Chapter 2 — Quick Start

This chapter gets a brand-new production into Scene Cards in about ten minutes. By the end you will have a document on disk, a wall populated from a script PDF, a still on one of the cards, and everything saved.

If you already have Scene Cards open on a document, skip to §2.3.

✱ Tip — if you just want to see what a finished wall looks like before starting your own project, click Explore Sample Wall on the Welcome screen. This opens a bundled sample document (The Big Lebowski) with 49 scene cards, stills, full script text, a 45-day shooting schedule and character colour assignments. Browse Script, Location and Schedule modes to get a feel for the app, then close the sample and start your own document when you’re ready.

Before you start

  • Scene Cards installed and launched (Chapter 1).
  • A script in PDF or Final Draft (.fdx) format.
  • A still image (JPEG, PNG or HEIC) for at least one scene — a phone photo is fine.

2.1 Create a New Document

A Scene Cards document holds one production. On a series, one document can cover every episode — see §13 Multi-Episode Productions.

2.1.1 🍎 macOS

  1. Launch Scene Cards. The standard Open a Document dialog appears.
  2. Choose File → New (⌘N). The document opens immediately with an empty wall.
  3. Save the document with File → Save… (⌘S). Choose a location — iCloud Drive is a sensible default for a production that will travel between devices — and give it a name such as MyProduction.scenecards.

✱ Tip — macOS auto-saves the document after the first manual save. You rarely need to press ⌘S again; use File → Save As… (⇧⌘S) only when you want to fork a copy.

2.1.2 📐 iPadOS

  1. Launch Scene Cards. The Files browser appears (after the Welcome screen on first run — see §1.6.2).
  2. Tap Create Wall on the launch screen (or + in the Files browser). A new document is created with an empty wall.
  3. To rename, tap and hold the document’s title in the toolbar and type a new name, or rename later from the Files app.

ⓘ Note — iPadOS auto-saves continuously. There is no manual Save command; closing the document commits the latest state.

2.1.3 📱 iPhone

  1. Launch Scene Cards. The launch screen appears.
  2. Tap Create Wall. A new document is created with an empty wall — 3 cards wide in portrait by default.
  3. Rename from the Files app at any time.

ⓘ Note — iPhone auto-saves continuously, the same as iPadOS.

2.1.4 The Empty Wall box

A brand-new wall shows an Empty Wall box with two buttons:

  • Import Script… — fills the wall from a script (§2.2).
  • Open Cloud Wall… — opens a wall your team already has in the cloud (§14.1.6). It loads into this new document, so no spare empty document is left behind.

✱ iPhone tip — untouched empty “Untitled” documents are tidied away automatically the next time you open a document.

2.2 Import a Script PDF

A script import walks the document top-to-bottom, finds every scene heading (e.g. INT. OFFICE – DAY), and creates one card per scene. The script text, scene number, episode number, location and any detectable character names are read across in a single pass.

Scene Cards accepts:

  • PDF — the most common format from screenwriting software.
  • Final Draft (.fdx) — native, parsed directly from the XML.

2.2.1 🍎 macOS

  1. Choose File → Import Script PDF or FDX….
  2. Select one or more files in the Open panel. Multi-select is supported — you can import several episodes of a series in one go.
  3. Click Open. A progress indicator appears while the script is parsed.
  4. When parsing completes, the wall populates with one card per scene, in script order.

2.2.2 📐📱 iPadOS and iPhone

  1. Tap the ⋯ overflow menu in the top-right of the toolbar.
  2. Choose Import Script PDF or FDX….
  3. Pick the script file from the Files picker.
  4. Tap Open. The wall fills as parsing completes.

🔒 Permission required — the first time you pick a file outside the app’s own folder, the system asks whether Scene Cards may read it. Tap Allow.

What gets imported

For each scene the parser extracts:

Field Source in the script
Scene number The number printed in the scene heading
Episode number Detected from cover page or filename where possible
Location / Slugline The scene heading itself (INT. / EXT. plus location)
Raw script text Every line between this heading and the next

Characters detected in dialogue are added to the document’s colour palette — see §6.3 Character Detection & Colour Assignment.

⚠ Caution — a script whose scene headings use non-standard formatting (e.g. lower-case or unnumbered) may produce cards the parser couldn’t number automatically. See §5 Building the Wall for how to renumber or re-brief them.

2.3 Open a Scene Card

Every card on the wall opens into an Inspector where you can edit its content.

2.3.1 Opening the inspector

A single click (or tap) on a card selects it — the usual behaviour for wall operations like reordering or revision-colour changes. The Inspector itself is opened in one of two ways:

  • 🍎 macOS — double-click the card, or click it once to select and then click the Inspector button at the top-right of the toolbar.
  • 📐 iPadOS / 📱 iPhone — double-tap the card. The Inspector slides up as a sheet.

