Causality Story Sequencer Version 3.0 Preview

Causality Version 3.0 is a huge update with many new features. Download the free version now at www.hollywoodcamerawork.com/c...

[@pdrg]

Looks like a good update, great to see you're still actively developing this

[@MrJasmineValley]

We're loving Causality, and this makes it even more lovable! Fantastic work Per. Thanks!

[@PhucNguyen-zg3yn]

Can't believe in this world have existed an app like this

[@lyravisionmusic]

Definitely buying Causality. The features and story development workflows it makes possible are light years ahead of competing apps.

[@QuaisWaseeq]

I'm a cinematographer, and I've only recently started using Causality for studying the scripts for my next project, an 8 episode series. I'm blown away by how useful it has been so far in helping me understand the story and characters, by allowing me to break down scenes in small beats based on the changing character behaviours/intents, events and the information revelations. I extensively use the synopsis, tags and notes features to add notes based on my own thoughts and my discussions with my director. It's been extremely helpful in planning my shots and coverage of the scenes with better understanding of the context of each scene and story beat, not just in relation to the scenes before and after, but also in relation to events further down the line and the whole story arc. The editing-software-style visual presentation of the script is very powerful. Thank you for creating such a wonderful software!! Looking forward to putting it to use in finishing my own half written stories.

[@QuaisWaseeq]

One feature that would be great to have is the ability to attach images to beats as visual references.

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

That's awesome, thank you very much! In that regard, two things are in the pipeline that you'll care about. First, we're going to have multi-format scripts, where you have multiple expressions of a script side by side, e.g. a screenplay + storyboards, or a screenplay + novel, or screenplay + Spanish screenplay + previz. There will also be a "data layer", like a FileMaker layer, which is what you'll use for production, by creating fields that can then be filled out per beat, props used, lenses needed etc. The second part is that we're simultaneously working in a much bigger 3D version of Shot Designer, where you can actually shoot in 3D and have it look like something. Now imagine Causality and Shot Designer being BFFs, so that you write a scene in Causality and immediately go shoot it. Now you have a screenplay you can watch. The goal is for you to previz an entire movie, not just effect shots, both to help you visualize the story as you're writing it, or bringing all your blocking together as you're preparing. Or for pitching a movie, or just for shooting it in 3D and have that be the end result.

[@QuaisWaseeq]

Wow, those are fantastic features!! Looking forward to the future updates! Thank you Per, your courses and apps have helped me a lot since I started!

[@QuaisWaseeq]

Do you by any chance have an estimated release timeline for these updates? Specially the 3D version of Shot Designer?

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

@@QuaisWaseeq It's too soon to give timelines. Shot Designer is an absolutely massive project. As for Causality, besides emotion tracking and some convenience features, we have a feature freeze while we work on sync/collaboration the rest of the year.

[@kyounokuma]

This looks fantastic! Congratulations on a great update and good work. I'm looking forward to diving into version 3. Thank you so much.

[@scriptfiles5007]

Keep it up Per. This has genuinely been an answer to all my prayers.

[@ContentScientist]

Thanks again for this wonderful release Per - This is exactly what I'm taking about!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@udayballa6205]

You might create a mind mapping story organizing tool which is able to import images (like storyboards) to get a better over view of story and events .

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

There will be a more comprehensive relationship graph that's like a mind-map and a dependency graph in one.

[@fatheadvideollc]

NICE PER!! Looking forward to the upgrade and just in time for my next feature project!

[@0TylerDurden0]

Thank you, Per!

[@philyourhead]

Exciting stuff. Well done!

[@mailtoerikhui]

Thanks for the updates again! I couldn't appreciate more that your team has been polishing the software for free these years, while others go with subscription or frequent paid upgrade. I can see you guys really doing it for good instead of just craving for more money from users. I hope more people like your team in this business. I hope you could develop mobile app which allow users to plot-on-the-go. It doesn't have to be as powerful as the desktop version given they sync.

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

Thanks! Truth be told, we are subscription-based for the paid version. It's impossible for a whole team to do something full time for many years and never make a dime. That said, we don't charge for upgrades; it's bad for many reasons. It incentivizes holding back features to justify charging for upgrades, it drastically slows down the feedback cycle, and it guarantees that most of the user base will always be running the oldest version they can tolerate. It also forces development to maintain many branches of the code-base, which means many build systems and many framework versions, and constant back-porting. Mobile versions will come, we're cross-platform from the ground up, but we're finishing collaboration first.

