Type, paste or import shots

Type a shot

Every scene in the script has a card, at its location, even before it has a shot. A scene with no shots shows as a faded row that says no shots yet.

1. Click that row, or Add shot at the bottom of a card. A new row opens in the table.
2. Pick the scene, and a size, camera and lens if you want them. The characters start as the scene’s cast. Click them to change who is in frame.
3. Type what the shot shows and press Enter.

The shot shows up right away with the next free letter in its scene, like 12C. The row stays open on the same scene, so you can type the next shot straight away. Escape or × closes it.

Import a list

Press Import in the header, or paste a list with more than one line into an add row. Either opens the import box.

1. Give it the list

   Paste text from a spreadsheet, a document or an email. Or choose an Excel workbook, a CSV, a text file or a PDF. A workbook with several sheets is read sheet by sheet.

2. Read the shots

   Press Read shots. Haiku turns each row into a shot: scene, label, size, camera, description, dialogue, notes and who is in frame. It follows your header row if there is one, and a scene heading line sets the scene for the shots under it.

3. Check the list

   The shots are added at the end of the open version. A message says how many came in, and Undo takes them back out.

A shot for a scene the project doesn’t have keeps the number you gave it and sits under No Location. Names that aren’t in the cast are skipped, and the message lists them. One import adds up to 500 shots. A long file is read in parts, and the message says if a part could not be read. Reading costs a few credits.

Work on many shots at once

Tick the box at the left of a shot, or the box in a card’s heading to pick the whole card. A bar appears at the bottom of the window. It can:

1. Set the Size, Angle, Movement or Lens of every picked shot.
2. Move to scene. The shots take the next free letters there.
3. Add cast or Remove cast for one character at a time.
4. Duplicate, which puts a copy right after each picked shot.
5. Re-letter, which renumbers the picked shots’ scenes in list order as 12A, 12B, 12C.
6. Delete. The shots stay at the bottom of their card, struck through, and Undo brings them back.

Everyone who can edit shots sees these controls. Someone with View access sees the list and nothing that changes it.

Ask the assistant

The project chat can do the same work from a sentence. It reads the open version, adds shots in a scene or after a shot you name, changes or deletes them, and applies a bulk change to many. It can also list the versions, start a new one (a copy or a blank list), rename or switch versions, add the shots for panels that have none, and delete a version. For example: “add a close-up of her hands on the cup after 12A, 85mm, dolly in.”

Names that aren’t in the cast are skipped and the reply lists them, the same as the import.