Between the shoot
and the cut.

Cue is where a production lives after the camera stops and before the edit locks. Notes pinned to the exact frame that anyone can open, camera cards that never leave your machine, the script on the page you actually print, and the schedule that falls out of it.

Open Cue See the work it does

Dark for the edit, Daylight for the exterior, and everything in it prints.

One document, four jobs.

Most crews run a screenwriting app, a scheduling app, a folder of renamed clips and a link in a chat thread, and none of the four know about each other. In Cue they are one production: the scene you wrote is the strip you shoot, the strip becomes the call sheet, and the cut you review still knows which scene it came from.

  1. 01

    Write

    Screenplay, A/V script or run-of-show, on the page you print.

  2. 02

    Plan

    Strips, call sheets, shots and a budget, built from those scenes.

  3. 03

    Offload

    Cards renamed to your pattern, with a record of what was on them.

  4. 04

    Review

    Notes on exact frames. The client needs only a link.

Four tools that already know what the production is.

Not a general-purpose app with a film skin on it. Every screen already knows the scene numbers, the crew, the frame rate and the shoot days.

A note on frame 1 854, not “around the one-oh-four mark”.

Pause and type, or draw straight on the picture in cyan: an arrow at the boom, a circle round the thing nobody else can see. Every note carries its timecode, so answering it is one tap and you are both looking at the same frame. Exactly that frame, not the nearest one a streaming player can reach.

The client opens a link with no account and no password and sees one cut and the notes you marked for them. Not the budget, not the rest of the slate, and that limit is enforced on the server rather than just hidden on screen. Playback is signed, so the cut is never a public file anyone can stumble on.

You write on the page you print.

Not a text box that becomes a PDF later: an A4 sheet at real print margins, Courier Prime at twelve point, six lines to the inch. The page breaks on screen are the page breaks in the PDF, so “it’s on page nine” means the same thing on your screen, the director’s phone and the paper in the 1st AD’s hand. US Letter is one select away.

Write a Fountain screenplay, a two-column A/V script with the agency header and sign-off block, or a back-timed run-of-show for live broadcast. A finished script can come in as .fountain, .txt or a .pdf from any screenwriting app, and is turned back into editable text page by page.

The card is offloaded, renamed and written down, on your machine.

A DIT plugs a card in at wrap. Cue copies it, renames every clip to the production’s own pattern, files it by day and card, and writes a manifest of exactly what was on it: how many files, how big, when they were shot.

The footage never leaves the machine. There is no upload step and no cloud bucket behind it. The only thing that ever travels is a review cut you choose to send.

One honest limit: the card tools need Chrome or Edge, the browsers that let a web page work directly on your drives. Cue says so on screen rather than failing quietly. Everything else runs in any modern browser.

The schedule is the script, rearranged.

Scenes become strips, and strips cluster by venue, because that is what decides a shoot day. Each day becomes a call sheet with the times, the weather, the nearest hospital and every call on it, filled from the real crew list rather than a blank template.

Add a shot list per scene, a storyboard and lookbook that keep their pictures on your machine, and a budget that only marks a line spent once it is paid. It exports as a real .xlsx with SUM formulas and department subtotals: a workbook a producer can keep working in, not a picture of one. Everything prints from the same document the screen shows, so nothing is typed twice.

One button does the first day of producing.

You have a finished script and nothing else. In most set-ups the next two days are a producer copying scene headings into a spreadsheet.

Press Kickstart full production and Cue drafts the rest in one pass: shoot days from the page count, every scene on the stripboard by venue, coverage for each, a day-one call sheet from the real crew with a TBC row for every part still to cast, and a first budget from a rate table you can see in the exported workbook.

It adds. It never replaces. Run it on a production that already has strips and it fills the gaps and leaves your work alone.

A documentary does not need a storyboard. A broadcast does not need a stripboard.

Tell Cue what you are making and it puts away the tools that do not apply. Review and camera cards are always on. Everything else follows the type, and any tool can be switched back on for a single production.

