Start with a picture, or a story

Give StoryBarn a photograph and it writes you a show — a logline, who is in it, the first scene — and hands the picture back moving. Or give it a story you wrote and it keeps your people, your dialogue and your ending. No account, no card, nothing spent. A Studio is the workflow that fits the work; they share one production system and differ in what Development asks for.

Where a story is written

The source everything below is adapted from. Today it arrives from elsewhere.

Book Studio planned

**Where a story is written, and the Studio every other one is fed from.** A novel, and the series it belongs to. Continuity is established fact and timeline rather than picture — names, ages, dates, who is related to whom, what was established and when — and drift across a trilogy is nobody's tooling today. The audiobook is where this tool transfers exactly: one narrator who must be the same for thirty hours and again in the sequel is the borrowed-identity problem entire. Needs an outline in place of a bible, and a typesetter rather than an assembler, which is what makes it a separate product sharing this engine rather than a fifth column. Show and Film adapt a source and have nowhere to make one.

Made from a story

Long-form. They want people, a world and an ending before a camera is pointed.

Show Studio

Episodic television or a web series. Seasons, episodes, a returning cast.

Nothing here yet.

Film Studio

One story, one running time. A treatment becomes a screenplay.

Nothing here yet.

A photograph or a story starts a show. This one begins from its own material for now.

Made to something given

A client's brief, or a finished track. The source arrives rather than being written.

Commercial Studio

A spot for a client, cut to a brief and delivered in many sizes.

Nothing here yet.

A photograph or a story starts a show. This one begins from its own material for now.

Music video Studio

One finished track, and pictures cut to it.

Nothing here yet.

A photograph or a story starts a show. This one begins from its own material for now.

Also planned

Declared and not built, each with a note saying what finishing it would take.

Poetry Studio planned

A poem, and the collection it belongs to. **The line is the unit of time**, which nothing here models: a scene is timed by dialogue running at its own pace, and a poem is timed by where it breaks — enjambment, caesura, the pause a stanza ends on — so the timing IS the text rather than a consequence of speaking it. Nearest to Music video, because a recorded reading is a locked track with the pictures cut to it, and unlike it in having no beat to cut on. The continuity object is a VOICE and a system of images rather than a face: the same speaker across a collection, and a metaphor that has to mean the same thing on page forty as on page four — which is the borrowed-identity problem exactly, and the part of this tool that transfers without changes. What is missing is a collection in place of a bible, a poem in place of an episode, and a delivery that is as often a page or a reading as it is a video.

Influencer Studio planned

Recurring personalities, social clips and creator campaigns. It is campaign-shaped rather than episode-shaped — one identity across many campaigns, each with its own sponsor, disclosures and release history — so it needs its own phases rather than a fifth column in these.

Podcast Studio planned

An audio series — episodes, a host, recurring segments. Most of the machine is already here and none of it is video: the soundtrack builds dialogue, ambience, spots and a music bed ducked against the speech. What is missing is a format in place of a bible, a running order in place of a shot list, and a delivery that is an RSS feed. The cheapest of these to finish.

Course Studio planned

Modules and lessons rather than seasons and episodes. The continuity is pedagogical and it is the same failure in different clothes: a term used two lessons before it is defined is a jacket that changes colour. Needs a syllabus in Development, an exercise and assessment item that has no equivalent here, and a delivery to a course platform rather than a video host.

Explainer Studio planned

One idea, explained, for a company that has a brand to obey. Nearest to Commercial — a brief, rounds of sign-off, one cut in several lengths — and it differs in what constrains it: the rules come from somebody else's brand guidelines and somebody else's legal review, so they are imported and obeyed rather than written here. `never` is the field they land in.

Documentary Studio planned

Assembled from footage and records that already exist rather than generated, which inverts the tool: provenance replaces generation as the thing every asset must carry, and a cut has to be able to say where each shot came from and what rights allow it to be there. `Project.record()` exists and nothing calls it; that is the first piece of this, and it is worth having anyway.

Comic Studio planned

Pages, panels and lettering — a graphic novel, a webtoon, a strip. The hardest problem it has is the one already solved here, a character who must be the same in every panel being a locked reference. The assembler is not: page layout, gutters, balloon placement and reading order are a compositor's job, not ffmpeg's. Likely a separate product on this engine rather than a Studio.

Album Studio planned

A record rather than a track. Demo and master are scratch and hero under other names, the identity to hold is a band's own sound, and the assembly no API offers is sequencing, mastering, and the metadata a distributor refuses a release without — ISRCs, splits, credits. Check what a music model's terms actually allow before this one is started, not after.

Game Studio planned

Narrative games, and the visual novel first because it is the smallest thing that is really one: a script, a cast of references, branching, and a build. The part nothing here models is state — every other kind assembles one fixed timeline, and a player carries a different one through each run.

Campaign Studio planned

A tabletop campaign — a world, its people, and the sessions played in it. The only kind here whose episodes are written after they happen and by somebody else, which is the interesting half: continuity has to absorb what players did rather than hold a script to what was planned. The deliverable is prep and handouts for the next session, so it wants a shorter loop than four phases.

Brand Studio planned

A company's own ongoing output, rather than one spot for it — which is what separates this from Explainer. The continuity object is the brand guidelines themselves, and the `never` list stops being a visual negative and becomes a legal one: claims that may not be made, a spokesperson's likeness, a competitor who may not appear. Largest market of these and the most crowded.

Cookbook Studio planned

Recipes, and the book they add up to. The continuity is unglamorous and strict — yields, units, oven language and a house voice that must hold over two hundred entries — and the photography has a cast's problem exactly: one kitchen, one light, two hundred times. Testing a recipe is the step with no analogue here, and it cannot be generated.

Theatre Studio planned

A stage production. Development and Pre-production are close to what exists — a script, a design, a cast — and then Production is a rehearsal room rather than a render, which is the part this tool has no idea how to help with. The deliverable is a prompt book rather than a file, so Post means something else here too. Worth designing before assuming the four phases fit.

Fashion Studio planned

A collection, and the look book that sells it. The clearest case of continuity with no script at all: a silhouette, a fabric and a palette repeated across forty pieces, ending in a show or a shoot. The nearest thing here is the Look book, which is one page of a bible rather than the whole of the work — this kind would find out what that page is missing.

Bring a production in

A production is a folder of data files and images, zipped. It is unpacked, checked whole, and refused with a reason if anything is wrong — before anything is generated. Its Studio comes from kind in its bible.

About photographs of people. If your picture shows recognisable people, the tool will write characters from them and can use it as the reference every later image is generated against. Only bring in photographs you have the right to use, and where the people in them have agreed to appear — you are responsible for that, and StoryBarn cannot check it. Public figures, other people's photographs and pictures taken where consent was not given are yours to avoid.

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