LCBE (LensCowboy Breakdown Engine) is the script-to-screen starting point of the LensCowboy pipeline. Feed it a screenplay; it builds a complete production bible — every scene, shot, character, creature, location — and turns each shot into a runnable AI generation package ready for the video vendor of your choice.

Two outputs flow from one screenplay:

• A traditional VFX breakdown & bid — shots graded by complexity (A–D), asset build days, schedule timeline, full cost estimate. Read for client bids, internal planning, or simply to size the work.
• A runnable AI production pipeline — each approved shot becomes a structured prompt package (cinematic prose + character / location reference imagery + dialogue with voice direction + production-style guardrails) ready for Seedance, Runway, Luma, Veo, Kling, and the rest. Click Run, watch the result land back on the shot.

The same script reads as both a budget and a runnable production. The bible richness you build once feeds every downstream surface: shot prompts, character continuity references, location atmosphere, sequence-level continuity rules, audio direction, the LensCowboy Studio Vault (cryptographic provenance ledger for IP attestation).

Where it fits

LCBE is the front of the LensCowboy stack. Downstream it hands shots to PAL (3D previz / spatial layout), SPECTACLE (client-facing dailies review), and the Resolver editor handoff tooling. Upstream, it consumes the writer’s script in standard screenplay formats (Final Draft FDX, PDF, RTF). Cost estimates flow into the Bid Page; approved shots sync to the LCBE companion Sheet for legacy-pipeline interop.

From the main dashboard, click New Breakdown and upload your screenplay. Supported formats:

• .fdx — Final Draft (recommended; preserves scene headers and element types)
• .pdf — PDF screenplays (OCR'd if needed)
• .rtf — Rich Text Format

LCBE parses the document structure, identifies scene headings, action lines, dialogue, and transitions, then runs VFX analysis based on your chosen options.

Writing scripts to maximise breakdown quality

LCBE’s analyser is grounded in your script’s own prose — the richer the scene description, character introductions, and location detail, the better the resulting bible, and the better the prompts that flow downstream. Sparse scripts produce sparse bibles produce sparse prompts.

Two templates ship with LCBE to help writers structure data-rich preambles. Paste them into your script above the first scene heading and fill in the fields; the parser picks them up automatically on import or Reload Script and seeds the matching entities.

Character Bible Template

Per-character profiles — face, build, wardrobe, props, voice, demeanor, identity anchors, “wrong looks” (what the character should never look like). Voice profile (tone / pace / accent / treatment) feeds dialogue direction; identity anchors lock continuity across shots; wrong looks become negative directives so the vendor doesn’t drift the look.

The Tools menu on the dashboard exposes a one-click Parse Character Bible action and a Download Template option if you want the blank scaffold to fill in.

Location Bible Template

Per-location prose — geography, architecture, atmosphere, lighting character, signature features, material vocabulary, color palette, transition zones (which locations connect to which). Read for every shot bound to that location, so the vendor sees consistent atmosphere across every scene set there.

Same Tools menu offers Parse Location Bible and Download Template.

For a standalone writer-focused walkthrough — bracket tags, character & location bibles, sequence-level continuity anchors, persistent visuals, what not to do, and a before/after worked example — see Writing for AI.

Every LCBE project is bound to a pipeline slot when it's created. A slot is a self-contained workspace that owns:

• A dedicated Google Sheet (where Characters / Creatures / Shots get written).
• A Drive folder tree (render output, source images, source videos, LUTs, watermarks).
• All PAL / pipeline output for that project.

Your plan determines how many active slots you have:

Creating a project

From the Projects page, click + New Project. The modal asks you to pick a Pipeline Slot before uploading the script. Free slots are selectable; slots already bound to another project are shown disabled with the owning project's name so you can see the full roster at a glance.

If you have no free slots, use the + New slot in Settings → link in the picker to scaffold a new Sheet + Drive folder tree, then come back.

Slots overview

The Slots page in Hub shows every slot across your clients, with per-slot actions:

• Open PAL — launches PAL pre-bound to this slot's project.
• Open LCBE — jumps to the project's LCBE dashboard.
• Open Sheet — the raw Google Sheet.
• Unbind — frees the slot. The LCBE project's data is preserved; it shows a “Bind slot” pill on the Projects page until rebound.

Archive releases the slot

Archiving a project (topnav → Archive on the project dashboard) frees its slot for a new project. The archived project's data remains intact — unarchive to bring it back, then pick a slot to rebind.

