The product
What is Keyframes?
It’s production software for people making films without a studio behind them. Your script, the breakdown, elements, locations, mood, the schedule, call sheets, cast and crew, the budget and your shot lists all sit in one production instead of nine files you spend your evenings reconciling. Tag a keycard in the pages and it’s in the catalogue, sitting on a budget line, and on the day it shoots, without you going anywhere else.
Who is it for?
Independent productions, whether that’s a feature, a short, a doc, a commercial or a music video, made by a crew small enough that people are covering more than one job. It’s built for the days when the producer is also the first AD and there’s no coordinator to hand any of it to. It isn’t a studio pipeline with a department for every tool.
Is it really real time, or does it sync when I save?
It’s really real time, and that’s the part almost nothing else in this category does. Your whole team can be in the same production at once, two of you can write the same scene and watch each other’s carets while you do it, and a record somebody else is working in is ringed in their colour with their name on it. Nothing is merged afterwards out of copies people kept on their own machines.
What can I do in it today?
Twelve modules are built and in use: Script, Beats, Breakdown, Elements, Locations, Mood, Assets, Schedule, Call sheets, People, Budget and Shot lists. Research, reports, dailies, review, VFX, marketing, festivals and deliverables aren’t built yet, and we’d rather say they aren’t built than call them coming soon.
Is it a screenwriting app or a production app?
Both, and that’s really the whole idea. The script is a proper editor that formats as you type, counts your pages in eighths, numbers your scenes and handles locking and revisions. It’s also what the rest of the production reads, so your breakdown, your schedule and your call sheets follow the pages, and nobody types them up off a PDF a second time.
Does it do a stripboard schedule?
Yes. Every scene is a strip and a shoot day is a stack of them, so you drag one onto a day, or take a run of them and move the lot together. The four colours are the industry key and they come off the slugline, so you’re not setting them by hand. Page counts run in eighths down the column, which means you can read the weight of a day at a glance.
Can it send call sheets?
Yes. A sheet belongs to a shoot day, so the scenes, pages, cast, sets and sunset are read live off it. When you publish, it freezes a version and emails everyone a PDF and a link with the sides and the shot list attached. The link opens on a phone with no login, it leads with their own call time and their first location, and it has a confirm button on it. You get to see who opened it and who confirmed.
What it costs
What does Keyframes cost?
Free is $0 for 1 production and 1 seat. Student is $7 a month for 2 seats and 3 projects, and you’ll need a student email for it. Indie is $19 a month for 3 seats and 10 projects, which is the one most small teams land on. Team is $49 and Studio is $89 a month, and both come with unlimited projects and an audit log. Enterprise we work out with you, and a film program licenses the whole department for one yearly fee. Every plan includes every major module.
Is there a free plan?
Yes, and it’s a real one you can stay on for as long as you like. You get 1 active production, 1 seat and 2 GB of storage, with every module unlocked. The thing you don’t get on it is the assistant. There’s no card to enter.
What’s the difference between the plans?
Seats, active projects, storage, and how many requests the assistant gets. Indie and up also drop the Keyframes mark from exported PDFs, and Team and up add an audit log across the organisation. We don’t paywall a module and we don’t hold a feature inside a module back for a higher tier. Storage runs from 2 GB on Free up to 500 GB on Studio, and on Enterprise we work it out with you when we talk.
How do seats work?
A seat is one person, counted once across every production on the plan. Pending invitations hold a seat until they’re accepted or revoked. Seats belong to the plan itself, so everything you make draws from the same pool.
Film schools
Do you license to schools?
Yes. A program licence puts every student and every faculty member in a department into one workspace for one yearly fee, from $4,000 for a program under 100 students. A program past 300 students is scoped to the department and quoted, starting at $15,000. You tell us the program’s enrollment when you sign up and that sets the fee for the year, so nobody is counting logins and a class that grows mid-semester costs nothing extra. Everybody is included, faculty as well as students, and it’s invoiced annually. Students own the films they make and instructors see every production in the program without being added to each one. A semester pilot is available if you’d like to put one cohort through it first.
How do students join?
