One board per indie film,
from development to distribution.

Usually too many: a screenwriting app such as Final Draft, WriterDuet or Celtx, a spreadsheet for the budget, another for the shot list, Pinterest for references, a shared drive, Notion for everything else, and a group chat for the schedule. Each is fine alone, but the one person who needs the whole picture never has it. Storyflow replaces the planning part with one board, while the screenplay stays in the writing app and the footage on drives.

Number the top folders by stage so they sort in workflow order: 01 Development, 02 Pre-production, 03 Production, 04 Post, 05 Festivals and Distribution, 06 Paperwork. Start every file name with the date in year, month, day order, then the project, what the file is and a version number, so nothing is called final. Keep camera originals under the shoot day and card, on two drives stored apart. The Storyflow board links to those folders instead of duplicating them.

Before and during the shoot: talent releases, location agreements, crew deal memos, insurance certificates and any permits. For the soundtrack: a licence for every piece of music and a cue sheet. For distribution: chain of title showing the production owns the script and underlying rights, and usually errors and omissions insurance. Collect signatures by the shoot day, because a release chased months later stalls a sale. Keep signed copies as PDFs in a paperwork folder on the Storyflow board.

Skip the ceremony: formal daily production reports nobody reads, documents that restate the schedule, and meetings that could be a look at the board. Never skip the safeguards, which cost minutes on the day and cannot be recovered: a tech scout at the hour you shoot, room tone at every setup, a second verified copy of the footage before any card is reused, signed releases on set, and one named person for continuity.

Not always. If one or two people hold the plan, seeing everything at once matters more than a database of modules, and Storyflow builds the breakdown, strip board, shot list and call sheets from the script on one canvas. Dedicated suites earn their place when departments work in their own modules, when call sheets must go out by text with confirmations, or when an accountant tracks actual costs: StudioBinder, Celtx and Yamdu cover those.

With a link, not a process. Share the board view-only and they open it in a browser with no account, which suits a gaffer or sound recordist hired for two days. Put the lookbook next to the shot list so short-term crew see what the film is trying to be. Send the Call Sheet PDF for their days, and if they need to edit, invite them, since anyone a paid member invites joins free.

It is the normal case on indies, and most systems fail because the files survive but the reasoning does not. Write the why on the board as you go: why a scene was cut, why a location was dropped, which actor's dates the schedule was built around. When the money arrives, that board is readable in an afternoon, and you can ask Storyflow's AI what the plan was and which dated items have passed.

Not yet. Storyflow is paid-only during early access, with plans from $7.99 a month billed annually ($9.99 monthly). A free plan launches before the end of 2026, and anyone a paid member invites to a board joins free, so a director on a paid plan can bring the producer, DP and first AD onto the production board. Short-term crew who only read open a view-only link with no account.

It can hold the budget, not the books. A Storyflow table with category and currency columns totals the budget live, and the AI can build one from the breakdown or a quote on the board. It does not track actuals, run payroll or produce cost reports, so if your accountant uses a spreadsheet, keep the budget there. Most indie costs scale with shoot days, so the strip board beside the budget table shows whether a day can be cut.

Keep a continuity table per character on the same board as the strip board: scene number, wardrobe, props, hair and makeup, and injuries or state, with reference photos from the take beside it. When the schedule puts scene 40 before scene 12, the table shows how the character looked in the scenes either side in story order. On a small crew continuity defaults to nobody, so name one person for it on the call sheet and the board.

As the last stage of the same board. A festival table holds each festival's deadline, fee, premiere requirements, accepted formats and status. Beside it sit the deliverables festivals and distributors ask for: screening file, subtitles, stills, press kit, poster and trailer, plus the paperwork folder with chain of title, music licences and releases. On the production board, the release a sales agent asks for is one folder away, and every deadline sits in a date cell beside its festival.