What is a production book?
The one document your crew actually shoots from, and how to build it without ten open tabs.
A production book is the single, ordered document a crew shoots from. It collects everything decided in pre-production, the brief, the treatment, the storyboard, the shot list, and the script breakdown, into one place, in the order you shoot. Instead of a director holding the vision in their head and the crew guessing, everyone reads the same book.
Some people call it a lookbook, a pitch book, or a pre-pro book. The name matters less than the job: one source of truth for what you are making and how you are making it.
What goes in a production book
A complete book usually contains these documents, in this order:
- Creative brief: what the project is, who it is for, and the tone.
- Director’s treatment: the take, the look, and the approach, in the director’s voice.
- Storyboard: frames that link back to the script lines they cover.
- Shot list: every setup with industry shot-size codes (ECU, CU, WS), grouped by location, with the must-gets flagged.
- Script breakdown: cast, props, wardrobe, and effects tagged with the standard color key.
Why one book beats ten tabs
Most teams assemble pre-production across scattered Google Docs, a Notion page, a folder of frame grabs, and an email thread. The references live in one place, the shot list in another, and the treatment in a third. When a reference changes, nothing downstream knows.
A production book fixes that by keeping every document together and traceable to its source. The crew reads one thing. The client reviews one thing. And when the concept shifts, you update one thing.
How to build one with Shotwright
Shotwright is a visual canvas for pre-production. You collect references, notes, and frames on one board, then wire them into document nodes. An agent reads the board and drafts each document in your project’s voice, and you edit from there.
When the documents are ready, Shotwright compiles them, in pre-production order, into one print-ready production book your crew can shoot from. No copy-paste, no reformatting, no version chase.