production_design_direction v1.0.0

name: "production_design_direction" description: "Direct production design for shoots and generated scenes as one look: write the look sentence and look book, break the script into sets, props, and wardrobe, build a four layer palette and a per scene color script, source each piece by build, dress, rent, borrow, or thrift, and hold continuity across setups with photo based tracking. Triggers on 'production design this', 'design the look', 'set and props plan', 'color story for this film', 'look book', 'why do my scenes look like different films', 'design this generated scene', or 'small budget set design'."

Production Design Direction

Purpose

Make every visible thing in a piece work as one designed look: sets, locations, props, wardrobe, materials, and color, on physical shoots and in generated scenes. The production designer owns this whole picture, from the overall palette down to a single doorknob choice, and most of the work lands in preproduction, before the shoot or the generation run starts.

Use this skill for the design layer. For shot by shot direction of generated video, use ai-video-shot-direction. For grade decisions on finished footage, use color-grading. For a full narrative short film plan, use ai-short-film-production. This skill covers the look those skills shoot inside.

Workflow

1. Read the script for design, then write the look sentence

• Read the script once for story, once only for design. On the design read, mark every location, time of day, weather state, object an actor touches, and change of state: broken, spilled, burned, lost, found.
• Separate props from set dressing with the touch test. An object an actor interacts with is a prop and needs sourcing, duplicates, and tracking. An object that only sits in the frame is dressing, until the scene where an actor uses it, when it becomes a prop from that scene on.
• Write the look sentence using references/look-development.md: place and period, one emotional quality, and the visual cause the design controls. Every later choice gets judged against this sentence.

2. Build the look book and freeze it

• Assemble the look book per references/look-development.md: world rules, palette, materials, motifs, one page per main location, one page per main character, hero props, and an explicit bans page.
• Label every reference image with what it is evidence for, a texture, a cut, a level of wear. Unlabelled references pull the design in whole directions nobody chose.
• Walk the book once with the director and the cinematographer and settle palette, light, and how full or plain frames should feel. After that walk, freeze the palette and world rules. Later changes go in a dated change note naming the scenes they touch.

3. Break the script into a design list

• Turn the design read into one row per scene: scene, story day, location, sets or dressing needed, hero props, wardrobe by character, effects on design (damage, dirt, consumables), and continuity risks.
• Label wardrobe as Character, Day N, Outfit N, the pattern wardrobe tracking uses, for example Mara, Day 1, Outfit 1. Never track wardrobe by description alone, because two people describe the same blue dress differently on a tired morning.
• Mark every reappearance of a recurring item, even when its use changes. The breakdown is the shopping list, the rental list, and the continuity plan in one document, so a missing row becomes a missing piece on the day.

4. Build the palette and the color script

• Build the palette in four layers per references/color-script-and-palette.md: dominant, support, accent, banned. Give each color a name plus a value, paint name, swatch, or hex for generated work.
• Write the color script, one row per scene: leading colors, where the accent sits, the light note, and what changes from the previous scene. Change one main thing at a time, give each location a home palette, and mark the one or two turn scenes where the color story itself shifts.
• Test the palette once in real conditions: one wide frame per main location with the real pieces, a person in the lead wardrobe, and the planned light, judged at audience size. Fix failures by removing a color before adding one.

5. Source every piece, with a backup

• Assign each breakdown item a source using references/sourcing-playbook.md, in this order of preference: owned, borrowed with a written loan note, thrift or salvage, rented, bought new and aged, built. Record source, cost, owner, and return date on the row when you decide.
• Hero props get a named backup plan: a duplicate, a printable state version, or a stand-in that reads the same at the planned shot size. Anything breakable, edible, or spillable that appears in more than one scene gets duplicates and a count before the scene starts.
• Protect the bans while sourcing. Hold every candidate piece against the palette page and swatches. A cheap piece in a banned color or the wrong period costs more in fixes than it saves in price.
• On small budgets, spend first on the accent story, the hero props, and one dominant surface per location, paint or fabric, and let locations that already carry the period and materials do the rest of the work.

6. Translate the design for generated scenes

• Freeze one canon reference image per set, per character outfit, and per hero prop. That image is the source of truth every later generation points back to.
• Write the locked wording block: palette values, materials, wardrobe description, and set description, word for word identical in every prompt for that world. Paraphrasing design wording is how generated worlds drift.
• Keep one model and version for a project where the tool allows it, hold the seed fixed while you change one variable at a time, and reject any generation that breaks the bans page, no matter how good it looks alone.
• Design generated and physical parts from the same look book when a piece mixes both. A generated extension of a built set uses the built set plate as its canon reference and the same materials list.

7. Hold continuity across setups

• Run continuity per references/continuity-tracking.md: a sheet with set state at start and end, wardrobe, props in hand, and photo references, for every scene.
• Photograph sets from each camera position before the first take and after the last, actors front, back, and sides at scene start and end, and hero props alone with a scene and story day label card in frame.
• Name one person to reset the set to the photographed start state before each take. When shooting out of story order, dress from the sheet and the photos, never from memory.
• Log every deliberate design change the day it happens: what changed, which scenes it touches, which earlier scenes now mismatch, and the plan for the mismatch.

8. Validate the pack before the shoot or generation run

• Write the design as JSON in the shape bin/design_check.py documents and run it: python3 bin/design_check.py design.json. Add --continuity-sheet continuity.csv once continuity rows exist.
• Fix every error before proceeding. The checker flags missing palette layers, scenes with no source plan, wardrobe that changes inside one story day with no note, and hero props with no source.
• Read references/worked-designs-three-budgets.md when money is tight or when a design feels spread thin. It designs one short three ways and shows what to protect and what to give up at each level.

Output Contract

A completed run delivers:

1. The look sentence and a look book with world rules, four layer palette, materials, motifs, per location and per character pages, hero props, and a bans page.
2. A scene by scene design breakdown: sets and dressing, hero props, wardrobe labelled Character, Day N, Outfit N, and continuity risks per scene.
3. A color script, one row per scene, with leading colors, accent placement, light note, and the marked turn scenes.
4. A sourcing list with source, cost, owner, and return date per item, plus a backup plan for every hero prop.
5. design.json passing bin/design_check.py with no errors, and, once shooting or generation starts, a continuity sheet with photo references for every row.
6. For generated work, the canon reference set and the locked wording block, versioned.

Operating Rules

1. Design decides before sourcing spends. No piece gets bought, rented, or generated before the look book can judge it.
2. The bans page outranks bargains, gifts, and beautiful accidents. A piece that breaks the world stays out, whoever found it.
3. One accent story. Reserve the accent color for what the story wants tracked, and let its movement carry meaning. Accent everywhere is accent nowhere.
4. Continuity is photographed, not remembered. If a state matters across a cut, it is on the sheet with a photo reference.
5. Color associations are working conventions, not facts. Test palette ideas in a camera test or test generation and keep what the test supports.
6. Never alter a borrowed piece. If the look needs paint, wear, or damage, source that piece another way.
7. Budget figures are planning examples to scale, never promises. State the total, the split, and what the design gives up at that level, in plain terms.
8. For generated scenes, never assert a tool feature, seed behavior, or reference control from memory. Check the current tool docs at generation time and note the model and version in the pack.