A series or a feature: the whole film suite, from the screenplay through to the budget.

    Most of it never goes anywhere.

    A production tool that quietly uploads the rushes is one nobody on a real job can use. Your work lives in three places, and it is worth knowing which is which.

    On your machine
    • Every frame of camera original, copied and renamed in place and never sent anywhere
    • The manifest, written next to the footage
    • Storyboard and lookbook images
    • Every PDF and the budget workbook, made in your browser when you press export
    In the production
    • The script, strips, call sheets, shot list and budget figures
    • Notes, threads and who resolved what
    • The review cuts you chose to send, played back signed
    • Readable by the production’s own crew and nobody else, checked on every record
    On the client’s phone
    • One cut, through one link, with no account and no password
    • The notes marked client-visible, plus the ones they write
    • Nothing else on the slate, and no way to ask for it
    • Switched off when the job is done

    Said plainly: hiding tools by role inside a production is tidiness, not security. It keeps a DIT out of the budget screen; it will not stop a determined crew member. The client link is the boundary that is actually enforced.

    Free to start. Open source soon.

    Cue is free. The only thing it costs us to run is the video you keep on it, so that is the one thing that will ever have a limit. Productions, scripts, plans, crew seats and client links stay unlimited, and a client on a review link never needs an account.

    Free

    Every production, hosted by us.

    R0no card, no trial clock
    • Every tool: review, cards, script, plan, on set
    • Unlimited productions and crew
    • Zero-login client links
    • Raw media never leaves your machine
    • A fair allowance of review video
    Open Cue

    Supporter

    For the studios that want it to keep going.

    Soonmonthly, in rands
    • Everything in Free
    • More review video, kept for longer
    • Your studio’s branding on the client portal
    • Your name in the credits
    Who builds Cue

    Run your own

    Your servers, your Supabase, your Mux.

    Soonopen source
    • The whole app, free to run yourself
    • No limits but your own accounts’
    • Setup help from the people who built it
    Who builds Cue

    Nothing is charged, and nothing will be without telling you first. Cue is in early access. When the video allowance gets a number, it will be on this page before it applies to anyone, and cuts already on Cue will not be removed to make it fit.

    The ones a producer asks first.

    Does my client need an account?

    No. Switch a share link on and send it. They open it on whatever phone they have, watch the cut, and leave notes under a name they type themselves. The link opens that one cut and the notes marked client-visible, and nothing else.

    Does Cue upload my rushes?

    Never. The camera-card tools work on your own drives and the original files stay exactly where they are. The only video that goes up is a review cut you choose to send, and it plays back signed, never from a public address.

    Why does it seek to the exact frame when other tools do not?

    Because Cue plays the cut as one file rather than a stream cut into chunks. A streaming player jumps to the nearest chunk, close to the frame you asked for but not on it, which is useless when the note is about two frames. The trade is a slightly heavier first load, and for review that is the right way round.

    Can I bring a script in from elsewhere?

    Yes. .fountain and .txt come straight in, and a .pdf printed by any screenwriting app is read page by page and rebuilt as editable Fountain, with cues, dialogue and action told apart by their indents. Drop it in when you create the production, or later from the Script screen.

    What do I need to run it?

    A browser. Review, script and planning work in any modern one; the camera-card tools need Chrome or Edge, and Cue tells you so on screen instead of failing quietly. An Android app is on the way. Two themes: Dark for the edit suite, and Daylight for reading a call sheet outside at noon.

    Who is behind it?

    Cue is built by Downstage, a South African software company that makes tools for work that happens live. It exists because the alternative was four disconnected tools and a WhatsApp thread.

    Start a production and put a cut in front of somebody.

    Accounts are open while Cue is in early access. Make a production, drop a script in, send a client a link and see whether the notes come back better than they used to.

    Open Cue Read it again first

    No card, no sales call. If it is not for your production you will know inside an evening.