Imagine being able to visualize your live-action or animated stories based on a PDF script, and immediately spot problem areas and red flags before production even starts. That’s the promise of Scriptsee, a new free-for-now software product from New Zealand’s Motion Tech Lab, which has raised around US$900,000 in pre-seed funding. (There will be a fee to license the software upon its official release.)

Scriptsee uses natural language processing (a type of AI that focuses on teaching computers to understand language) to analyze a script, predict how many shots are required for scenes, and break down the number of characters, props and effects needed in each one. It also highlights scenes that are more complex. (The software works with both live action and animation, but doesn’t yet have the capacity to handle unscripted projects without a screenplay.)

Creatives can gain a whole new level of understanding of their projects by being able to visualize a script beforehand to determine how many times a character shows up, which scenes have the most characters (and would therefore take the most time to animate), and what the emotional tone of the story is, says Greg Harman, Motion Tech Lab’s CEO and co-founder.

And more importantly, this bird’s-eye view allows producers to make changes in pre-production and development before committing to production, when they would become far more costly—something that’s becoming more and more critical as budgets continue to get squeezed.

While the industry has understandable concerns around AI, Harman underlines that Scriptsee doesn’t do any creation; it’s solely an analysis tool. “We don’t write the story for you, and we don’t tell you what to do. We highlight the ways your script can be improved—it’s battle-planning for the production.”

One of Scriptsee’s clients is writer and producer Robert Seal (author of a kids book called Three Wise Animals from Guardian Angel Publishing), who used the software as he was developing a US$15-million CG-animated feature film for six- to 11-year-olds called The Florentine Cats.

Scriptsee’s metrics for The Florentine Cats led to a greater emphasis on main characters a third act that makes a bang with special effects. 2D book images by Gabriella Pezzani @garightnow and 3D character renders by Luisa Leal @luisamleal and Rich Gaddy @mavriq

Seal says the software helped him make significant improvements to keep the project on budget. One of the biggest red flags Scriptsee pinpointed was that his script had “way more” locations and scenes than a typical animated film. It then helped him identify which locations could be merged or eliminated. Similarly, he found that some of his minor characters didn’t interact with main characters very often, so there were opportunities to condense their screen time.

“I was able to see right away from the visual metrics the improvements in the draft-to-draft comparisons, which made for a better writing process overall,” says Seal. “For instance, I was able to analyze the use of special effects in the film and find ways to reduce them in the first two acts and maximize them for the third act—which was useful for the estimated budget.”

As a creative, Seal says he’d like to see a database of other films added to the software to allow him to compare his own metrics with other projects, and maybe an auto-budgeting feature that would calculate costs based on the film’s length and complexity. He’d also find it helpful if Scriptsee was available in languages other than English so he could easily share its insights with international partners.

Scriptsee has received similar feedback from 200-plus trialing clients—ranging from independent creatives to medium- and large-sized studios—who have been using the tech since Motion Tech Lab launched it at MIPCOM in October. And all of this feedback has been added to the project’s roadmap.

It helps that Harman has a tech and animation background—he was previously a CTO for Karactaz Animation (later Mechanic Animation), which produced 18 shows for Marvel Animation Studio (Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy series) before the pandemic.

The Motion Tech team has been busy onboarding clients in recent months, and all that additional data is helping to improve the software. While the tech is predictive, it’s not yet 100% accurate—it will currently give producers a solid approximation of the numbers—but Harman says the product’s accuracy will improve over time. He foresees a time when a company might plug its entire back-catalogue into Scriptsee to get insights for multiple seasons—something that would be especially valuable for new writers coming onto the crew. Having a breakdown of a show’s characters and plots, and being able to search through them on demand, would save a writer from having to watch an entire series to catch up, he explains.

By this time next year, the goal is to have more data and benchmarks for the team to share. Scriptsee might even be able to analyze books, or help commissioning bodies filter pitches to make sure they meet specific criteria. The sky’s the limit.

Right now, Harman just wants producers to try it out. “If you can start with a good story, you set yourself up for success,” he says. “Development execs and writers can look at their projects through a different lens, and seeing all this data can empower decision-makers.”

This story originally appeared in Kidscreen‘s May/June 2024 magazine issue.