From script to reel

Filmara is built around a single idea: everything you make for a film — the words, the look, the frames, the cut — belongs to one project, and you move through it left to right. This journey walks that whole path once, end to end, so you know where you are and what each stage is for.

Filmara calls its workspaces lenses, and you switch between them from the row of icons along the top of a project. Five of them make the path this journey walks:

1. Editor — write the screenplay.
2. Design — decide how the film feels.
3. Storyboard — turn scenes into shots and images.
4. Producer — bring the frames you want to move into motion.
5. Deliver — assemble and export the result.

There are two more you'll meet as you go: Structure, where the acts and beats of your story live, and Gallery, where every image and clip in the project ends up.

You don't have to finish one before starting the next. Most people loop back — write a scene, see it on the Storyboard, tweak the Look, return to the page. The lenses are places, not steps.

Write the script

Everything starts on the Editor lens. Filmara writes in Fountain, the plain-text screenplay format, so you type naturally and formatting happens as you go:

INT. DINER — NIGHT

MAYA slides into the booth, coat still on.

MAYA
You came.

RAY
I said I would.

Scene headings (INT./EXT.), character cues, and dialogue are recognized automatically. You don't style anything by hand — you write, and the page stays a proper screenplay.

Scenes are the unit

Each scene heading starts a new scene, and scenes are what the rest of Filmara hangs off. When you move to the Storyboard later, every scene is already there waiting to be visualized. Keep headings clean and your storyboard organizes itself.

Tip: You can dictate straight into the page. Where you see a microphone on a field, speak and Filmara transcribes it — useful for getting a rough scene down fast.

Set the look

Open the Design lens to decide how your film feels before you generate a single frame. This is where a project stops being text and starts having a visual identity.

What you settle here is your film's Look, and it holds a few things:

• Visual context — the words that describe your film's world: era, mood, palette, lens feel.
• References — images that anchor the style, in priority order.
• Imperfections — the grain, halation, and softness that keep frames from looking too clean.

Everything you set here becomes a floor that every generated image sits on. Set it once and your frames stay consistent — you're not re-describing the mood shot after shot.

Why the look comes first

If you storyboard before setting a look, every frame is a fresh guess and nothing matches. Setting the Look first means the Storyboard has a foundation to build on, so a night diner in shot 3 feels like the same film as the rooftop in shot 40.

Storyboard the shots

The Storyboard lens is where scenes become images. Each scene gives you a strip of covers — the frames that represent your shots — and you build coverage by adding and generating them.

A cover has two authors:

• You, describing the shot (a wide of the diner, a close on Maya's hands).
• The look, supplying the consistent visual floor underneath.

Generate a frame and Filmara composes those together. Don't like it? Adjust the description and regenerate, or edit an existing frame to keep its composition and change one thing.

Coverage, not perfection

The Storyboard is about coverage first — getting a frame for every beat — then refinement. Fill the scene, see it read as a sequence, then go back and push the frames that matter most.

Generating images and video uses credits. Each generation shows its cost before you commit, so you're never surprised. New accounts start with a credit grant to explore.

Bring it into motion

Where a shot needs to move, the Producer lens turns a still into a short clip. The frame you chose on the Storyboard is the starting point; Filmara renders the movement from it.

Producer is deliberately plan-first: you set a render up on the shot itself with Propose render, see what it will cost, and start it when you're ready. A chat message won't do this for you — it doesn't carry the shot's chosen still, its camera move or its length, and Filmara won't invent them.

Clips land in the project's media pool alongside your images, ready for the last lens.

Deliver the cut

The Deliver lens is where a project becomes something you can hand off. It gathers your finished frames and clips and turns them into deliverables.

Two things happen here:

• Assemble — put your shots in order as a sequence.
• Hand off — export to the editor you actually cut in.

Filmara doesn't try to be your final editor. Instead it exports a clean editorial handoff — FCPXML, EDL, or OTIO — so your shots, timing, and references open directly in Final Cut, Premiere, Resolve, or anything that speaks those formats.

The project bible

Everything you've built — characters, locations, the look, the shots — is also readable as a bible: a single reference for your film that you can share with a collaborator or bring to set.

Where to go next

You've seen the whole path. From here, dig into whichever lens you're working in:

• Keep writing on the Editor lens.
• Refine your film's feel on the Design lens.
• Build coverage on the Storyboard.
• Render the shots that move in Producer.
• Package it all on Deliver.

Each has its own journey with the details. This one was the map.