The Reference Board

The Reference Board is your film’s whiteboard, open from the top bar in every room. Bring in anything that looks like your film: photos, screenshots, web pages, sketches, notes. Arrange them, draw on them, and gather them into groups tied to your characters, sets and props. Ask Ozu what he sees, and have him make new images and video from what you pinned. What you build here shapes the pictures the film makes downstream, and any shot you make here can go into the Editing Room’s bin.

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Where the board’s pictures go

On the left are the ways a picture arrives. In the middle is the board, where pictures get arranged, drawn on, grouped and generated from. On the right are the three doors to the film: a group tied to a character, set or prop informs Ozu when he designs it; any board image can be picked as a reference from a design card in the Director Review Board; and a video made here can be added to the Editing Room’s bin. Nothing leaves by itself. Each door is a tap you make.

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1 · Getting around

The board is a dark dot grid that goes on forever. Drag empty space to move, flick to coast, pinch to zoom, tap empty space to deselect. When the board outgrows the screen a minimap appears top right; drag on it to jump. Beside it, the zoom pill: frame everything fits the whole board on screen, the slider zooms from 25% to 300%, the readout taps back to 100%. Down the left is the tool column. The layout button fans out four tidy-ups that act on every image at once: scale to width, scale to height, auto-arrange into a grid, and undo the last one. Below it is the tool palette. Move is the everyday tool: a finger pans and drags, and an Apple Pencil draws white ink straight onto the board, over images too. Marker lets a finger draw as well, Eraser rubs ink out, and Lasso draws a loop that selects everything inside it. A two-finger tap undoes the last stroke. The X top left saves and returns you to the room you came from.

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2 · Bringing things in

The ➕ button at the top of the tool column fans out every way in. Paste takes what is on your clipboard. Photos and Files open the pickers you know. Imports is the inbox for pictures other apps have shared to Ozu, so a Procreate export is waiting here; tap a cell and Add it. Sketch opens a full-screen sketch pad with the Pencil tools; Done puts the drawing on the board, and you can reopen it later. Link takes a web address; Ozu grabs the page’s main image and pins it with a link back. Each of these asks where the picture should live first: name a new group and create it, or pick a character, set or prop from your breakdown and the group is made and tied to it in one go. Two shortcuts skip the menu: drop a picture or link from another app and it lands under your finger, or hold on empty space to open the same choices right there. Two more things ride the ➕ menu. Note drops a sticky note: tap once to select, again to type, drag the grip to move it, the puck to resize it, hold to delete. New group makes an empty frame to fill later. And any picture you attach to a character, set or prop on its design card shows up here on its own, in a group tied to it.

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3 · Working an image

Tap an image to select it; tap more to select several. Selected images are what Generate and Ozu look at. Drag to move one; where it lands decides which group it belongs to. With one image selected, pinch resizes it and a two-finger twist rotates it, snapping to quarter turns. A small bar appears under it: Crop opens a frame you can drag and resize, and Crop again makes a new image beside the original, which stays as it was. Fullscreen shows it big (X to come back), Save puts it in your Photos library, and Delete takes it off the board with no confirmation. Hold an image for its menu: Ask Ozu about this, Move to group, Delete. Any image Ozu made carries a prompt sticky, the prompt behind it on a note you can drag and resize that stays tied to its picture.

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4 · Groups

A group is a named frame, and it is how the board talks to the rest of Ozu. Whatever sits inside the frame belongs to the group; drop an image in and it is a member, drag it out and it is not. Drag the header to move the whole group and everything in it; drag any edge or corner to resize it. The header is the group’s control panel. Tap the name to open its settings: rename it, tie it to a character, set or prop from your breakdown, untie it, or delete the frame (the images stay). Name a group the same as something in your breakdown and a “Bind to …?” chip offers the tie in one tap. A tied group takes that thing’s name, turns the accent colour and wears its icon. Left of the header, Organize packs the group’s images into a neat collage. Right of it, ➕ opens the same import choices but lands the picture inside this group, and ✦ Generate asks Ozu for a new image built from just this group’s pictures. Hold the name for Ask Ozu about this and Delete. Tying groups to your characters, sets and props is the point: when Ozu designs one later, what you gathered here informs him.

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5 · Ask Ozu

The round button bottom right opens a chat with Ozu about your board. He can see the groups and, when you select images, the pictures themselves: whatever is selected rides along as thumbnails on your message, and you can drop one or all of them before you send. Ask what a group has in common, for a description of a character’s look from her references, or what is missing. Tap a thumbnail in the conversation and the board glides to that picture. When Ozu suggests an image or a video, a Generate this chip takes his prompt to the same confirmation the Generate button uses, so you see the price first. The same button closes the chat. Bottom left, the Waiting Game is there for while a render finishes.

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6 · Generate

Select one or more images and a Generate button appears at the bottom of the screen. Ozu reads the board and writes a prompt from your selection, then a confirmation opens. At the top is the prompt (hold to copy); Tweak the prompt turns it into a text box. Under it, how many references are going along, and the image model: xAI gives one picture, Midjourney gives options. For a video, a video model picker and a length slider take their place, and the reference limit and price follow the model. Then the estimated cost; nothing is charged until you tap Generate. Don’t ask again this session skips this confirmation until you close the app; retries still ask, because a retry spends again. The result lands on the board. An image appears beside the references it came from, or inside the group when you used the group’s ✦, with its prompt sticky attached. A video puts its card down first, spinner and timer in the middle, and you can move and group it while it renders; when it lands, the card plays. If a render fails, Retry on the card runs the same request again, price on the button. Everything made here is a reference; it does not change your cast, sets or storyboard on its own.

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7 · Sending a picture on

Three doors lead out. First, the tied groups above. Second, from a design card in the Director Review Board, Add reference → Board opens this board as a picker: tap the images you want (up to that model’s limit; the counter at the top keeps score), then Use them or close without choosing. They become references on that card’s next design. Third, a finished video card wears an Add to film badge. It asks first, because it changes the film: Add to film makes it a shot called Reference 1, Reference 2 and so on in your project’s bin, under Reference, not in the cut, so nothing moves until you drag it onto a track; Not now keeps it on the board only. If the board will not load, a retry chip appears at the top; tap it to try again.

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What happens next

The board is not a step in the pipeline; it sits beside every room, and you can come back to it any time from the top bar. Its pictures reach the film through the Director Review Board, where tied groups and picked references shape the designs, and those designs shape every Storyboard frame after them. A video you add to the film waits in the bin of the Editing Room until you cut it in.