Motion Scene Builder

Use this skill when individual scenes need to be authored, refined, or overridden inside an existing storyboard.

Read ../../references/scene-vocabulary.md before drafting.

Use when

• A storyboard already exists and one or more scenes need stronger composition.
• A scene must be split, merged, or re-ordered.
• A scene needs a new motion token or transition.
• A scene fails review and must be re-authored without redoing the storyboard.

Do not use when

• The storyboard itself is missing. Use motion-storyboard first.
• The whole render pipeline is failing. Use motion-render-ops instead.
• The request is QC and review only. Use motion-qc.

Scene-building failures to avoid

• inventing one-off easing curves instead of using motion tokens
• describing motion only in adjectives such as "smooth" or "snappy"
• overloading a single scene with too many tokens
• breaking caption coverage by extending a scene without extending the caption track
• producing a scene that visually conflicts with its neighbors' motion continuity

Workflow

1. Anchor the scene in the storyboard

Confirm:

• the scene's index
• its intent
• its duration budget in frames
• its transitions in and out

2. Choose a recipe or override

Either reference a shared scene recipe or write an explicit composition override.

3. Resolve composition

Specify layout regions, asset placement, and text placement.

4. Apply motion tokens

Pick named camera, subject, text, and transition tokens. Document the rationale when more than two tokens are combined.

5. Re-check neighbors

Verify the scene's start aligns with the previous scene's exit and that motion continuity is honored or intentionally broken.

6. Update the storyboard

Persist the scene change and bump the storyboard version when the scene order or intent changes.

Output format

Return:

1. Scene anchor

• index, intent, duration

2. Recipe or override

• recipe id, override fields, or full composition spec

3. Motion tokens

• camera, subject, text, transition tokens with rationale

4. Continuity check

• how the scene aligns with neighbors

5. Updated storyboard fragment

• the JSON or pseudo-JSON describing the new scene

6. Risks

• timing conflicts, asset gaps, caption coverage gaps

Use together with

• motion-storyboard
• motion-render-ops
• motion-qc