The Reality Check
A direction that cannot be shot is a mood, not a plan. The Proof exists to close that gap. When you press Generate Reality Check, the engine reads your brief the way a line producer would — not for beauty, but for consequence — and returns a document that answers one question: what does it actually take to put this in front of a camera?
The read covers the whole physical footprint of the direction. Lighting is described as a setup you could rig, then drawn as a schematic: your subject at the centre, each named light fanned around it with its position and a working note. Lens and camera are stated plainly. Location comes back as a type with its requirements listed underneath, so you know what to scout for before you ever call anyone.
Nothing in the Proof is decorative. Every line is written to survive contact with a producer who has seen a hundred over-ambitious treatments and funded very few of them.
Crew, kit and the money
The Proof names the crew the direction needs, and — more usefully — says why each role earns its day rate on this particular shoot. A gaffer is not listed because shoots have gaffers; the document tells you what this lighting design demands of one. Equipment follows as a tagged list you can hand to a rental house without translation.
The budget arrives in pounds as the sum of its line items: one figure when every line is a single estimate, a range only when the lines themselves carry one, with its assumptions spelled out beneath it. When the brief states a budget, the recommended tier is planned to it, and a note says so plainly if the plan misses it. Read the assumptions before you read the numbers. A budget without assumptions is a guess wearing a suit; this one shows you exactly which decisions move the figure, so you can negotiate the direction rather than the total.
The honest risks
The document closes with risks, and it does not soften them. Each risk is stated as the thing that could go wrong on the day, paired with a mitigation — the adjustment, the backup, the earlier call time that keeps the problem from becoming the shoot.
Treat this section as your rehearsal for the production meeting. Every hard question a producer will ask is already answered here, in writing, before anyone asks it. Walking in with your risks named is the difference between defending a vision and directing one.
Three tiers, one vision
When the Proof offers a tier toggle, you are looking at the same vision scaled to three budgets — not three ideas. Lean is the bootstrapped read, built to come in under five thousand pounds. Considered is the house standard. Flagship is the direction with no compromise left in it.
The discipline here matters. Most productions collapse under budget pressure because the cheap version was a different idea in borrowed clothes. The tiers refuse that: the light, the intent and the frame survive at every level; only the means change. Switch between them and watch what is actually load-bearing in your direction — it is a lesson in itself.
This is also your negotiating instrument. When the client asks what it costs, you do not give a number; you give three, each one still recognisably the work.
Walking in armed
Use the Proof before you commit, not after. Generate it while the direction is still warm, read the risks and the assumptions, and regenerate if the brief shifts — the document is cheap, the shoot day is not.
Then take it into the room. A director who arrives with lighting drawn, crew justified, budget ranged and risks mitigated has already answered the question every production meeting is secretly about: does this person know what they are asking for. The Proof means you do, on paper, before anyone has spent a pound.