Breakdown
Breakdown
The Breakdown section is where you analyze your script scene by scene, identifying every element that production needs to plan for — cast members, props, vehicles, wardrobe, special effects, and more.
What is a Breakdown?
A breakdown is the process of reading through each scene in a script and tagging all the production elements mentioned or implied. This is one of the most critical steps in pre-production because it determines what needs to be sourced, budgeted, and scheduled.
SceneItAll automates much of this process with AI-powered element detection while giving you full control to review, modify, and manually add elements.
The Two Views
The Breakdown section has two main views:
Breakdown Overview
A table listing all scenes in your script. Each row shows the scene number, location, time of day, status, and counts of elements and crew. From here you can:
- Search and filter scenes.
- Select multiple scenes for batch operations.
- Run AI detection on selected scenes.
- Navigate to individual scene detail views.
Scene Detail
A two-panel view showing the screenplay text on the left and the element/crew breakdown on the right. This is where you do the detailed work of tagging elements, editing their properties, and managing crew assignments.
What You Can Do
- Add elements to scenes from your project’s element library.
- Create new elements on the fly when you encounter something not yet in the library.
- Edit element properties — name, type, and description.
- Merge duplicate elements when the same item was entered under different names.
- Link related elements to track dependencies between them.
- Run AI element detection to automatically identify elements from the script text.
- Split scenes when a single scene needs to be broken into multiple setups.
- Copy breakdowns from one scene to another.
- Write synopses for each scene, manually or with AI assistance.