AI Estimation Style

Controls how the AI estimates shot count, grades, and task day counts.

• Conservative — leaner shot counts, lower complexity grades when uncertain, tighter task days. Best for internal planning or competitive bids.
• Aggressive — more shots per scene, higher grades when uncertain, generous task days. Best for client-facing bids with buffer for scope creep.

Set globally in Admin (AI Analysis section), override per-project in Settings, or select at upload time in the New Project modal.

After analysis completes, the dashboard organises the breakdown into five tabs:

Click any row to expand its detail view. Use the search bar and filters at the top of each tab.

• Approve — shot is in scope. Included in bid total and schedule.
• Reject — shot removed from bid. Useful for cut shots or practical handling.
• Reset — return to default unreviewed state.

Budget updates in real time as you change approval statuses. Only approved shots contribute to the final bid.

Each shot you keep in the bid carries a rich set of inputs — description, screenplay snippet, character voice profiles, location atmosphere, glossary terms, reference images. When you click Generate, those inputs flow through LCBE’s prompt composition engine, which assembles them into a single vendor-shaped instruction set and ships it to the video generator (Seedance, by default). The output URL lands back on the shot so you can preview, annotate, or pass it to the editor pipeline.

   ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
   │  INPUTS  (you edit these)                                │
   │  Shot description · screenplay snippet                   │
   │  Cast & creature data · location & production style     │
   │  Directorial notes                                       │
   └────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────┘
                            │
                            ▼  assembled automatically
   ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
   │  OUTPUT  (what the vendor receives)                      │
   │  A single, cinematically-written prompt + reference      │
   │  image when the model expects one (image-to-video).      │
   └────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────┘
                            │
                            ▼
   ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
   │  VENDOR  ─►  Generated video clip back on the shot       │
   └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The shot edit row at a glance

Click any shot to open its edit row. The row is organised into four colour-coded panels so the dependency direction stays legible at a glance:

   ┌─────────────────────────┐  ┌──────────────────────────┐
   │ INPUTS · rose           │  │ VISUALS · cyan           │
   │ Description             │  │ Starting Frame           │
   │ Script Snippet          │  │ Reference gallery        │
   └─────────────────────────┘  │ (Spectacle embed)        │
   ┌─────────────────────────┐  └──────────────────────────┘
   │ OUTPUT · purple         │
   │ Final Gen Prompt        │
   │ + state chip + buttons  │
   └─────────────────────────┘
   ┌─────────────────────────┐
   │ PIPELINE VENDOR · amber │
   │ Vendor / VFX / Notes    │
   │ Camera negatives        │
   └─────────────────────────┘

The Inputs panel (rose)

Two surfaces operators edit:

• Description — a short summary of the shot. AI-generated on import; edit freely. The RESET button restores the AI baseline if you ever want to start over.
• Script Snippet — the writer’s verbatim screenplay paragraphs for this shot. Read-only here (re-imports via Reload Script). When the screenplay marks dialogue, voice direction is woven inline using each speaker’s voice profile.

Beyond what shows in this panel, LCBE also pulls from the surfaces you maintain elsewhere — the bound location, the cast bound to the shot, and the project’s overall style. The richer those surfaces, the more the final prompt carries forward.

The Output panel (purple) — what gets sent to the vendor

This is the assembled prompt. A small chip in the panel header tells you which path produced it:

Output panel buttons

• ▶ Run — ships this shot to the vendor right now. Real billable call. Confirms via a styled modal first. The shot row’s status badge tracks progress (queued / running / done) once submitted.
• ↻ Regenerate prompt — forces a fresh prompt build, bypassing cache. The engine is non-deterministic, so the same inputs often produce a usefully different result. Cheap; use freely.
• ✎ Edit — switches the prompt textbox into edit mode. Reveals Save prompt / Reset / Cancel.
• ✔ Save prompt — pins the current text as a manual override and exits edit mode. Independent of the row’s Save Changes button, so you can keep editing other shot fields after.
• ↺ Reset — reverts the textbox to the loaded prompt without exiting edit mode (good when you’ve made a mess and want to start over).
• ✕ Cancel — discards changes and exits edit mode.
• ↺ Clear override — appears only when an override is active; removes it and reverts to auto-composition. Confirms first.
• ⧉ Anatomy — expands the prompt’s interpretable breakdown: subject & action, environment, camera, lighting, style, motion, voice direction. Useful when you want to understand why the prompt looks the way it does.

