| name | Curious Refuge (Caleb Ward): AI Film Pre-Production |
| description | The pre-production layer of AI filmmaking — reference-asset architecture, the shot-list floor, board-to-plate channel assignment, prompted coverage, voice casting and the ADR seam where AI hands off to a human |
| version | 1.0 |
| format | completion-engine |
| workflows | 3 |
Curious Refuge (Caleb Ward): AI Film Pre-Production
Caleb Ward — co-founder (with Shelby Ward) and CEO of Curious Refuge, an AI filmmaking school
and a Promise company (the same Promise where Dave Clark is CCO). Courses: AI Filmmaking,
AI Advertising, Advanced AI Filmmaking 2.0, AI Animation 2.0, AI Documentary, AI VFX, AI Screenwriting.
Extracted from four videos, all 2026, all watched in full. Credential ledger with verification
status: references/source-notes.md.
What he adds that nobody else in the house does: the files that have to exist before you
generate. Everyone else teaches the prompt or the look. Ward teaches the reference-asset
architecture — character sheets, location angle banks, style anchors, voice beds — and the order of
operations that makes shot 7 belong in the same film as shot 1.
The one-line thesis
"If you just rely to going to the AI video tools alone, you're going to see that there's just some
severe lapses in continuity." — [FILM26] 08:22
Continuity is a planning artifact, not a model capability. When a shot comes back wrong, you change
the reference assignment — not the adjectives.
The core claim
A pre-production package is not a mood board. It is a set of reusable identity assets built once at
high quality and referenced into every generation, plus a shot list saying which asset goes where.
Reference assets get maximum quality because their cost amortises across the whole film; shot plates get
only what the next step consumes. Generation is the last step and the cheapest to redo.
Available Workflows
| # | Workflow | Produces | Use When |
|---|
| 01 | Pre-Production Package | Story spine + tension shape + shot list + reference-asset manifest + generation budget | Starting any narrative AI piece longer than a clip, or you have to quote a cost before you start |
| 02 | Storyboard → Plate → Coverage Chain | Shot conversion sheet: board-or-brief call, three-channel reference assignment, CCR direction, specify-vs-cover, chain plan, accept/salvage criteria | The shot list exists and it's time to generate — or generations keep coming back "wrong" and nobody can say which part |
| 03 | Voice & Performance Direction | Voice-bed casting, per-line director's notes, consistency rung per character, stem handoff, the ADR seam | Anyone speaks; the same character sounds like a different person shot to shot; deciding whether to hire voice actors |
Quick Reference
- Genius Context: genius.md — load before any workflow. 28 patterns, 10 signature
moves, a 15-row quality rubric assembled entirely from his own dated on-camera verdicts, and the voice
profile.
- Source notes & fidelity ledger: references/source-notes.md — every
source dated, every self-reported credential flagged, and an explicit list of what this corpus does
not carry.
Doctrine: tool-independence
The core method names files, channels, rungs and seams — never products. It survives the next model
release because none of it is about a model. Every tool name, model version, price, resolution and button
path from the four 2026 sources is quarantined in
references/era-bound-mechanics.md — "verify before use." No
workflow and no execution prompt depends on a line of it. That appendix is unusually large here precisely
because the corpus is unusually current: this material will rot fast at the tool layer and not at all at
the discipline layer.
The load-bearing decisions
- The shot list is the floor; the storyboard is optional. "You need to at the very least have a
shot list, if not a storyboard." [FILM26] 08:13
- The composition question — board the shot when composition is load-bearing, brief it when only the
idea of the shot matters: "it was the idea of the shot and not the individual composition being
exactly right." [ANIME26] 15:47
- Rough on purpose — the sketch protects your own decision-space: "your brain doesn't get so locked
in on some of the supporting details." [FILM26] 09:04
- Three channels, three references — "use the composition from image number one… and keep the
character as at character number one." [FILM26] 11:40. Unassigned channel = unauthorised drift.
- One identity per character sheet — two characters on one sheet "would be very confusing."
[ANIME26] 07:16
- Locations get two angles, built before you need them. [ANIME26] 08:40
- Never judge a prompt on one output — "the actual problem is just you didn't generate enough
images." [FILM26] 07:44
- Salvage before you reject — half a second counts. [ANIME26] 13:03 · [FILM26] 15:44
- Easiest shot first — it becomes the reference anchor. [ANIME26] 09:21
- Voice last, ADR inverted — the AI authors the timing, the human matches it. [ANIME26] 09:02
- Budget in generations — iterations × unit cost × runtime. "This is not a free creative medium."
[ANIME26] 12:14
- IP hygiene at the moodboard, where it's free. [FILM26] 03:06
Signature moves (short list)
Four-panel dynamic character sheet · channel-assignment prompt · location angle bank · CCR ordering
(camera, character, rig) · the 15-second voice bed cast with emotional range · the rolling reference cut ·
the parallel model bake-off · board above / plates below · easiest shot first · the salvage pass.
Routing
- Anything before generation starts on a narrative piece → workflow 01
- Turning a shot list into generations; diagnosing "which part is wrong" → workflow 02
- Dialogue, VO, voice drift, hiring voice actors → workflow 03
- Judging a batch that already came back →
references/prompts-v2/continuity-audit.md
- Why the finished piece reads flat; look cards, cadence, grade, provenance, release QC → NOT this
skill.
skills/dave-clark/ — same building, the layer above. When they disagree: Clark owns the look
and the cut; Ward owns the asset architecture and the order of operations. Clark says board the shot;
Ward says board it only when composition is load-bearing — settle it per shot with the composition
question.
- Ad-shaped / platform-optimised AI video →
skills/pj-accetturo-ai-video/
- Still-image art direction, style handles, prompt syntax →
skills/nick-st-pierre/,
skills/rory-flynn/, /art-direct. Ward consumes their output as his style anchor and character sheet;
he does not teach that layer.
Execution Prompts (structure-pure v2)
4 deterministic practitioner prompts — each carries an Output Contract, Output Skeleton, and Quality Gate. When a deliverable matches one, Read it and honor its contract instead of improvising the output shape.
- Curious Refuge (Caleb Ward) — Continuity & Consistency Audit —
skills/curious-refuge/references/prompts-v2/continuity-audit.md
- Curious Refuge (Caleb Ward) — Pre-Production Package —
skills/curious-refuge/references/prompts-v2/preproduction-package.md
- Curious Refuge (Caleb Ward) — Shot Conversion Sheet —
skills/curious-refuge/references/prompts-v2/shot-conversion-sheet.md
- Curious Refuge (Caleb Ward) — Voice & Performance Direction Plan —
skills/curious-refuge/references/prompts-v2/voice-performance-plan.md
Fidelity note
Three workflows and four prompts, not eight. The master-hunt brief proposed a pitch-trailer workflow;
no 2025–26 source in this corpus teaches pitch-trailer structure, and the one trailer-build video on
the channel predates the multi-shot-coverage shift that [ANIME26] documents — so building it would have
imported era-bound mechanics into the core. It was dropped and replaced by voice & performance direction,
which is the densest verified material in the corpus. "Hybrid AI + live pipelines" is built only to the
extent the corpus carries it: the ADR seam and the finishing handoff, not live-action plate photography.
Ward's press credentials (100M+ views, NYT/Forbes/Hollywood Reporter/CNBC/USA Today, Netflix/Adobe/Sony
collaborations) are self-reported on his own site and not independently confirmed — they appear in no
prompt's Role & Activation. Full ledger: references/source-notes.md.
