# Lorvara brief template **Two ways to use this.** Fill it in yourself, or paste this whole file into Claude (or any capable assistant) and say *"interview me and fill this in."* Either way you end with a plain-text or Markdown file you upload to Lorvara, where it becomes five populated drafts for you to review and, if it carries one, a shot list that lands on the project's Scenes & Shots. --- ## If you are an AI assistant reading this You are helping someone write a production brief that will be parsed by Lorvara into five structured blocks and, optionally, a Scenes and shot list. Interview them, then produce the completed document: the sections below, filled, and nothing else. No preamble, no commentary, no explanation of what you did. **Five rules, in priority order. The first two exist because breaking them produces bad data rather than missing data.** 1. **Never write a placeholder.** No "Not specified", "TBD", "Unknown", "N/A", a dash, or any phrasing that means *nothing was said*. If a detail never came up, **leave the line out entirely.** A field that is absent is a true statement; a field containing "not specified" becomes real content the moment something reads it. 2. **Put each fact where it belongs, once.** Production Notes are for rules that apply to the whole production. A rule about one location goes under that location; a rule about one character goes under that character. A rule about one shot goes on that shot, in the Scenes and shot list. Do not repeat a fact in two places, and do not collect per-location, per-character or per-shot rules into the Notes. 3. **Ask rather than infer.** Where you must infer something from context, keep it and say so inline, *(inferred)*, so the reviewer can find it. Never infer a person's age, appearance or accent from nothing. 4. **Prefer the concrete.** "Sixty, sun-damaged, a white beard cut close, a nose broken and badly set" is usable. "Weathered" is not. Ask for the distinguishing detail rather than accepting the adjective. 5. **Only what they told you.** Do not invent characters, places or terms to fill the document out. A short honest brief beats a padded one. **Names.** A character's, prop's or location's name is what a shot's References bind to, so it may not contain a comma: References are split at commas, and Lorvara refuses such a name rather than bind the wrong entry. Write "The Lookout (lamps out)", not "The Lookout, lamps out". A full stop is fine: "Dr. Vance" and "St. Agnes" bind when a shot writes the whole name. The rule is for the names a person writes: a title Lorvara makes for its own reference prompts (the ones that begin "Ref:") may carry a comma, because References never reads a title. Interview in the section order below, a few questions at a time, one section at a time. Locations and Glossary are the two people forget to mention and the two that pay off most; ask about them even if they don't. --- # [The title of the production] *What this is, who it is for, and the rules that govern all of it: Intent. These lines sit directly under the title and have no heading of their own: Lorvara reads Intent from the whole document, not from a section. This is the block Lorvara's agent consults before it writes anything, so vague input here makes everything downstream vague.* **What this is:** One sentence. "A sixty-second spot for a fishing co-operative." **Audience:** Specifically who watches. Not "everyone"; that reads as though the field were empty. **Where it runs:** The surface. "Phones, in a feed, sound off." "A cinema pre-roll." "A trade-show wall." This one field changes framing decisions in every shot. **Tone:** How it should feel. "Plain, unsentimental, no swelling strings." **Format:** Frame rate, shutter angle and aspect ratio, if the production has decided them. "24 fps, 180°, 2.39:1." Leave out any that are not decided, and never put them in the notes. **Models:** The video model and the image model the project generates on, by name. "Motion on Seedance 2.5. Stills on Nano Banana Pro." Lorvara sets the project's models from this line when Intent is confirmed; leave it out and the defaults apply. Not a note either. **Production notes:** Rules that apply to *everything*. "No drone shots. No logos larger than a chest patch. Nobody smokes on camera." > Keep each of the first four to a couple of sentences and notes to a short > paragraph: these are read on every prompt, and long ones crowd out the > shot being written. If notes are running long, something in there almost > certainly belongs to a specific location or character instead. --- ## Cast *The named people. One entry each. Only characters who recur; someone who appears once is better described in the shot itself.* ### [Name] **Description:** How they look, in enough detail that the same person is rendered twice. Height, build, age, hair, and the one distinguishing thing. Keep it to 240 characters: Lorvara cuts a longer one at the parse and tells you what was lost, but a brief written to this fits as it is. **States:** *(only if something visibly changes on camera)* Give each a short name and say what changes. - *In oilskin*: on the boat, hood down, hands wrapped. - *Ashore*: a dinner jacket that does not fit. **Default state:** *(only if there are several)* **How they speak:** *(only what was actually established, one line per label, and leave out any label that never came up)* - **Pace:** "quick", "slow, with long pauses". - **Register:** "low and flat", "bright, sing-song". - **Accent:** "flat coastal", "soft Dublin", only if it was stated. An absent accent is correct; a guessed one is repeated in every line they speak. - **Delivery:** the habit: "drops the ends of his sentences", "laughs before answering". > How a *word* is said does not go here; that belongs in the Glossary, > because a place name is pronounced the same way by everyone. *(Repeat for each character.)