The 1ST AD should be a creative first
Save 50% of the Time and 100% of the Stress
When Breaking Down a Script
An AI-second script breakdown software that takes away the boring work, and allows you to embrace your creativity. Plan the shoot with Set Keel and if you don’t sleep easier, you get your money back.
Script Breakdowns Are a High-Risk Task
High anxiety during pre-production, prep week insomnia, and the fear of being publicly humiliated on set are too real for 1st ADs. You want to get the breakdowns perfectly right. You give your all during the planning stage, draw the 1/8ths by hand, or spend the whole night in front of a screen tagging elements, only to miss a prop or an outfit. A small oversight can cascade into hours of idle time, costing the production thousands of dollars.
It's Not Your Fault
Of course, since you are the AD, you get blamed for everything that goes wrong on the set. But really, it’s not your fault. Oversight is a very normal, human nature. Anyone can make mistakes, even you. Chances are, you already have made this one.
You Are Being Sandwiched
Screenwriters and directors write the scripts for narrative flow, not for logistics. And production cares only about the logistics, not the story. You are the bridge between them, but also the one they will dump on. Your job is to convert an abstract piece of literature, into an airtight supply chain, and you are human, so you will make mistakes. But both sides will point fingers at you.
You Have Tried Everything
Physical Tagging and Color Coding
You used to print out scripts, sit down with dozens of highlighters, and manually read through each line, tagging and making notes. It worked great, until the writer sent you a revised script, making your work garbage and you had to start again.
Legacy Industry Software
Your production house gives you a software suite that you use for pre-production. It does solve the problem of doing script breakdowns on paper, but the software is so cluttered, non-intuitive, outdated, and simply so archaic that it makes the physical approach look modern.
DIY Tools or Vibe-Coding
You may be one of the tech-savvy ADs. Dabbling in coding, you decided to make a tool for yourself, or worse, used AI for help. Soon, the small tool you were working on got out of hand, stuck in problems you can’t solve. You realize you’ve wasted days making something which now makes you want to rip your own hair off.
Newfangled AI Breakdown Apps
Despite your skepticism, you tried the ‘AI-first’ apps promising single click breakdowns. They worked, like a toy. Good to look at and play with, but not for the real world. The breakdowns produced by the AI were not reliable, only doubling your work for you. Even worse, because a machine did your work, you lost ownership of the script and the story, showing up blank on set.
You Deserve a Life Without This Suffering
You already bear the brunt of the brutal, the boring, and the bust days on set. Your only dream is making the day every day, avoiding idle time, and overrun costs.
And what if you could? Not because you worked 20 hours a day during pre, but because you chose a tool that made sure nothing slipped through.
1. Focus on the creative
You chose this career to be a creative, not to make spreadsheets. Leave the dreary calculating tasks to Set Keel while you focus on the narrative, the director’s vision, and collaboration.
2. Use An AI Second Approach
You cannot let AI be at the helm. At best, it will miss a few things making you do the work anyway, and at worst it will waste your time and money. In Set Keel, AI is your second brain. You can choose it to speed your process, and to make sure you don’t miss any elements.
3. Get Streamlined Outcomes
You work with the script, and Set Keel creates the outcomes. Don’t waste time entering data into Excel or Google Sheets, running calculations in your head to ensure integrity, and triple checking your breakdowns. You get automatic breakdowns and summaries once you are done tagging the script and making notes.
4. Rely On Total Security
As an AD you are working under NDAs, and it is natural to mistrust an online software with your unreleased scripts. Especially one with AI integrations. This is why we deploy industry standard security practices, encryptions, and scrambling, to keep your data secure and private, while it is in use, and after you delete it.
5. Don’t Change Your Workflow
If your production uses legacy software for scripts, pre, or shoot management, Set Keel will fit seamlessly into those workflows. Upload your scripts in PDF, fdx, or fountain formats, and get outputs in industry standard formats like .sex, .csv, .xlsx, or .mmb.