See who carries the story
before you book a single interview.

Group them by story beat, not by biography. A chronological walk through someone's life produces a long transcript and a thin film. Instead, look at the beats that subject is carrying for the film and write questions aimed at each one: the question that gets the event described, the question that gets the emotion of it, and the follow-up that gets the detail an editor can cut on. On a canvas, that grouping is physical: questions sit under the subject card, clustered by the beat they serve, with a connector running up to the beat itself. When a beat gets recast to a different subject, its questions move with a drag instead of a rewrite across documents.

Three tests, roughly in order. Proximity: were they actually there, or are they retelling something secondhand? Firsthand accounts nearly always cut better. Standing: does the audience have a reason to believe this person on this point? An expert has standing on analysis, a participant on experience, and mixing those up weakens both. Delivery: do they tell the story well on camera? This is where frames from prior footage earn their place on the board, because a subject who is essential on paper and flat on camera is a real casting problem. When two subjects pass all three tests for the same beat, decide who leads and what distinct angle the second person adds, or cut one shoot day.

It can draft question angles, but that is not the job it is built for. Storyflow's AI is structural: it lays out the board from your logline and subject list, suggests where coverage looks thin, and drafts starting points you then sharpen with your own research. Because it sees the whole canvas, its suggestions fit the film you are actually making rather than a generic checklist. But the questions that get real answers come from knowing the subject's story better than they expect you to, and from listening in the room rather than reading a list. The AI gets you to a solid plan faster; it does not replace the pre-interview call or the follow-up question you could not have scripted.

Not during early access. Storyflow is paid-only right now, with plans starting at $9.99 a month, and a Free plan launches before the end of 2026. Anyone a paid member invites to a board joins free today, so your producer, editor, or co-director can work on the plan without paying. If you need a free option this minute, Google Docs is genuinely serviceable for shared question lists, and Notion's free tier can hold subject pages and transcripts if you are willing to build the structure yourself. What neither will give you is the film-level coverage map, which is the part a canvas is for.

As many as the structure requires and no more, which is exactly what a coverage map tells you. Lay out the beats, connect the subjects who can carry them, and count. If every beat has a strong firsthand voice and the overlaps are deliberate, you are done, whether that is three people or thirty. Warning signs run in both directions: a beat with no connector means the film has a hole, while a subject with no connector is a shoot you are booking out of politeness. Budget usually argues for fewer, better-cast interviews over more coverage, because every extra subject costs a shoot day, a transcript, and edit time spent discovering they were redundant.

Yes, and it is one of the most clarifying uses of the board. Card out the structure the edit is actually producing, beat by beat, then connect the interviews you already have to the beats they genuinely cover, based on what is in the transcripts rather than what you hoped for on the day. The gaps that appear are your pickup list: the missing beat, the claim with no firsthand voice, the emotional turn nobody lands. Planning pickups this way keeps a second round of shooting small and precise, because each new interview exists to fill a named hole rather than to generate more material for an edit that already has too much.

Yes. Drag articles, PDFs, and links onto the canvas and pin them beside the subject they concern, and grab frames from YouTube or Vimeo where the person has spoken before. Prior footage matters more than most first-time filmmakers expect: it shows you how a subject performs on camera, which stories they already tell in polished form, and where they get guarded, all of which changes what you ask and in what order. Release status, availability, and location notes can sit on the same card. The practical effect is that everything you know about a person is in one place on the board, instead of split across a research folder, a spreadsheet, and your inbox.

Yes. Send a view-only link and they open the whole board in a browser with no account: the beat spine, the subjects, the coverage connectors, and the questions. For an editor, seeing which beats each interview was booked to cover is genuinely useful groundwork, because they come into the footage knowing what every conversation was for. For a producer, the map plus the logistics notes on each card is most of a production meeting. If you want someone contributing rather than reviewing, invite them to the canvas, and you can export the board as an image or PDF for funders or a commissioning editor.

Five things, most of which question lists leave out. The story structure, because questions only make sense relative to the film they serve. A profile per subject covering who they are, what they witnessed, and what they have standing to say. The coverage map connecting subjects to beats, which is where redundancy and gaps show up. The research layer: documents, prior footage, and the facts you need to hold in the room. And the practical layer: release status, availability, locations, and contact details. Storyflow keeps all of it on one canvas, which matters because these layers change together: recast one beat and the questions, the schedule, and the research all move with it.