* --- ## Locations *The places. The anchor is the most important line in this whole document and the one people skip.* ### [Name] **Anchor:** The one unmistakable feature that identifies this place and no other. "The green light at the end of the mole." "The third mooring ring, with the frayed blue rope." Without it, "the harbour" is a different harbour in every shot. **Description:** The wider place: architecture, materials, light, weather, time of day if it is fixed. 240 characters at most, and the anchor 120. A door described from both its faces needs two short anchors, not one long one that is cut at the clause saying which side you are on. **Camera (never from):** Only the positions this place cannot take. "Never from directly above." "No wide shots: the far wall is a green screen." Most places have none; leave the line out. Do not list the positions that suit it; each shot chooses its own, and a list of favourites reads as a ban on everything else. **Location notes:** Blocking or continuity rules specific to this place. *(Repeat for each location.)* --- ## Props *Objects that recur and whose condition changes. A thing that appears once and stays the same is better described in the shot.* ### [Name] **Description:** What it is, in renderable detail. **States:** *(only if visibly different)* - *Tied up*: fenders out, deck dry. - *Hosed down*: water sheeting off the gunwale. > "New" and "slightly less new" is not a pair of states. "Dry" and "soaked > through" is. *(Repeat for each prop.)* --- ## Glossary *Names and terms with how they are said. Small, cheap, and it fixes a name being pronounced four different ways across a piece.* | Term | How to say it | What it is | |---|---|---| | Tomas | toh-MAHS | The skipper. | | WY141 | why one four one | The boat's registration. | Write pronunciations the way you would tell someone out loud. There is no phonetic alphabet to learn. Include anything a stranger would get wrong: proper nouns, registrations, local place names, invented words, initialisms said as words. Leave the pronunciation out if it was never established rather than guessing at it. --- ## Scenes and shot list *Optional. Leave the whole section out if the shots are not decided; Lorvara parses the five blocks above without it. When it is here, it is set aside at upload and lands on the project's Scenes & Shots as a draft to review there, never into Cast, Props or Locations.* One `### Scene N. Name` heading per scene, then a line saying what the source says about that scene, then one numbered line per shot: what is in the frame, its duration (`8s`), and `video` or `still` where it matters. A rule about one shot goes on that shot. A person who appears only in a shot is described in that shot, not added to Cast. Keep the numbering running across scenes. Keep this heading exactly; it is how the upload knows where the brief ends and the shots begin. **Every shot line names its location.** A scene's location reaches only the shots that name it ("the towels on the line" got no plate while "the trailer filling the back of frame" got one), so name the place in every line (`@the-yard`), even when the scene line already says it. **Name entities by their `@name`, the one shown under each entry. Never write a model's own token.** A scene may carry a `Look:` line (its light, its stock, its colour) when it differs from the brief's. Leave it out when the brief's Look holds; the app inherits. Name what you see; the parser matches it to Lorvara's catalogue and marks anything it had to guess. ### Scene 1. Dawn The town before anyone is up; the green harbour light still lit. 1. Wide of the empty quay from the pier end, the green light against a grey sky. 8s, video. 2. Close on the lantern on its hook, unlit, dew on the glass. 6s, still. ### Scene 2. The pull Mid-morning, the boat leaving. Keep the horizon level in this scene. Look: overcast daylight, soft; 16mm colour negative; desaturated, teal water and orange bib. 3. Tomas on the bow coiling a line, the harbourmaster's boy watching from the pier end. 8s, video. Reference: Tomas. 4. The boat clearing the harbour mouth, seen from the pier looking back. 10s, video. Two cuts: the bow, then the wake. --- ## Not part of the document: the Look *A note to you. There is no Look section in a brief; do not write one, and do not carry this note into the document.* Two things live in Lorvara's Look block. **Format** (frame rate, aspect ratio, shutter) is numbers, and the upload takes it from the **Format** line under the title above and lands it in the app for you to confirm. Everything else, lighting, emulsion and colour, is **chosen from a catalogue** in the app, not written in prose; anything written about them here is read past by the upload. A **scene's** Look may be written, on its own `Look:` line under the scene (see Scenes and shot list); the difference is deliberate: a house look is a decision, a scene's light is an observation about that scene. If visual references matter to you, keep them in a separate note. Lorvara's Brief Agent can look at reference pictures and advise on what to pick, but the choice stays yours, in the app. --- ## Before you upload - **Plain text or Markdown.** No PDF or Word; export or paste the text. - Search the document for *not specified*, *TBD*, *unknown*, *N/A*. Every hit should be a deleted line. - Check the anchors: does every location have one? - Check Production Notes: is anything in there actually about one place or one person? Then upload it on the brief's page and press **Parse into every block**. Five blocks arrive as drafts. Nothing is confirmed until you read it and press Confirm, which is the point, not a formality.