Who it’s for

Search the light, not the title

Prep is Monday and the lighting plan is still an argument: how hard the key is, where the falloff sits, whether the night exterior reads as moonlight or as sodium. The frames that settle it are in films you have already seen, and you can describe the light in them long before you can name the title. That description is what you search here.

Search by the light you remember

A DP carries a shelf of remembered frames, and the title is the part that goes missing first. Lexical search takes the words you would use on set with the filters that sit under them: frame size, lens size category, capture format, lighting quality, time of day.

The sheet a DP reads first

For a lighting plan the lens and the format carry as much as the light does: a long lens on 35mm at night is not the same problem as the same framing on a large-format digital camera.

The credits name who shot it, by role, and a known timecode says where in the film to look.

The references a treatment is built on

The callback is Thursday and the treatment goes in before it. You know the film you are describing: how close the camera sits, what the light is doing, where the cut lands. Frames that match that description are what the deck gets built from, and the deck stays in whatever tool you already write it in.

Search the scene, not the filmography

A director’s reference is a scene, not a title: two people at a table with the window blown out behind them, a corridor that narrows as it goes. Lexical search takes those words with the filters under them: frame size, camera angle, composition, lighting quality, time of day.

What a shot list needs off the sheet

For a shot list the columns that travel are frame size, camera angle and composition: a medium close up at eye level is a different instruction to the floor than the same subject from a low angle.

An editor pulling a reference gets the timecode with it, where it is known, so the frame can be found in the film it came from instead of described from memory.

References for a set build, by place and colour

The build starts before the money does: a period, a place, and a colour that has to hold across every room in the script. The references that pin it down are in films, and what you can describe is the world, not the title on the poster. Location type, interior or exterior, colour tone: those are filters here, not things you hope to stumble on.

Describe the room, not the film

A designer’s reference is a room: a 1970s municipal corridor, a kitchen somebody has actually cooked in, an interior that reads as money without looking staged. Lexical search takes those words with the filters under them: location type, interior or exterior, colour tone, time of day, release year.

What the sheet tells a designer

Location type and interior or exterior are on the record, and so is the title’s release year. Colour tone and colour hue are there too, as readings of the frame. The credits name the production designer by role.

The crew filter works the other way round: give it a name and a role, and it returns frames from the titles they are credited on.

References for the pitch, from cinema and commercials

The review is Monday and the lookbook is still a folder of stills nobody can source. Decks get read by people who ask which film that is, who shot it, and whether the reference came from a film at all. Every frame here answers that on its own page, and the lookbook stays in whatever tool your studio builds decks in.

Search the look you are describing

The reference in a pitch is a look, not a filmography: a wet street at night, a face half-lit by a practical, a wide with space left in it for the product. Lexical search takes those words with the filters under them: frame size, lens size category, lighting quality, colour tone, title type.

The credits come with the frame

The title, the release year and the credits by role sit on the frame’s own page, so a slide can say which film it is and who shot it.