The program claims its email domain, and anybody who signs in with an address on it lands in the workspace as a member, with no invitation to send and no code to pass around. A claim on the apex domain covers its subdomains, so a student on a departmental subdomain is covered too. If you’d rather work from a list, a professor can paste a roster of addresses into the workspace settings and each one becomes a member the first time that person signs in.
Can students sign in with Microsoft or through Canvas?
Students can sign in with Microsoft. The Continue with Microsoft button signs them in against a university’s Entra ID tenant, and because Keyframes is registered as a multi-tenant application, a tenant administrator may need to approve it once before the button works for everybody. Magic links keep working the whole time, so nothing waits on that approval. Canvas isn’t integrated today, so a course page links out to Keyframes the way it would link to any other site.
Working with other people
Can my whole team be in the production at the same time?
Yes, and this is what the software is really for. Two of you can write the same scene and see each other’s carets while you’re doing it, and undo stays per person so yours won’t take back their sentence. Everywhere else, a record somebody is working in is ringed with their name on it, so you know where the rest of your team is before you go editing over them.
Can I control who sees crew rates and phone numbers?
Yes, and they’re two separate permissions. Being able to see the budget doesn’t get you rates, and being able to see People doesn’t get you phone numbers. A field you can’t see isn’t rendered at all, so nobody can overwrite a number they’ve never read. If any account holds somebody’s rate, the grand total is withheld too, or you could subtract your way to their fee.
What happens when the script is locked?
The rest of the production stops following it automatically, and nobody stops writing. Scene numbers freeze, so a scene added between 10 and 11 becomes 10A and a cut number retires and prints OMITTED, and anything written from then on queues as a revision for a producer to apply.
Getting your work in and out
Can I import my screenplay?
Yes. Fountain, Final Draft and plain text. There’s no PDF import. Importing replaces the whole document, so bring a script into a new production and don’t drop it on top of one you’ve already started.
Can I get my work back out?
Yes. The script exports as Fountain and as a PDF, and there’s a breakdown PDF and a shot list PDF as well. The budget goes out as a top sheet PDF, a full PDF with every account in it, and CSV. Shot lists come out as CSV and the beats board as a PDF. There’s no Movie Magic budget export yet.
Does it work on set with no signal?
One thing does, and it’s the one that matters at the time. Ticking a shot off saves on the device and goes up when there’s a network, so it shows straight away and survives a reload. The rest of it needs a connection while you’re working. The call sheet PDF that gets emailed out is your copy for somewhere with no bars.
Is there a mobile app?
No, Keyframes runs in a browser. The two things built to be used on a phone are the on-set shoot day view and the call sheet your crew opens out of their email, and both of those work in a phone browser with nothing to install.
The assistant
Is there AI in it, and can I turn it off?
There’s an assistant called Key and it’s off until somebody turns it on. It never writes a line of your script and it won’t change anything by itself. What it does is hand you a card describing exactly what it would do, and nothing happens until you press Apply. Anything you apply goes through the same permission check and the same activity log as a change you made yourself, and it’s one undo away.
Can Key see things I can’t?
No. Key works as you do, so a tool your role doesn’t have is never offered to it and it can’t even propose the change. A module you can’t view isn’t in its vocabulary. If you can’t see crew rates, neither can it.
Is my script sent anywhere?
Only if you use Key. If you never touch the assistant or the element suggestions, none of your work goes to an AI provider at all. When you do use it, the part it needs to answer with, meaning the scene text and the relevant records, goes to the provider we name in our privacy policy.
Where it’s up to
Can I use Keyframes now?
It’s in closed beta and we’re taking productions on in small batches, so that we can answer you properly when you ask us something. Ask for access and we’ll be in touch.
What doesn’t it do?
It won’t track actuals, purchase orders or invoices, because the budget is there to plan your spend and it isn’t a cost report. There’s no PDF import. There’s no SMS either, so phone numbers are on the sheet but nothing gets texted to them. Offline covers the on-set done tick and nothing else. Research, reports, dailies, review, VFX, marketing, festivals and deliverables aren’t built yet.