Every shot in a Didascalies flipbook is read through three lenses. The Making documents how the shot was produced — crew, light, lens. The Frame Speaks reads what the composition argues — axis, poles, thesis. The Bloodline traces the shot's descendants in cinema history.
Your team will apply this method to a film of your choice, one shot at a time, and produce a flipbook indistinguishable from the published Didascalies volumes.
Each team member takes a role. You can divide by shot (each person owns their shots end-to-end) or by register (one person writes all the Making, another all the Frame Speaks).
Shot selector
Chooses which frames matter and why
Making writer
Documents the craft — crew, light, lens
Frame Speaks analyst
Reads the composition — axis, poles, argument
Bloodline researcher
Traces cinematic descendants
Assembler
Merges all sections into the final flipbook
How to start
Set up → build → export → hand off.
Set up your project — film title, year, team name, section
Add shots — upload your frame, fill the three registers
Save your work — download your project file after every session
Export your section — hand your JSON file to the assembler
Assembler merges — imports all sections, exports the final flipbook
Your project auto-saves in this browser. Download your project file and keep it in Google Drive — that is your real backup.
DDidascalies Studio
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Preface
No image — cover will be typography only
Project settings
D
Didascalies Studio
Shot analysis, in flipbook form.
A Passeurs de sens studio · From chosen shot to published volume
3 registers · 5 sections · self-contained HTML export
The Making
documentation
The Frame Speaks
interpretation
The Bloodline
research
Esc to close
How to use Didascalies Studio
Understand the method
What you'll produce
A Didascalies flipbook reads a film one shot at a time. For each shot you choose, you write three short analyses — the three registers — and the Studio binds them into a book indistinguishable from the published Didascalies volumes. You are not summarizing the plot. You are arguing about how a single frame is built and what it means.
Anatomy of a spread — the one thing to get right
Every shot becomes a two-page spread. The two pages do different jobs, and confusing them is the single most common reason a flipbook fails.
The right page is the argument — the three registers written as prose. This is where you write. The left page is the proof — under the frame, structured evidence rises when you tap a register: the crew and keywords for The Making, the compositional axis for The Frame Speaks, the lineage of descendant films for The Bloodline.
These are separate inputs. The left page is not generated from your prose. If you write a beautiful Making paragraph but leave the crew and keywords empty, the left page stays blank — a half-built book.
The right page argues. The left page proves. Fill both.
The three registers
The three registers form a ladder of difficulty — which is really a ladder of intellectual demand.
The Bloodline — research. Which films descend from this shot? Concrete, verifiable, sourced. The easiest to fill.
The Making — documentation. Who made it, and with what. Crew, light, lens, set.
The Frame Speaks — interpretation. Name the two poles of a compositional tension and the pivot between them. This is not "describe the image" — it is argue. It is the hardest register, and the heart of the method. Give it the most time.
Before you start
Open a published volume and read it like a student of the form. Notice how The Making under the frame is who-did-what, never a paragraph. That is the standard your flipbook is held to.
A project holds one section of a flipbook — your team's shots plus the book matter around them. You can run a whole small flipbook from a single project, or split a larger one across teammates (chapter 6).
Create a new project
On the setup screen, fill the fields that identify your volume:
Film title and year — the film you're analyzing (required).
Director — optional, shown in the book's matter.
Team name — your collective's name; it signs the volume (required).
Section title and number — the thematic part you're building, e.g. "I · The Harbour". Numbers run I–V.
Institution and course — optional; they appear in the colophon.
You can change any of these later from More ▾ → Project settings.
Open an existing project
Click Open existing project on the setup screen and choose your .json file. This is how you return to work between sessions, or pick up a teammate's project. Your .jsonis the project — keep it safe (chapter 5).
Sections (I–V)
A finished flipbook is organized into up to five numbered sections, each a thematic movement through the film. In the Studio you usually own one section; its shots are numbered within it — I·01, I·02, and so on — and renumber automatically as you reorder them. Adding and moving sections is covered in chapter 5.
Build a shot
A shot is the unit of work. Everything below is filled on the shot editor; the right-page prose and the left-page evidence are separate fields — see chapter 1 if that distinction isn't yet second nature.
The frame and its timecode
Upload the still you're analyzing — drag it onto the frame zone, or click to choose a file. The image is stored inside your project, so it travels with your .json file.
Enter the timecode as HH:MM:SS:FF — hours, minutes, seconds, and the frame number. The timecode is a citation, not a control: it tells a reader exactly which frame you mean. Standard players stop at the second; to land on an exact frame, step through it in VLC (press E to advance frame by frame), DaVinci Resolve, or ffmpeg. Precise frame extraction is a skill worth learning — it will serve you across your studies.
Title and caption
The title (up to 80 characters) names the shot — "The Trial Chamber", "The Odessa Steps". The caption (up to 240) is one plain sentence describing what is literally visible in the frame, before any analysis. It sits in italic under the title on the right page.
Writing in the registers
The three register paragraphs are the prose on the right page. Each prose field has a B / I toolbar — select text and click B for bold or I for italic, or use Cmd/Ctrl+B and Cmd/Ctrl+I. Use emphasis sparingly: a film title in italic, a single load-bearing word in bold.
The Making — who made it, with what
Prose on the right (300–1000 characters). On the left, fill the structured evidence that rises under the frame:
Crew — each person as a name and a role (Carl Th. Dreyer · Direction). List only the people whose decisions shaped this shot.
Keywords — two to four short tags that compress the shot's production logic ("rare wide", "frontal key"). The first is highlighted in gold.
