short-film

name	short-film
description	Direct narrative video in NodeTool — short films, trailers, teasers, single dramatic scenes, music-video segments with a story. Use when the user gives a logline, a genre, characters with dialogue, or asks for a short, a trailer, a scene, or a cinematic piece with a title and a score. Not for ads or product films (use product-commercial) and not for narrated explainers (use script-video).

Load /storyboard-core first. It carries the loop, the tool contract and the gating this skill assumes. Everything below is what narrative work adds on top.

What makes this job type its own

An ad needs a board. A narrative piece needs the screenplay framing around it: title, logline, style bible, narration and a music prompt. Those live on the board's screenplay, and that has one writer.

ui_storyboard_set_screenplay is the only tool that writes them. edit_storyboard set_board takes brief, style, aspect_ratio, entity_ids, image_model and video_model — and refuses the rest. So:

• Board open in a browser tab → ui_storyboard_set_screenplay with the whole screenplay object, framing and shots together, in one call.
• Headless → create the board with create_storyboard, put the look in style and the premise in brief, keep the words on each shot's dialogue and narration, and tell the user that the title, logline and music prompt need the board open. Do not pretend they were set.

This matters at assembly: assemble_storyboard_timeline turns the screenplay's narration and music into draft audio clips ready to generate. With no screenplay there are no draft clips, and you add the score yourself with generate_music plus edit_timeline → add_track + add_media_clip.

The screenplay object

{
  "type": "screenplay",
  "title": "Night Drop",
  "logline": "A courier discovers the package was never meant to arrive.",
  "brief": "40-second neo-noir teaser",
  "styleBible": "wet asphalt, sodium and cyan, anamorphic flare, 2.39:1 crop, heavy grain",
  "aspectRatio": "16:9",
  "narration": "",
  "musicPrompt": "sparse low synth pulse, one rising note at 0:32, no drums",
  "entityIds": ["<asset id>"],
  "shots": [
    {
      "slug": "1a",
      "action": "Wide. Mara stands alone under a sodium lamp on wet asphalt, the city behind her out of focus",
      "camera": {         
       
       
       
    
  

style is accepted as an alias of styleBible. Only action is required per shot; ids, indexes and statuses are filled in.

Shot pattern

Six shots for forty seconds is a workable ratio — long enough to hold, few enough to afford. Open wide, end close. The wide establishes the world, the close is what the audience leaves with.

• Give shots room: 5–8 seconds each. Narrative shots that run 2 seconds read as an ad.
• Write blocking as physical events with counts — she turns her head once, he sets the case down and does not let go — and keep emotion out of motion. "Tense" is not a motion; a held stillness is.
• Dialogue goes in the shot's dialogue field, not in action. That keeps the option open to lift the words into a real script with extract_script_from_storyboard and voice them per /script-video.
• The style bible carries the grade. Do not restate it per shot — it is appended to every still prompt already.

Casting

Each character is a character entity: generate a reference, show the user, then create_entity. Add every one to the board with set_board {entity_ids}. A character seasons only the shots whose text names them, which is what you want in a scene where one person is alone.

Recurring locations are worth a location entity — those apply to every shot on the board, which is how a single street stays the same street across six cuts.

Direct mode earns its place here

Dialogue that must look synced, and heavy camera movement, both come out stiffer from a still. Set those shots to render_mode: "direct" and put the framing and the style into the action text, since no still carries them in. Keep the establishing and static shots on keyframe — they are the ones where holding the look matters most.

Brief

Direct a 40-second [genre] short: [LOGLINE]. Six shots, open wide, end close,
5-8 seconds each.

Write the full framing as well as the shots: title, logline, style bible,
aspect ratio, and a music prompt. If the board is open in a tab, set all of it
with ui_storyboard_set_screenplay in one call; if not, say so and keep the look
in the board style and the words on the shots.

Cast every character as an entity from a reference you show me first, plus a
location entity for the street. Set the shots that carry spoken lines to
render_mode direct.

If I gave no logline: a night courier loses the package. Wet asphalt, sodium and
cyan, and she whispers "That wasn't a drop."

Stop after the board. Stills before clips.