The brief template

Most productions do not have a written brief. The writing that exists covers the plot, or is a client document about deliverables, timelines and approvals, not what the harbour looks like, who is in it, or how the skipper’s name is said. This page is for that gap.

You do not need a Lorvara account to use it. Send this page to whoever knows the production best.

Two ways to use it

Be interviewed. Copy the template, paste the whole thing into Claude, ChatGPT or any capable assistant, and say “interview me and fill this in.” It opens by addressing the assistant directly, so nothing needs editing first. Answer its questions; it hands back a finished document.

Fill it in yourself. Download the Markdown file and write into it. Leave out anything you do not know: an absent line is correct, a placeholder is not.

Either way you end with a plain-text or Markdown file. Upload it on a brief’s page in Lorvara (Upload a brief, then Parse into every block) and it becomes five populated drafts, one per block, for you to read and confirm. Nothing is confirmed on your behalf. If the document carries a shot list, it is set aside and lands on the project’s Scenes & Shots once the blocks are confirmed. See Sending the shots.

Download as Markdown

When to reach for it

You have no written brief at all.
The brief you have is about the job (deliverables, dates, sign-off) rather than the world: the people, the places, the things, the words.
Someone outside Lorvara (a client, a director, a writer) knows the answers and you want them captured in a shape that uploads cleanly.

If you already have a bible or a treatment, skip this: upload it as it is. An uploaded document reads prose as well as it reads this template. And if you are already in Lorvara, the Brief Agent does the same interview inside the app, with your reference pictures in hand. Reach for that first.

Why the rules are the way they are

The template’s five rules for the assistant are not style. The first two exist because breaking them produces bad data rather than missing data:

A placeholder such as “not specified” or “TBD” becomes real content the moment something reads it. An absent line is a true statement.
A rule about one place written into the production notes is read on every shot, including the forty that are not set there. The same goes for one person, and for one shot: each rule lives where it applies.

The lengths the template states are the parser’s own: a character or prop description is kept to 240 characters, a state description to 200, a location description to 240 and its anchor to 120. A longer one is cut at the parse and the brief page says so, quoting what was lost, so a brief written to these figures lands exactly as written.

One more rule sits with the shot list, and it is not style either: every shot line names its location. A scene’s location reaches only the shots that name it, so a shot that leaves it out gets no location plate, even when the scene line says where you are.

Both are things Lorvara’s parsers have been taught to refuse; the template asks the document not to contain them in the first place. If a rule here ever disagrees with what the upload does, the upload is right and this page is stale, so tell us.

One more rule is about names, and the template states it to the assistant directly. 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. See A name was refused for its comma.

The template

What follows is the file itself, rendered. Copy or download it above; do not retype it.

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Wide of the empty quay from the pier end, the green light against a grey sky. 8s, video.
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.

Tomas on the bow coiling a line, the harbourmaster’s boy watching from the pier end. 8s, video. Reference: Tomas.
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.