About the notes strip

When LCBE has to make assumptions or work around missing data, a notes strip appears above the prompt. These aren’t bugs — they tell you what would lift the next render. Common ones: a missing aspect ratio, an empty location bible, a character without a voice profile, or a script directive that needs a tidy home. As you flesh out the bible, the notes shrink and the prompts get richer.

The Visuals panel (cyan) — how images get bundled in

Most modern video models accept (or require) a reference image alongside the text prompt. LCBE handles this automatically with a Starting Frame — a locked keyframe that bakes together every reference image bound to the shot:

   Character refs (face + body)  ┐
   Creature refs                 ├──► Starting Frame
   Location plate / bible image  ┘     (single locked keyframe;
                                        bakes every ref into one
                                        cohesive image)
                                            │
                                            ▼
                                   Sent to vendor as the
                                   "image" input alongside
                                   the text prompt.

You can let LCBE generate the Starting Frame automatically, replace it with a hand-curated frame from the Reference gallery, or build it manually using the Generate Starting Frame button in the Visuals panel. When the vendor model is text-to-video only (no image input), the Starting Frame is still useful as the visual anchor for downstream editing — it shows up in the Reference gallery and the Spectacle review viewer.

When no Starting Frame is set, LCBE falls back to whatever bound reference data is available — PAL renders, prior generations on the shot, or character / location reference imagery. Most shots have something usable without manual setup; the Visuals panel tells you which source was used.

The Pipeline Vendor panel (amber)

Vendor-routing fields and notes that travel with the shot:

• Vendor — pick from the dropdown of supported video models. Defaults are chosen per-project based on your plan tier and visual brief.
• VFX Type, Priority, Complexity — routing and scoring; affect the bid total and dispatch order.
• Override Notes / Director Notes — creative direction. Director Notes are also exported to the LCBE companion sheet for downstream collaboration.
• Camera Notes — positive camera direction (“35mm, low angle, handheld”). Woven into the prompt.
• Camera Negatives — what the camera should not do. Comma-separated. Many video models respond especially well to negative camera language: try “no cuts, no zoom, no stabilization” for handheld realism, or “no 3D, no cartoon, no VFX” for grounded photoreal.
• Lighting Notes / Edit Notes — lighting design and edit-stage preferences (duration, slow motion, etc.).

The bottom drawer — analytical lenses

Open the drawer at the bottom of the dashboard for cross-cutting views of your project:

• Shot Task Days — per-shot effort estimates with manual overrides.
• Scenes — per-scene insights: shot count, characters, locations, time of day, total task days, and a complexity score that flags heavy scenes. The “Shares with” column surfaces other scenes with overlapping characters or locations — useful for grouping continuity work.
• Shots — flat per-shot view across all scenes. Filter by VFX type, see live status, spot creature shots at a glance (rows tinted amber).
• Locations / Characters / Creatures — per-entity detail with footprint scoring and companion-entity suggestions.
• Asset Build Days — aggregated build effort by asset.

The editing flow at a glance

1. Open the shot edit row.
2. Tweak Description, voice profile on a bound character, glossary terms, or any bible field.
3. Save. The Output panel re-builds automatically.
4. Don’t love it? Hit Regenerate prompt for a different take.
5. Want full creative control? Edit this → override, write what you want.
6. Hit Generate. Watch the badge in the shot row.

The Pipeline Sheet’s Description column is a downstream report — a one-way mirror of what’s in LCBE. Editing the sheet does not feed back into LCBE. All editing happens here in the dashboard.

You can pull a character, location, persistent visual, sequence, scene, another shot, a creature, or a script-level VFX note into any shot’s prompt — even shots they’re not formally bound to. Useful when you want a callback, a continuity beat, or an environmental lock that the dashboard’s automatic bindings don’t cover.

How it works

In Director’s Notes, Override Notes, the shot description — any free-text field that travels to the vendor — type:

[[type:slug]]

LCBE replaces the token with the entity’s full content at generation time. So a token like [[visual:planetary_bodies]] in Override Notes becomes the full Persistent Visual description in the prompt the vendor sees — locked positions, palette, the whole thing — without you copy-pasting it.

The types you can reference

Don’t memorise slugs — let the dropdown help

Start typing [[ in any shot text field and a dropdown appears with every entity in your project. Type the first few letters to narrow it down. Hit Enter or click to insert. Hit Escape to dismiss.

The dropdown shows a short preview of each entity so you can pick the right one without guessing.

