Draft concise coverage

Every exercise in this course uses one short scene. In scene forty-two, Nora stands on a farmhouse porch at night and tells her brother she is selling the house.

Two things went wrong in production. The rain was cut from the budget. And the wide shot that should give her brother's answer room is missing. In the edit timeline it's a slug: a placeholder that holds the gap where a shot should go.

The shot can't be reshot. The farmhouse has new owners and the actors are on other jobs.

Here's what does exist on film:

• The takes of the scene. A take is one recorded attempt at a shot. In take six, the actor playing Nora gives an unplanned look back at the house.
• A dry wide: a wide shot of the porch and yard, with no rain.

Keep that list in mind. Every AI task in this course starts from two sources: what's on film and what's on the script pages. Anything else is a suggestion until a director, producer or department lead approves it.

James Cameron, director of Titanic and the Avatar films, talked about generative AI in a January 2026 interview with Graham Bensinger. He said he has no interest in typing a prompt and getting a final image. Everything should "start with performance." If you take the actors out, you're not really making a film. He also urged caution and firm rules.

In the same interview he said Avatar used older machine learning, such as software that animates flocks of bats, not generative AI. Keep the two apart. Generative AI produces new text, images or video from a prompt. Older machine learning finds patterns to help with a narrow job.

For scene forty-two, starting from performance means that take six and the dry wide are the foundation. Nora's look back at the house happened once, between people, in front of a lens. No prompt can recreate it, and it belongs to the actor. Any AI work on this scene has to fit around that look, not replace it.

Script pages for a film in production are unreleased story material, meaning the public hasn't seen them. Pages and call sheets may also carry performer information such as names, contact details or other private notes. Protecting both is part of the job.

Before you paste anything into an AI assistant, check what your production allows. This course can't tell you your production's rules. Ask whoever owns them, usually the producer or the production office.

Then keep the paste small. For this task the assistant needs the pages for scene forty-two and nothing else. It doesn't need the whole script, the cast list or anyone's contact details. Sending less protects more and also gives cleaner answers, because the assistant can't borrow details from other scenes.

In this course you'll practice on the illustrative scene your tutor supplies, so nothing real is at risk. On a real job, the check comes first every time.

Coverage is a short written report on a script. Here you want concise coverage of one scene. Give the assistant one task only, with clear limits. Here is a prompt you can adapt:

Here are the pages for scene 42 only. Write concise coverage in no more than six lines. End every line with a scene or page reference, for example (Sc. 42, p. __). Use only what these pages state. Where the pages are silent about motives, backstory, mood or weather, write "not stated" instead of filling the gap. Don't suggest shots or fixes.

Each limit has a purpose:

• One task. Coverage only. The breakdown and the shot brief come in later lessons.
• References on every line. Any line you can't trace is easy to spot.
• "Not stated." Assistants tend to fill silence with plausible detail. This instruction gives the assistant a way to admit a gap.
• No fixes. Ideas for the missing wide come later and need their own check.

Even a careful prompt doesn't guarantee faithful output. Read the coverage line by line with the pages open, and give each line one of three marks:

• Traced: the pages state it, and the reference points to the right place.
• Implied: the pages suggest it but don't say it. For example, a night scene on a porch may suggest a light source.
• Not in the script: the assistant added it.

The risky lines are the plausible ones. Invented reasons for the sale ("she's in debt"), a mood the page doesn't describe ("she's fighting tears"), or a line that describes rain as if it had been shot all sound right. Rain needs extra care. Whatever the pages say about weather, no rain exists on film. Any line that reads as though it does should be flagged.

Keep the traced lines. Mark implied lines as questions. Delete the lines that aren't in the script, or flag them if someone should decide. A reference that points to the wrong page counts as untraced until you fix it.

Your first course output is a scene synopsis: a few sentences, headed by the scene number, that say only what the pages say happens. Build it from the lines you marked traced and nothing else.

A synopsis built that way for scene forty-two might read:

Sc. 42 – EXT. FARMHOUSE PORCH – NIGHT. Nora tells her brother she is selling the house. He answers.

That's short, and it should be. Add anything else the pages actually state, with the same discipline. Leave out implied items such as the porch light. They'll go into the breakdown in the next lesson, marked as questions.

The output format is FDX, the file format of Final Draft, a widely used screenwriting program. If you don't have Final Draft, write the same content in plain text and convert it later. What matters is the content, not the software.

Your second output is a character beat: what each character does and wants in this scene, as written. Use the same rule. Write what the pages state, and write "not stated" for anything they don't.

Nora – Does: tells her brother she is selling the house (Sc. 42). Wants: as written on the pages, or "not stated." Her brother – Does: answers her (Sc. 42). Wants: as written, or "not stated." Captured performance, take six (not script): Nora's unplanned look back at the house.

The last line needs to stay separate. The look in take six isn't in the script. The actor found it once, on the day, and it belongs to her. If you record it as script text, someone might later treat it as a direction to recreate, or generate. Labeling it as captured performance tells everyone downstream that it comes from the footage and isn't up for reinvention.

Save the beat as FDX, or as plain text to convert later.