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In Automat Studio a storyboard and a shot list are the same object viewed two ways. You break each scene into shots, give every shot a lens, a shot type and a description of the action, and generate a first frame for it. The list of shots is your shot list; the generated frames, in order, are your storyboard. Both stay live, so changing a shot updates the board. Because the frames are generated from characters and locations you have already defined, the board shows your actual cast in your actual sets — not generic sketches.

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Step 1: List the setups before you generate

Work scene by scene and decide the coverage first, in plain language: a wide to establish, a single on each character, an insert on the object that matters. Create one shot per setup. It is much cheaper to reorganise a list of empty shots than to regenerate frames you did not need.

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Step 2: Give each shot its grammar

Open a shot in Shot Studio and set:
  • Shot type — the framing, from wide through to close-up.
  • Lens — which changes how compressed and how intimate the frame reads.
  • Description — what actually happens in this framing, written for this shot rather than for the scene as a whole.
Then @-mention the characters and props that appear, so the frame is populated with your established assets. See mentioning assets.

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Step 3: Generate the frames in Draft first

Every generation has a Draft / Final quality switch. A storyboard is exactly what Draft is for: you want to see blocking, composition and continuity across twenty frames, not a finished image of one. Board the whole scene in Draft, look at it as a sequence, fix what does not read, and only push the frames you will actually use up to Final. This is also the cheapest way to work. Generations are paid for in credits, new accounts get 500 free, and failed generations are never charged.

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Step 4: Read the board as a sequence

With the scene’s frames generated, look at them in order and check the things a board is meant to catch:
  • Does the coverage cut together, or are you missing a connecting shot?
  • Is screen direction consistent from shot to shot?
  • Does the same character look like the same person throughout? If not, see keeping characters consistent.
  • Does the aesthetic hold across the scene?
Reordering, duplicating and deleting shots is cheap, so treat the first pass as a draft of the sequence rather than a commitment.

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Step 5: Turn the board into the film

The difference between this and a paper storyboard is that the board is the film’s first stage rather than a document you set aside. When a frame is right, turn it into video — image-to-video starts from the frame you approved, so the shot you boarded is the shot you get. Then add dialogue and lip sync, sound effects and visual effects per shot.

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Sharing the board

You can share your project with a link so collaborators can see the sequence — shares from free accounts carry a watermark. Independent plans and above can export the frames as image files to drop into a deck or a PDF, and the Hollywood plan can export an XML project for Final Cut Pro or Premiere.

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One honest limitation

Lens and shot type steer a generation rather than dictate it — the docs are explicit that shot attributes may not be reflected precisely in the image, a current limitation of the underlying models. For boarding this matters less than it sounds, because what you are checking is blocking, sequence and continuity. When an exact framing is essential, iterate on the shot description rather than relying on the lens setting alone.

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Next steps