Typo protection

If you type a backlink that doesn’t match any entity in your project — either a typo, or an entity you haven’t created yet — a small amber chip appears below the field:

⚠ Unresolved backlinks: [[visual:planetery_bodies]] (typo or entity not yet created)

Catches mistakes before you generate.

Stable slugs — survive renaming

Slugs are derived from the entity’s name by default. If you rename a Persistent Visual from “Three Planetary Bodies” to “Three Suns”, any [[visual:three_planetary_bodies]] tokens stop matching.

To keep references stable, set a custom slug on the entity. Persistent Visuals and Sequences both have a slug input next to the name field in the Production panel. Set it once; references using that slug survive any rename.

Worked example

Grades are AI-assigned but can be manually overridden on any shot by clicking the grade badge.

Shot Labour

Per-shot cost of executing approved VFX work. Calculated from the shot's grade → day count → per-department day rates configured in Settings.

Asset Build Costs

One-time costs to build assets (characters, creatures, vehicles, environments) used across multiple shots. Separate from shot labour so they're not double-counted.

Rebate

If your production qualifies for a regional tax rebate, enter the percentage in Settings. Budget shows gross and net-of-rebate totals.

Currency

Display costs in multiple currencies. Set base and display currencies in Settings. Rates refresh on breakdown reload.

The drawer at the bottom of the dashboard offers seven cross-cutting views. Each is a different way to look at the same project data. Click a tab to switch.

Shot Task Days

Spreadsheet grid: rows are shots, columns are VFX departments. Each cell is artist-days for that shot/department. Totals at the bottom of each column. Toggle between AI estimates and operator overrides via the switch in the drawer header.

Scenes

Per-scene insights with a complexity score that flags heavy scenes amber. Columns include: shot count, locations referenced, characters present, creatures present, time of day, total task days summed across the scene’s shots, drivers (what makes the scene heavy), and Shares with — the top three other scenes that share characters or locations with this one. Useful for grouping continuity work and spotting scope outliers.

Shots

Flat per-shot view across the whole project — every shot in one table, sortable mentally by scrolling. Columns: scene, shot code, VFX type, duration, description (truncated), characters, creatures, total task days, priority + complexity scores, live status. Rows with creatures are tinted amber. Header summary surfaces totals (shot count, scenes, creature shots, total task days) and a project-wide VFX-type histogram.

Locations

Per-location footprint scoring. Surfaces shot count, scene count, time-of-day setups, character density, and an overall complexity score. Heavier locations are flagged so you can spot scope outliers. The companion-locations column shows other locations sharing scenes — helpful for batching set-extension work.

Characters

Compact table of all characters with key metadata: shot count, locations they appear in, time-of-day exposure, hard / soft anchors. Click any character to open the full profile in the centre area.

Creatures

Same shape as Characters but for non-human entities (CG creatures, monsters, aliens). Surfaces category, dimensions, locomotion, surface, and the same per-shot footprint scoring. The CG_CHAR build often dominates a project’s asset cost; this lens makes that visible.

Asset Build Days

Per-asset matrix: rows are assets, columns are department-builds (modelling, texturing, rigging, look-dev). One-time costs, separate from per-shot usage. Toggle between AI baselines and operator overrides via the switch.

LCBE separates Characters (human performers, digital doubles) from Creatures (non-human, CG beings, practical creatures). Each has its own sidebar tab with its own edit view, but they share a single unified field schema so downstream tooling treats them consistently.

Fields

• Age — estimated or explicitly stated range
• Physical description — height, build, distinguishing features (creatures: species, scale, anatomy)
• Role — protagonist, antagonist, supporting, featured extra, creature type
• Costume / covering — wardrobe or skin/fur/armour details from action lines
• Arc — brief story trajectory
• Relationships — connections to other characters or creatures
• Reference prompt — image-generation-ready description used by PAL and concept-art tools
• Proxy hints — shape / size / colour hints used by PAL for viewport stand-ins
• Linked assets — associated VFX assets (digital double, prosthetic, CG companion)

Adding characters & creatures

Three paths:

1. From the script breakdown — LCBE auto-imports speaking + named characters during analysis.
2. Character Bible Template — download the template from the Tools menu, fill it in (one character or creature per block), and upload or paste it back. Parses into fully structured entries without having to re-run the whole breakdown.
3. Paste-preamble parser — if your script already has a character-description preamble, paste the preamble into the Tools → Parse Character/Creature Template dialog. LCBE extracts and attaches the entries to the current project.

