Hey there, I’m looking at producing my first documentary and one of the tools people use for that is called Studio Binder. It’s an all-in-one for making your scripts, shotlists, moodboards, location scouting, storyboards, production planning, collaborators management etc etc.
Any of you know of similar tools that are FOSS? I think some VFX/animation pipelines also have similar needs.
I already found storyboarder for making panels which seems amazing but I’m getting a bit lost in the jungle of options for the project management/scripting side of things. I’m considering Airtable for example but might be overkill for my needs.
Ideally it’s something tailored for filmmaking specifically but open to hearing about general purpose planners that can be adapted.
Here is the alternative to list for airtable https://alternativeto.net/software/airtable/ . Why not just use Libreoffice and a project planner and a notes app. Big integrated tools are the realm of proprietary Lock in. Lot of what you want seems to be just a word processor and a spreadsheet.
Tools with features and UX designed around a specific workflow can significantly reduce the cognitive load of that workflow. It’s why these products gain so much traction to begin with.
Provided that you fit that work flow well and want to put up with crazy licensing. My personal experience is that for simple stuff they do have advantages. I also think this stuff can have more advantages for lower skill people as a fixed work flow can help but for higher skill people fixed work flows are often more of a problem then a help.
People rave about Visual Studio for example. I always found it fine for editing and debugging but terrible at building software. Not sure what people do now but use to be not uncommon to use other build tools, other compilers, and other version control systems because MS stuff sucked. In the same way, people also rave about excel and matlab too. I will use Python or maybe R thank you.
Even if you don’t like Visual Studio specifically, you probably still use some kind of IDE rather than a plain text editor plus command line tools. Even basic things like syntax highlighting are tremendously useful features that significantly reduce cognitive load.
One use case I can think of for soemthing like Studio Binder is their scriptwriting tools. You can do that all in a word processor, and there are probably even good templates for it. But presumably Studio Binder’s script editor is built to ensure all your formatting adhere’s to existing industry standards. It probably has a custom spell checker to enforce some of this. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it has built in functionality for tying scenes to a shot list, tracking locations and props as they are introduced, etc. I don’t know if they actually do these things, but they are features I would likely build into such software based on my own experience that regular word processors and project planners don’t really do.
You’re precisely right all of these things and more are what tools like Studio Binder do. It reads from the script and creates required items like locations, actors, props etc.
A lot of that is mostly relevant for narrative works, to be honest, and since I’m planning for a documentary initially I won’t need everything. But I might also do narrative or commercial work that is fully scripted in the future so I want to set myself up for success with a pipeline that can do it all.
Sure I usually use a language sensitive editor. They are ubiquitous. I use Spyder sometimes for Python. Mostly because it is handy for static code checking. Generally I use Geany or nano.
Regarding Visual Studio. Used it for 15 or 20 years. Nice editor and debugger. For Windows is it is kind if required. Intel compiler tools for Windows were designed to be used with it too. Thankfully I am retired now. No need for Windows any more.
Visual Studio got a lot better after Microsoft finally pulled their heads out of their butts and made it 64-bit. But, at least for .NET development, it is no longer required. VS Code is a viable alternative with some extensions, and JetBrains Rider is downright awesome.
Hey thanks for the link I’ll check out Notion.
Yes of course you’re right, I can recreate everything through sheets, docs and slides, but a purpose-built tool has done a lot of the legwork for you and makes sure you’re using industry-standard instead of reinventing the wheel.
I think basically what it comes down to is if I want to avoid the proprietary all-in-one I’ll have to make a pipeline with multiple tools myself, if there was a shiny and well maintained Foss alternative I’d probably have found it by now.
Just for the benefit of anyone potentially reading this, it looks like I’ll be going for Notion, there are some relevant premade templates to give me a starting point and then I’ll adapt it to my specific needs.
It’ll still need to be in combination with a scriptwriting tool like trelby or arc and storyboarder for panels but all of these can be uploaded into Notion.
For sure it won’t be as elegant or integrated but definitely more flexible/powerful, and well, you can’t beat the price tag ;)