[@mailtoerikhui]

Oh. I got the pro permanent license years ago. So that sounds fair to me :-) looking forward to the mobile version!

[@daslolo]

Bloody incredible!

[@edelweiss-]

well explained, as always :). iam really happy with Causality till now. Since iam able to think i write historys, poems, books and stuff. but i always wanted to make movies out of my storys or at least scripts and to try it. iam 20 now and more then a year ago i downloaded causality but never used it. now i started to write my first scriptbook and i absolutely love it. (i even wrote the whole school day today in lessons further because i couldnt wait, oops 😂). i ABSOLUTELY LOVE it. its perfect for me, because iam a completely chaos mind. i have thousands of good plot and story ideas and with Causality i just can write them all down firstly and later put them in the correct order, which would be difficult on paper and always was my big problem with my storys before. it really helps and makes many things easier. its perfect for designing, iam really happy with it, thank you guys still :)

[@zaidisyed3325]

fantastic. Addition of synopsis too.. wow.

[@raylavers4216]

Amazing Per thank you. Keep up the great work.

[@alvinburrell]

Very nice updates...downloading this asap.

[@EddyFluchon]

Great news! I'm looking forward to test this new version ;-)

[@EddyFluchon]

Could you please allow the spell checker everywhere in the document? Beats, groups, etc. and more importantly, synopsis. By the way, it could be interesting to have a "synopsis mode" inside the beat display. Thanks =^.^=

[@AluminumBird]

Just getting started today with Causality. I hope someone will work up / update a playlist of tutorials - or even a commercial video course - for version 3. 🤞🏻

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

Indeed, we're way behind on that. It's mainly because emotion tracking is right around the corner, and this would force us to redo the tutorials again, since it would be visibly missing from all the screens. It's just a new core feature, and any new tutorials would only live for a month or two, not fully worth the effort.

[@czeXperiment]

I want to buy your product, but before I do I want to make sure that it is still being worked on and there will be updates in the future. I am particularly interested in the possibility of online collaboration between multiple writers. Thanks for the reply

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

Collaboration is pretty much all we work on, every day.

[@BazColne]

Just started with 3.0. It's all very exciting.

[@Axiassart]

how to download it ? Only found 2.4.14 version or 2.9 in beta edit: Nevermind, found it with google

[@songokann2420]

When is the mobile app version coming out ?

[@360designtutos]

Hello. How i can insert image into the bar script to visualize a scene, like its showed on the trailer of Causality 3.0 and the website ?

[@ricardourroz9322]

Are there by any chance more tutorials?

[@FrancisHerding]

Is there a way to add (collapsible) sticky notes to the Timeline screen?

[@christianklikovits]

Is there a way to incorporate graphic files, like png or PDF into the script?

[@dreamwalker.foundation]

Great stuff. Does synopsis show up in the export?

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

Yes, you can opt to have it printed.

[@WritersTerritory]

Looks great! I wanted to download the free trial to give it test run, but the trial is still version 2.4. Do you know when version 3 will be available? Thanks.

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

HI, you can download it from the Alpha page on the forum. It's going to beta on Monday, there are basically no bugs.

[@WritersTerritory]

@@HollywoodCameraWork Great, will do that! Thanks!

[@Elemmanuel]

Could we, please, have the bit windows be on is actual windows, so we can move them to different screens?

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

Just undock any area you want in the Windows menu.

[@user-tf7lc9qf8c]

I hope you can give a tutorial in Chinese.

[@CooperVisualStudio]

Hi, I'm wondering why there is no "Creating Cause" or "subtext" anymore in 3.2.9 version?

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

Hi, it was a fundamentally flawed idea that we finally had to let go. Basically, having causes and effects be something that goes vertically between lanes imposes the assumption that each lane is a storyline, and that all cause and effect can be expressed this way. And this is not the real use case for most people. You can only divide storylines into lanes when they're really major storylines, like A/B plots in a sitcom. For everything else, all the plotlines happen on top of each other, and the cause/effect idea stunk at capturing that. And it couldn't capture it at all when the cause/effect happened inside a single beat or in groups. By forcing people to have lanes equal storylines, you ended up with 20 lane whiteboards where the sequence is impossible to understand, especially when cross-cutting a lot between storylines. And it created questions that people really struggled to answer about which storyline a beat is part of. What finally killed it was that it was sync-hostile, and there was no way to collaboration with that concept tagged along. Long story short, you should only use lanes for absolutely major storylines, and you should use tags for everything else. Tags are able to mingle, and they don't create hard boundaries in your mind that force you to decide what something is part of. Tags draw nice lines in the whiteboard so you can follow storylines as they weave among each other. Use lanes and blocks for simple and practical things, like A/B plots, or tasks in a story, like getting a car for the bank robbery.