Push to the pipeline sheet

Characters and Creatures are written to the bound spreadsheet as dedicated tabs matching the PAL export layout, so PAL sees the same data the breakdown saw. See → Pipeline for the unified push modal.

The Tools menu (topnav) collects parsers and templates that let you add data to an existing breakdown without re-importing the whole script.

• Character Bible Template — downloads a pre-formatted template for characters & creatures. Filling it and uploading back populates the Characters and Creatures tabs directly.
• Parse Character/Creature Template — paste a free-form character preamble (e.g. the typical “CAST” section at the front of a screenplay) and LCBE parses it into structured entries.
• Import Cast from Breakdown — when you already have a character list on the sheet, LCBE can pull it back into the database so you can edit and republish.

• Asset Build Days — one-time effort to create an asset: modelling, texturing, rigging, look-dev, approval. Incurred once regardless of shot count.
• Per-Shot Usage — labour to animate, light, render, composite that asset within a specific shot. Counted in the Shot Task Days matrix.

Budget keeps these separate so you see true cost structure: a CG creature might cost 80 build days but only 3–5 shot days each time it appears.

• AI Estimation Style — Conservative vs Aggressive
• Rate Overrides — override day-rates for specific departments or grades
• Rebate Percentage — tax incentive applied to the total
• Per-Department Day Rates — cost per artist-day for each department

Changes recalculate the budget immediately. Settings save per-project.

The Bid page generates a clean, presentable summary suitable for clients:

• Total shot count and approved/rejected breakdown
• Cost summary by department
• Asset build costs
• Grand total with rebate applied

The Bid page is the client-facing read-only view — totals, descriptions, schedule. Your internal cost structure stays on the main dashboard.

Timeline visualisation of approved shots, laid out by department. See workload distribution and identify bottlenecks.

Shots order by sequence and scene. Timeline reflects day counts from the Shot Task Days matrix, giving a rough production calendar based on team size and availability.

The → Pipeline button on the dashboard writes your breakdown to the LensCowboy pipeline spreadsheet so PAL, the Daily pipeline, and downstream tooling pick it up automatically.

1:1 project↔sheet binding

Each LCBE project binds to exactly one pipeline slot (one spreadsheet). The first successful push auto-binds the project to the slot; every subsequent push uses the same slot, regardless of which option you pick in the dropdown. This prevents silent cross-pollination — two projects sharing a sheet would overwrite each other's Characters on matching IDs.

Unified push modal (Shots / Cast / Creatures)

The push dialog lets you pick which data types go in this round:

• Shots — writes approved shots to the main tab.
• Cast — writes the Characters tab in a layout matching the PAL export schema.
• Creatures — writes the Creatures tab with the same unified schema.

Each type has its own overwrite vs. append toggle, so you can (for example) overwrite Shots from a fresh reimport while keeping previously hand-edited Cast rows intact.

Broken binding

If LCBE can't reach the sheet (access revoked, sheet deleted), the binding flips to “broken” and a red banner appears at the top of the dashboard with a Reconnect button. Reconnecting either rebinds to the same slot once access is restored or pairs the project with a new slot.

When a project is delivered and you want it off the active roster, use the Archive button in the topnav. Archiving does three things:

• Marks the project archived — an “ARCHIVED” badge appears next to the project name.
• Releases the pipeline slot so another project can bind to it. Slot limits on your plan reflect active contracts, not historical ones.
• Disables the → Pipeline push button — an archived project can't accidentally overwrite the sheet of a live successor.

Your data is not deleted. Shots, characters, creatures, approvals, grades, and budgets all remain in place, view-only. The delivered spreadsheet on Drive is never touched either — if you want to keep it for the client, you keep it; if you want to remove it, that's a Drive action.

Unarchive

Click Unarchive to flip the project back to active. All data comes back immediately and exactly as it was. The binding stays null — you pick a slot on the next push, so the project doesn't accidentally reclaim a slot that's been assigned to a newer project.

Studio-wide configuration: default day rates, department definitions, user permissions, integration settings. Changes apply to all new projects unless overridden at the project level in Settings.

Access restricted to users with administrator privileges.

Use Reimport when you receive a revised draft. LCBE will:

• Re-parse the updated script
• Identify new, modified, and removed scenes and shots
• Preserve existing approval statuses and grade overrides where content hasn't changed
• Flag changed shots for review

Review the flagged changes and update approvals as needed. Budget recalculates automatically.