Pre-Production Powerhouse — AI Skill for Filmmakers

The job isn't won on the shoot day. It's won by a document.

Somewhere in the client's office, a person you have never met is deciding between you and two other filmmakers. They aren't watching your reel. They're reading a forwarded email with an attachment.

That attachment is the treatment, and most of us write it last, at midnight, in a hurry. Then we plan the shoot around optimism — six lit interview setups in one day, no contingency in the budget, and a commercial quoted at a day rate with the usage rights given away free.

A day of pre-production in about twenty minutes: the treatment, the schedule that survives, and the money questions asked before you send a number.

One skill. Six jobs.

Build the full pack

Treatment, interview questions engineered for usable soundbites, shot list with 3:1 coverage, storyboard beats, schedule, call sheet, gear list and a budget that sums to the dollar. Brand film, documentary, commercial, corporate and event are five different jobs here, and the pack changes shape for each.

› Client brief: [two lines + budget]. Build the pre-pro pack.

Price the commercial properly

Agency work gets the four usage questions before anything is quoted: where it runs, which territories, how long, exclusive or not. Usage becomes its own budget line on top of the production fee, which is the line most solo videographers hand over free.

› It's a commercial for an agency. Ask me the usage questions.

Settle the tax before line one

A budget total means nothing until you know which side of tax it sits on. If the client's number includes it, the production fee comes out first and every line builds from that: $5,000 including 5% becomes a $4,761.90 fee, with the arithmetic on the page. Payment terms, deposit and kill fee land on the budget rather than in an email.

› Their $5,000 — is that before or after tax? Show the branch.

Add crew and a second camera

The crew multiplier touches setup and lighting blocks only, never the interview: a 60-minute solo build with one assistant becomes 60 × 0.7 = 42 minutes. Two bodies add two call-sheet rows every time — SYNC, and MATCHED SETTINGS written out in full, because mismatched log formats mean two grades.

› Two cameras and an assistant on the day. Redo the schedule.

Run the 48-hour preflight

Two days out, say preflight. Sunrise and sunset re-confirmed for the actual date, drive space verified rather than assumed, every line confirmed or turned into an action with an owner and a time. It's its own file because it gets read on a phone in a car park.

› preflight — the shoot is Thursday.

Debrief the day after

Say debrief and it computes your real setups per hour from what actually happened, plus what the client added on the day and whether it got billed. Two shoots have to agree before your numbers replace the defaults, and it says so out loud after the first one.

› debrief — here's what actually happened on the day.

The complete pack, including the money page.

Everything a producer would hand you, exported as real files rather than chat text:

The treatment, written to be forwarded, plus the three-sentence email that carries it upward
A call sheet per day, with individual call times and the sync + matched-settings rows
A budget that sums to the dollar: contingency, the tax line, the payment schedule
The preflight page and the debrief page, each its own file

Why not just ask the chatbot?

Setup math that survives the day

Lit interviews run one to two setups an hour. Anyone planning six is flattering the client, and a general chatbot will cheerfully write that schedule. Six corporate subjects gets computed instead: 60 + 6 × (15 + 35) = 360 minutes, before the meal and the B-roll block.

It asks the money questions first

Usage rights, tax basis, deposit, postponement, kill fee. These are the lines that decide whether the job was worth taking, and they get settled before a quote goes out rather than argued about on the invoice.

It comes back twice per shoot

Preflight two days before, debrief the day after. The debrief writes your real setups-per-hour into your profile, so every future pack is planned on your numbers instead of a table's.

Your first five minutes.

Install it, then type any of these. No prompt-writing, no setup screens.

1Client brief: [two lines + budget]. Build the pre-pro pack.
2Treatment only — I need to win this job by Friday.
3It's a commercial. Ask me the usage questions before you price it.
4preflight — the shoot is in two days.
5demo — watch a two-line brief become a full pack.

Plug and play

From download to done in three steps.

Buy & download

A skill folder and a one-page install guide. Claude and ChatGPT are both included.

ii.

Drop it in

About a minute, once. Then fill your profile — the same one every skill in the suite reads.

iii.

Just talk

Paste the job in front of you — an email, a brief, a spreadsheet. It runs the whole workflow and hands back a finished file.

What it won't do.

Every skill in the store ships with this section. If a tool won't tell you its limits, it's selling you something.

It plans the day; it can't scout the location or control the sky. Every outdoor anchor carries a named plan B and a decision deadline.
Budget benchmarks and usage bands are directional estimates. Your own quotes from crew and rental houses beat any general figure, and it says so.
It flags tax and rights; it doesn't advise on either. Cross-border work is your accountant's call, and the skill hands it over rather than guessing a rate.

Questions.

What exactly is an AI skill?

A small file you add to Claude or ChatGPT once. It teaches the AI you already use this specific professional workflow — so from then on, one sentence runs the whole job. No prompt writing, no new app to learn. You buy it once, download it, and it's yours. It runs inside the Claude or ChatGPT account you already have; the free tiers work too.

How is this different from just asking Claude or ChatGPT?

A chatbot writes an optimistic schedule and a budget that doesn't quite add up. The Pre-Production Powerhouse applies real coverage ratios and setups-per-hour limits, names which scene gets cut first if you run late, sums the budget to the dollar with 10% contingency, settles the tax basis and payment terms, and writes the forwarding email that wins the job.

Does it handle commercial and agency work, or just brand films?

Five project types run as five different motions: brand film, documentary, commercial or agency, corporate or internal, and event. Each one changes what the treatment must contain, the shape of the day, the approval loop, and which budget lines exist. Commercial work adds the usage licence as its own line, priced on top of the production fee.

What are preflight and debrief?

Two extra visits around the shoot. Preflight is a 48-hour page: sunrise and sunset re-confirmed for the actual date, every line confirmed or turned into an action with an owner. Debrief is the day after: it computes your real setups per hour from what happened, and once two shoots agree it uses your numbers in future packs instead of the defaults.

I'm a solo shooter, not a production company. Too much?

No. Solo shooters benefit most, because you're the producer too. The pack scales to the job: a one-person corporate interview gets a proportionate schedule, not a feature-film call sheet. When you do hire an assistant or add a second body, the schedule and the call sheet change to match.

Is it a subscription?

No. The Pre-Production Powerhouse is $19 once, yours to keep, updates included.

A day of pre-production in twenty minutes — including the doc that wins the job.