Note (up to 120) — one closing line: the production fact the shot turns on.
The Frame Speaks — the argument
The hardest register, and the one to spend the most time on (prose 300–1050). Its left-page evidence is the axis: a single compositional tension, named by its two poles and the pivot between them.
Choose an axis type — Depth, Horizontal, Vertical, Motion, or Rotational — then name:
First pole — e.g. "Foreground · the clerical watchers, our surrogates"
Pivot — the hinge between them, e.g. "The stone-cut sword on the floor"
Second pole — e.g. "Background · the encircled accused"
Then the argument (up to 180 characters): one declarative sentence — the frame's thesis, in the shape "By doing X, the frame argues Y." If you can't state it in a single sentence, you haven't found the axis yet.
The Bloodline — the lineage
Prose on the right (200–950). On the left: a source — the shot named as an origin ("The trial chamber, from The Threshold · 1928") — and a list of descendants, later films that inherit this shot's idea. For each: year, title, and a short note on what it took. Click W to auto-find the film's Wikipedia link; in the exported flipbook every descendant is clickable.
Character budgets — a filter, not a wall
Each prose field shows a live counter (The Making 1000 · The Frame Speaks 1050 · The Bloodline 950; aim for at least ~300 / 300 / 200). It turns amber near the limit. The budget isn't an obstacle — it's the discipline of the form. A register that won't fit is usually one that hasn't decided what it argues. Cut until only the load-bearing sentences remain.
Build the book
The shots are the heart of a flipbook, but a volume needs matter around them — a cover, a way in, a way out. You edit these from the sidebar, above and below your shots; the right-hand panel changes to fit each one. Most of these fields take bold / italic and blank-line paragraphs, like the register prose.
Cover
The cover carries your film's title (from project settings) over an optional frame. Upload a cover image, pick an accent colour from the swatches, and write a subtitle — one or two sentences naming what your analysis does. With no image, the cover falls back to clean typography.
Preface
Your editorial way in: four to six paragraphs on why this film, why these shots, what you're claiming. Separate paragraphs with a blank line. The transition line is a single closing sentence that hands the reader to the film.
Film intro
A synopsis for a reader who may not know the film — three to five paragraphs on where it sits, what happens, who made it. Same blank-line paragraphs, same closing transition line.
Section intros
Each section opens with its own intro: a short kicker (a label above the title), a title, and one or two paragraphs on the section's thematic angle. A section intro appears for every section you create, always at its head.
The team
Introduce yourselves: a short paragraph on who you are and what drew you to this film, plus a card per member — photo, name, role, and a one-line bio. This is the page students are proudest to show; spend a minute on the photos.
Colophon and studio page
The colophon is generated from your project settings (film, team, institution, course); you can add a line of notes. The closing studio page is generated for you — it credits Passeurs de sens as the maker of the tool, not as the publisher of your work. Neither needs hand-editing beyond the notes.
Organize, save, ship
Reorder shots and sections
In the sidebar, every shot shows ▲▼ arrows on hover — click to move it one step. At the top or bottom of a section, the arrows carry the shot into the neighbouring section. You can also drag a shot: grab it and a gold card follows your cursor, with an insertion line showing where it will land. Shot numbers (I·01, II·03…) renumber themselves automatically.
Add a shot to a section with the + on its header; add a new section with + Add section at the bottom of the sidebar. Drag a section header to reorder whole sections at once.
Save your work — and back it up
The Studio auto-saves to this browser every couple of seconds; the header reads "Saved". But the browser is not a backup — clearing site data, switching machines, or a wiped cache loses everything. Download your project file with Save project file after every session and keep the .json somewhere real (Google Drive). The Studio nudges you if you go too long without downloading. That .json is your only true backup.
Preview as you build
Click Preview flipbook to open your book in a new tab — the full flipbook, every spread, exactly as it will export. Leave the tab open: it refreshes on its own each time you save, so you can write on one screen and watch the page rebuild on the other.
Export the flipbook
From More ▾ → Export flipbook (HTML), the Studio builds a single self-contained HTML file — the engine, your text, and your frames, all in one document. It needs no server and no internet: open it in any browser, host it anywhere, hand it in. If you're assembling sections from a team, see chapter 6.
Work as a team
A flipbook is a team project. The Studio is built so several people can work in parallel and one person stitches the result together.
Divide the work
Two ways to split:
By shot — each person owns their shots end to end: the frame and all three registers. Simple, and everyone practises all three registers.
By register — one person writes every Making, another every Frame Speaks, a third every Bloodline. Faster and more consistent in voice, but everyone depends on the same shot list.
The five roles — shot selector, Making writer, Frame Speaks analyst, Bloodline researcher, and assembler — are a starting point, not a rule. Adapt them to your team's size.
Send your shots
When your shots are ready, choose More ▾ → Export my shots only. This writes a partial .json with your shots and the film's basic info, but none of the book matter. Hand that file to your assembler — by Drive, email, whatever you use.
The assembler merges everything
One person is the assembler. They hold the master project — the one with the cover, preface, and book matter (chapter 4). For each teammate's file they choose More ▾ → Import shots from teammate and pick the .json. The incoming shots are added to the project, each landing in its own section.
Two things to watch: importing the same file twice duplicates its shots, and import only ever adds — it never replaces. So import each file once; if someone sends a corrected version, delete their old shots first. When everything is in, the assembler reorders as needed (chapter 5) and exports the final flipbook.
Keep your own backup
Every contributor should still download their full Save project file as backup (chapter 5). The partial export is for handing off — not for keeping.
Troubleshooting
Coming soon — answers to the questions that come up most.