video/skills/pipelines/clip-factory/scene-director.md

Scene Director - Clip Factory Pipeline

When To Use

You are planning how each selected clip will be framed and packaged for its destination platform. This is where clip viability gets proven or disproven.

Prerequisites

Layer	Resource	Purpose
Schema	schemas/artifacts/scene_plan.schema.json	Artifact validation
Prior artifacts	state.artifacts["script"]["script"], state.artifacts["idea"]["brief"]	Selected clips and platform goals
Tools	frame_sampler, scene_detect	Visual checks and boundary inspection
Playbook	Active style playbook	Layout language and safe zones

Process

1. Choose The Right Frame For Each Clip

Do not default every clip to 9:16.

Use:

• 9:16 when a face-first crop works,
• 1:1 when speaker plus context both matter,
• 16:9 when slides, demos, or multi-speaker width are essential.

OpenMontage does not yet have first-class auto-reframe. If a vertical crop is weak, plan a safer aspect ratio instead of pretending the crop will work.

2. Plan First-Second Composition

For each clip, define:

• what the viewer sees on frame 1,
• where hook text can safely appear,
• where subtitles can live,
• whether the speaker needs a punch-in or whether the original framing is already good.

3. Standardize The Batch

Use the scene plan to lock series consistency:

• same top hook zone,
• same subtitle zone,
• same watermark / brand area,
• same lower-third logic.

4. Store Reframe Detail In Metadata

The schema is generic, so store richer layout notes in scene_plan.metadata.

Recommended metadata keys:

• clip_layouts
• safe_zones
• crop_variants
• speaker_positions
• platform_variants

5. Use Scenes To Represent Deliverables

Each scene should map to one clip variant or one clip family deliverable. Keep description human-readable and use required_assets for hook overlays, lower thirds, or branded frames.

6. Quality Gate

• every clip has a platform-aware framing plan,
• hook and subtitle zones do not collide,
• weak vertical crops are downgraded honestly,
• the batch will feel visually consistent when rendered together.

Common Pitfalls

• Center-cropping a wide shot and calling it vertical optimization.
• Ignoring slide or screen-share content while focusing only on faces.
• Letting each clip invent its own layout.
• Forgetting that the first frame determines whether a viewer keeps watching.