The Soft War — from screenplay to bible
I drop a film screenplay into The Soft War, and the app pulls out the whole development bible: universe, characters, locations, image bank, storyboard. The result lives on a web page you share by link, and it stays up to date with each new generation. The pipeline takes over work I used to do by hand, project by project, for my own short films.
The screenplay goes in, the bible comes out
I drop in a screenplay in Word, PDF or Fountain format. The app reads the whole text and breaks it into 10 modules: text extraction, universe, characters, locations, image bank, notable quotes, possible endings, references, storyboard analysis, and the final layout. Each module can be rerun on its own, without recomputing the others.
The screenplay.pdf · .docx · .fountain
/p/the-birds
The Birds
shared file
A bible, not a sheet
On a project that has already been processed, the character table comes out indexed, each trait linked to the place in the screenplay where it appears. The key locations, the literary quotes and the possible readings follow the same principle: nothing is asserted without pointing back to the source text.
Characterscharacters.md
Protagonist
Melanie Daniels
From frivolous seduction to absolute vulnerability: she starts the action, she endures it to the end.
Appears: pet shop, Brenner house, attic
Co-protagonist
Mitch Brenner
Lawyer in San Francisco, weekends in Bodega Bay. Pragmatic, protective, not very demonstrative.
Appears: pet shop, Brenner house
Mitch's mother
Lydia Brenner
Widow, possessive of her son. Shaken by the discovery of Dan Fawcett's body.
Appears: Brenner house
Mitch's little sister
Cathy Brenner
About eleven years old. Target of the attack at school, embodies vulnerable childhood.
Appears: school, birthday party
Schoolteacher, Mitch's ex
Annie Hayworth
Stayed in Bodega to stay near him. Dies protecting Cathy in front of the school.
Appears: cottage, school
Ornithologist
Mrs. Bundy
Rejects the idea of a massive attack at the Tides. Academic knowledge facing denial.
Appears: The Tides
Sheriff's deputy
Al Malone
Refuses to believe the first attacks. The local authority that downplays.
Appears: Bodega Bay
Locationslocations.md
Pet shop, San Francisco
Melanie and Mitch meet under the pretext of the lovebirds. Seduction game, worldly tone.
Bodega Bay
Boat trip. A seagull hits Melanie on the forehead: the first attack, almost invisible.
Brenner House
Central location of the last third. The swarm comes down the chimney, chaos spreads to the living room.
Annie's Cottage
Intermediate refuge, then the place of her off-screen death, in front of the door.
Bodega Bay School
The crows pile up one by one on the jungle gym while the children sing.
The Tides Restaurant
Community confrontation. The ornithologist argues, the drunk quotes the Bible, fear looks for someone to blame.
Attic of the Brenner house
Last interior location. Final attack on Melanie, isolated, found catatonic.
Notable quotesfragments.md
It's the end of the world.
The drunk at the Tides, the only one to name what everyone rejects
You're the cause of all this!
The hysterical mother at the Tides, projecting onto the outsider
I think you came up to see me.
Mitch to Melanie, turning the seduction game around
Possible readingsrefs.md
Freudian
Family neurosis
The possessive mother projects her fear onto the outsider. The birds as manifestation.
Ecological
The disruption
An environmental premonition written in 1962, still contemporary.
Du Maurier
Nature reclaims its place
Short-circuits human arrogance, without ever naming a culprit.
Formal
Pure suspense
A style exercise on fear, with no resolution and no end card.
A page shared by link
The final result reads on a single web page, reachable through a link with an optional password. The page isn't frozen: it rebuilds on every load, so any rerun of a module shows up in it right away.
Born from work done by hand
I built this pipeline after doing this work by hand for a short film. The Soft War automates what I used to redo project by project: reading a screenplay, pulling a complete bible out of it, laying it out.