[@CooperVisualStudio]

Thanks, your answer is so timely!

[@girjayjos]

Are there any Video Tutorials for version 3?

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

Hi, this one is mostly it. Many of the 2.x videos are still valid. But we do need a total video overhaul, we're just holding for Emotion Tracking, which would be visibly missing if we re-recorded all the tutorials now. Also make sure to check the docs, which are kept very current.

[@girjayjos]

@@HollywoodCameraWork Ok. Thanks.

[@backtothePI]

genius

[@RahulPradipPatil]

please do more tutorial, How to write script / screenplay using Causality Story Sequencer How to web series / Drama using Causality Story Sequencer

[@RahulPradipPatil]

Still no videos for version 3 ! why so delay its 2 years ?

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

Hi, this video summarizes everything that's new in 3.0. We've been holding off on new videos because emotion tracking is coming soon, which requires redoing all videos, so the effort would be wasted right now. Besides that, we now clearly know what matters most to people, primarily collaboration, which requires some big changes that preclude incremental updates. I has taken forever, and is frustrating for us as well, but it's the right thing to do, and will get Causality where it needs to be.

[@RahulPradipPatil]

@@HollywoodCameraWork emotion tracking + collaboration 🙏👍🏻

[@richclearpc]

Please provide more options for novel structure.

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

Hi, what specifically are you after? Word support is coming, and the ability to use scene headings. Besides that, there's no difference between a screenplay and a novel, other than formatting and automation in screenplay mode. So we'd love to know what you're missing.

[@richclearpc]

@@HollywoodCameraWork Being able to divide the story into acts, chapters and scenes. Assigning scenes as action or reaction scenes.

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

@@richclearpc Dividing into acts and chapters has been a core feature since the beginning. Simply right-click in the script or whiteboard and select Insert Break. In terms of scenes, since scenes don't exist in the final novel, we haven't been including them, but many authors would still like them as a writing aid, so we'll do something. In terms of action and reaction scenes, these are concepts specific to a particular writing philosophy, and is something Causality should be agnostic about. But you could easily use Tags for this, or use the Synopsis field for simply making a note that this is a reaction scene. What is a reaction scene, actually? Isn't it too simple for a scene to either be an action or a reaction scene?

[@stevefinken8414]

@@HollywoodCameraWork when will scene headings be available and Word support?

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

@@stevefinken8414 Hi, I don't have an exact ETA, but these are some of the only things that are allowed to get in front of collaboration, because that's the main on-ramp we're on. The scene headings is easy, and it's requested a lot. The Word import/export will be a small subset of Word features relevant for a novel, basically the text and the outline levels. It's more about choosing whether to use a Word library, or to roll our own, but it's a larger task. It's a priority, because it's an obstacle for everyone who tries to write a novel in Causality, so it's near the top of the list.

[@vansphere9202]

When is this available?

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

Hi, most likely on Monday.

[@vansphere9202]

@@HollywoodCameraWork Fantastic:) Whatever day it drops is a great day. I love this software and bragged about it so much....my wife then bought it two weeks ago and now love it as well. Great job on this software and the upcoming updates.

[@THOTHvii]

Alright I am hooked. This program seems phenomenal. Great price point and support seems equally as great. I only have one question that you may have answered before but I must ask. The name hollywood camera work instantly offers an element of distrust for myself. What are the chances that anyone else besides myself sees my script on your program that I gave no permission for? In other words how do I know that some hollywood exec isn't browsing through all of the traffic looking for his own script to snatch? It may sound like a silly question but how secure is the script written into this program? Does ANYONE else other than myself have access to my words used while using your system?

[@HollywoodCameraWork]

Hi! It's called Hollywood Camera Work because we started out making videos teaching camera work with some acclaim (see the website), and branched into apps. Your file is local and exists only on your computer. Once we release sync/collaboration, which is opt-in per-document, the document moves through our cloud encrypted with zero-knowledge encryption, meaning that we can't access it, and if you lose your key you lose your document on the cloud, since only you have the key. Or you can choose to not collaborate at all or sync any of your devices, in which case the document is physically only on your machine.

[@THOTHvii]

@@HollywoodCameraWork Perfect. thank you.