as it is sent.

Each scene block is one storyboard scene. Add a scene block and a card appears in the Storyboard tab; delete it and the card goes (its takes stay in your library). Reorder scene blocks and the storyboard reorders. Drag a scene's card in the Storyboard and its whole section in the script — the notes between it and the next scene — moves with it. There is one scene block per scene, always; the editor reconciles the two if a draft ever disagrees.

Camera move, duration, takes and the scene's cast are set on the card in the Storyboard, not in the script — they are render settings, not writing. The takes and picks guide covers that side.

Dialogue, inside the scene

Dialogue belongs to a scene, so it lives in the scene card — not as a separate block you could lose track of. Under the action, + Line adds a line:

• Speaker — one of your characters, or Someone else… for a free name ("The keeper", "Radio voice").
• Manner — how it's said: "whispering", "to herself", "not looking up". Optional.
• Line — what they say.

Enter adds the next line and hands it to the other speaker, the way an exchange goes; Backspace on an empty line removes it. A scene holds up to 30 lines. The same lines show in the Storyboard's scene panel — one list, edited from either place.

A scene's lines ride that scene's prompt, and no other. Two things follow from a speaker being a character:

1. They join the scene's references — their sheet goes with the render so the face matches — even if you did not add them to the card's cast by hand.
2. With sound on, their voice goes too. On engines that accept an audio reference (Seedance 2.x, Hailuo 3), the first speaker with a voice rides as a spoken sample — the roster voice or clone assigned to the character — and the card says who: "Spoken with the picture — Mina in their own voice." Other voiced speakers, and every voice on other engines, ride as a one-line descriptor ("female voice, warm and low"). A continuous shot opens on the previous scene's last frame and carries no references, so its voices are descriptors only.

Dialogue is also where a scene's length gets decided. A five-second clip holds one short line; a ten-second clip holds an exchange. Write the line, then set the seconds on the card to match.

What the engine receives

This is the part worth seeing once. Take this scene card:

INT. LIGHTHOUSE — DUSK
@Mina climbs the last steps of the spiral staircase, out of breath,
slow push-in as she reaches the lamp room.

  MINA (whispering)   It's still lit.

Its What the engine reads shows the scene as one paragraph: INT. LIGHTHOUSE — DUSK. Mina climbs the last steps of the spiral staircase, out of breath, slow push-in as she reaches the lamp room. Mina (whispering) says: "It's still lit." — the slugline, the action, then each line with its speaker and manner.

When it renders, the server adds the film's look as labelled sentences after it. With a look of Film noir · 1960s · Tense · 35mm · Anamorphic · f/1.4 · Neon noir · Practicals, the engine gets, in this order: the scene paragraph above; the cast line binding Mina to reference image 1, and a line keeping her face and outfit as in it; the camera move; lens and gear; lighting; color; the look; the pacing; and a voices line telling the engine how Mina sounds. Her persona — how she thinks, how she talks in chat — never rides a video prompt.

Long scripts are safe: past an engine's prompt limit the composer drops pacing, look, color and lens first, and never the scene, the cast or the voices.

A writing method that renders

• One event per scene. "She climbs, reaches the lamp, sees the letter, reads it" is four scenes. Engines that get four events in ten seconds compress them into none.
• Put the camera in the action or on the card, not both. "Slow push-in" in the action and Push-in on the card is fine; "push-in" in the action and Orbit on the card is a fight.
• Slugline every scene. The setting sentence is what keeps a lighthouse a lighthouse from scene one to scene six.
• Dialogue in the lines, never in the action. The action describes the picture; the lines describe what is said. The card keeps them apart for the engine.
• Notes above the scene, not in it. A production note in the action becomes a rendered production note.

From Video, or from a recipe

You do not have to start blank. A Quick result's Continue as a film opens Cinema with the take as scene one and its prompt as the action; the home page's prompt box hands its text to a new film the same way. The six recipes on the shelf — Perfume ad, Music video opener, Horror teaser, Streetwear drop, Romance short, Travel diary — each open as a whole script: notes, callouts, lists, three scene cards with their dialogue, and a look. The Quick-to-Cinema guide has them.

FAQ

Can I write the whole script before rendering anything?

Yes, and you should. Nothing in the Script tab costs credits; a film with 24 scenes written and none rendered is a free draft. Render from the Storyboard when the writing is done.

Do the notes and to-dos go to the engine?

No. Only what is inside a scene card — its heading, its action and its lines — is composed into that scene's prompt. Everything else is for you.

What happens to dialogue on an engine without sound?

The line still rides the prompt as direction (a character mouthing a line, a manner), but no audio is rendered. Engines with a soundtrack — and the sound toggle in the look — decide whether you hear it.

Can a speaker be someone who is not a character?

Yes. Pick Someone else… and type a name. They get no sheet and no voice sample; the engine invents them from the scene.

Open Cinema and write scene one — the render can wait.