The Director Review Board

The Director Review Board is where your film gets its look. Every actor, set and prop the breakdown found arrives here as a picture Ozu has already drawn. You look each one over, redo the ones that are wrong until they match what is in your head, and approve them. Whatever you approve becomes the reference for every storyboard frame and video clip downstream, so this is the moment to be picky. When you are happy, Approve All sends Ozu off to write and draw your storyboard.

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From breakdown to storyboard

Read it left to right. On the left is the breakdown, which found your actors, sets and props and drew a first picture of each. In the middle is this room: the board of cards, and the loop you run on any card that is not right yet: open it, direct or redo it, pick the version you like, approve it, come back. Approving a set grows one extra arrow, the 360° walk-around it builds. On the right is the door out: Approve All & Continue, Fast or Batch, Ozu writing a picture prompt for every shot, and the Storyboard where the frames appear. The dotted arrow underneath is the way back: re-approve a design after frames exist and Update Storyboards counts the frames that went stale.

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1 · The board

Three rows, one per kind of design: Actors across the top, Sets in the middle, Props at the bottom, each row scrolling sideways. Every design is a card with its picture and its name. A card on its own is a hero, the one picture that stands for that actor, set or prop. When a character has variants (a different outfit, a different age), the variant cards sit just right of the hero with a small tail pointing back at it, so you can see they belong together. Tap a card to open the design. Hold a card to retire it from the film: the card stays, grey and marked DEPRECATED, and nothing downstream uses it until you restore it the same way. Nothing is deleted. The + at the end of a row adds a design of your own (part 7). The round Ozu button bottom right opens a chat about the whole board (part 8).

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2 · Inside a design: the viewer

Tap a card and it opens full screen. The left half is the viewer. For actors and props it shows the multi-angle sheet by default: the hero plus the same design from other angles, which is what keeps a character looking like themselves shot after shot. The top-left toggle swaps between the sheet and just the hero. Pinch to zoom and look closer; double-tap to fit again. Under the viewer is a filmstrip of every version so far, oldest on the left; tap one to bring it into the viewer. The Multi Angle button top right draws a fresh sheet from the hero you are looking at; the price is on it. And the pen lets you draw straight onto the picture, a circle round a sleeve, an arrow at the hairline: Done saves the marks as a reference Ozu reads as direction on the next redo, Cancel throws them away.

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3 · The Recipe Book

The right half starts with a header: what kind of design this is, its name, your credit balance and the Approve button (part 5). Under it is the Recipe Book, a card that packs everything Ozu uses to draw this design; tap its title to open it.

• The prompt is the written direction the image model reads. Ozu wrote it; edit it yourself, or let Ozu edit it in the chat.
• References are the pictures the model looks at while it draws. The + offers four ways in: sketch one on a blank canvas, annotate the hero, upload a photo, or pull one from your Reference Board. Tap a tile to turn it on or off for the next redo; hold it to edit a sketch, delete it, or remove a board picture (the board keeps its copy).
• Tags show what kind of design this is and which scenes it appears in, in plain words: Scene 2, not S2.
• The last row spends: pick the image model, how many candidates to draw at once, and tap Redo. The price on the button follows the model and the count. The small ⓘ beside the model explains the marks next to each model and where your pictures go.

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4 · Directing with Ozu

Below the Recipe Book is your chat with Ozu about this one design. Tell him what to change in plain words: older, greyer, lose the scarf. He sees the picture and any references you have switched on. Ask a question and he answers; give him direction and he rewrites the prompt and redraws the design, as many candidates as the count says. If you would rather read the new prompt before he draws, say so and he changes only the prompt. Each attempt lands as a new version on the filmstrip. When more than one candidate comes back, the viewer becomes a grid. Tap the one you like and an Approve pill appears on it. Approving makes it the new hero and rebuilds its multi-angle sheet, so you can look the sheet over before you leave. For an actor, a short row of voices may sit under the book: tap one to hear it and cast it. If your dialogue was already recorded or uploaded in the Recording Booth, the voice was cast there and this row stays out of the way.

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5 · Approving a design

The header button changes with what you are looking at. While the version in the viewer is not yet approved it reads Approve ›: tap it and that version becomes the design the film uses, and the node closes. If the hero has variants, Ozu asks first: Yes, update variants redraws each variant to match the new hero (they keep their own outfit or pose), No, just this one leaves them alone. Once the version you are viewing is approved, the same button is a plain ✕ and only closes. You do not have to open every design: Approve All (part 8) approves whatever you left alone. Approving a set does one more thing: it starts the 360° build.

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6 · Sets in 360°

A set is a place, so once a set is approved Ozu builds a 360° walk-around of it from the hero picture. While it builds you see the flat picture with a progress note. If the build fails, Retry 360° runs it again; a set with a hero but no walk-around yet shows a Generate 360° Set chip; if a finished one will not load, Retry fetches it again. When it is ready the viewer becomes the sphere: drag to look around, flick to keep turning, pinch to zoom, and a compass strip along the bottom tells you which way you are facing. The 360° / flat toggle top left brings the flat picture back; the fullscreen button top right opens the sphere edge to edge, and its ✕ returns you still facing the same way. The walk-around belongs to one version of the set; pick another version on the filmstrip and you see that one flat. Only your view moves; nothing here changes the design.

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7 · Adding a design of your own

The breakdown finds what the script names; sometimes you want something it did not. The + at the end of a row opens a small panel: name it, describe the look in plain words (Ozu writes the prompt and matches your project’s style), add a reference photo if you have one, and tap Create; the price sits under the button. The new design lands in its row like any other.

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8 · Approve All & Continue

When the board looks like your film, tap the forward arrow top right. A small card asks for a speed. Fast draws every storyboard frame now, ready in minutes. Batch draws them as one cheaper overnight job and emails you when they are ready; you pay only for the frames that come back. Batch is offered the first time you generate frames, and only when the project’s storyboard model can queue them. Both prices are on the cards; Cancel backs out with nothing spent. Your pick approves every design not already approved, then Ozu writes a picture prompt for every storyboard frame and the app moves you to the Storyboard to watch. If the prep stalls, a banner up here offers Retry. Two more things live in the corners. The round Ozu button opens a chat about the whole board: he sees your current designs and will compare them, critique a look, or talk through what a change would ripple into, but he never approves anything for you. And once frames exist, re-approving a design makes some of them stale; a pill beside Ozu counts them and opens Update Storyboards so you can redraw just those.

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What happens next

The Storyboard. Ozu now has a picture prompt for every shot, and your approved designs ride along as references, so a frame in Scene 4 shows the same face, the same room and the same prop you approved here. Read on: Storyboard.