2.3.2 Fields on the Inspector

From top to bottom:

  • Scene Number — three fields: Episode / Scene / Suffix. Editable if the parser got any of them wrong.
  • Location — the slugline (INT. OFFICE). Auto-uppercased.
  • Action — free-form notes on the scene. Populated from the script’s first action line on import; edit to taste.
  • References — carousel of attached reference files (§8).
  • Move Tile — shortcut to reposition the card after another scene by number.
  • Toolbar strip — Import Image, Remove Image, Omit/Unomit, Insert After, Renumber From Here, Close Gap, Delete.

Sound-report entries, when present, appear below the toolbar as a Shoot Data block. Day-level reports live in Schedule mode — see §10.

ⓘ Note — the card’s revision colour and script-derived heading come from the import and are not edited in the inspector. To change them, re-import from an updated PDF or FDX (§5.1).

2.3.3 Closing the inspector

  • 🍎 macOS — click the Inspector button at the top-right of the toolbar to toggle the panel closed.
  • 📐 iPadOS / 📱 iPhone — tap the Inspector button at the top-right of the toolbar, or swipe the sheet down.

✱ Tip — edits are committed as soon as a field loses focus. You do not need to “save” an individual card.

2.4 Add a Still

Stills live on the card itself and double as the thumbnail on the wall.

2.4.1 Drag a file onto the card

  • 🍎 macOS — drag a still from Finder, Photos or a folder window onto any card. The image is copied into the document and becomes the card’s thumbnail. Supported formats: JPEG, PNG, HEIC/HEIF, TIFF, GIF, WebP, BMP and most common RAW formats (CR2, NEF, ARW).
  • 📐 iPadOS / 📱 iPhone — use the Inspector route in §2.4.2. Drag-and-drop from Photos onto a card is technically supported but fiddly on touch devices; the Inspector is faster and more reliable for a single still.

2.4.2 Use the Inspector

  1. Open the card’s Inspector (§2.3).
  2. Click or tap the Import Image button (photo icon) in the inspector’s toolbar strip.
  3. Choose a file from the picker.

2.4.3 Batch-assign a folder of stills

If you already have a folder of on-set or scout photos named by scene number, Scene Cards can match and assign them in one go.

  • 🍎 macOS — File → Batch Import Images (Folder)… and pick the folder.
  • 📐 iPadOS / 📱 iPhone — ⋯ overflow → Import Images from Files…, then navigate to the folder.

Filenames that start with a scene number are matched onto the wall — 5.jpg, 5A.jpg, 005_rehearsal.jpg all land on scene 5 (or 5A). The parser reads the leading digits and an optional letter suffix; anything after that (underscore, dash, space, dot, bracket) is treated as descriptive padding and ignored. To pin a photo to a specific episode in a multi-episode document, prefix the filename with Ep{NN}_Scene_ — e.g. Ep01_Scene_5.jpg lands on episode 1, scene 5. See §7.3 Batch Import from a Folder for the full matching rules.

ⓘ Note — stills are stored inside the .scenecards package under Media/thumbnails/. They travel with the document and never need a separate sync.

2.4.4 Batch-assign a folder of reference files

The same filename matching works for any file type — PDFs, location photos, sound reports, continuity sheets, anything — filed into each scene’s Reference tab rather than replacing the thumbnail.

  • 🍎 macOS — File → Batch Import References (Folder)… to pick a folder, or File → Batch Import References (Select Files)… to hand-pick individual files.
  • 📐📱 iPadOS / iPhone — ⋯ overflow → Import References from Folder… or Import References by Name….

Files are appended to whatever references already exist on each card — nothing is replaced. See §8.7 Batch Import References by Filename for the full matching rules and completion summary.

🔒 Batch reference import requires a Scene Cards Pro subscription.

2.5 Save and Close

2.5.1 🍎 macOS

  • Save — ⌘S. Redundant after the first save, but available.
  • Close — ⌘W, or click the window’s red close button. The document saves automatically on close.
  • Reopen — it appears in File → Open Recent and in the macOS Stage Manager / Recents view.

2.5.2 📐📱 iPadOS and iPhone

  • Close — tap the back chevron (or back button on iPhone) in the top-left of the toolbar. The document commits and returns you to the Files browser.
  • Reopen — tap the document in the Files browser.

2.5.3 Share to cloud

Saving to iCloud Drive keeps the document synced across your own devices. To share the wall with crew members — or to give an Android user access — use Cloud Walls. Sign in (any email address works, no Google account required), create a Production, and invite crew by email. The wall syncs live and snapshots can be imported by anyone on the production. See §14 Collaborating for the full setup.

2.6 Next Steps

You now have a working Scene Cards document with scenes and at least one still. From here:

  • Organise the wall — see §5 Building the Wall for reordering, omissions and revision colours.
  • Add reference material — see §8 Reference Files for scouts, storyboards and research.
  • Build a schedule — see §9 Scheduling for importing a one-liner and working in Schedule mode.
  • Share with crew — Scene Cards can sync the wall to cloud so crew members on any platform (macOS, iPhone, iPad, or Android) see the same cards in real time. See §14 Collaborating.
  • Browse the interface — see §3 Orientation for a guided tour of the toolbar, inspector and script panel.