Beat 2.0 · out now

Build the whole story
on one canvas.

Beat is a visual, node based space for writing stories and organizing every idea that builds them: beats, references, characters, and the look of each scene. I made it because I think in pictures as much as in words.

Download for Mac, free See it move

Completely free. Not for sale. No account, no tracking. Your files stay yours.

Featured on RedSharkRaindanceCineD
Act I · Act II · Act III — every beat, as wide as it plays The shape of the film
933downloads and counting
SC 02The canvas

A visual way to write and build a story.

Docs, Notion, Pinterest, chats: a story ends up scattered across five apps. Beat is one infinite board that holds the whole thing, the writing and the ideas and how they connect, where you can see it all at once.

01

Think in nodes, not documents

An infinite visual board where every idea is a node. Beats, notes, characters, locations and props, all as cards you move, group, connect and @mention.

02

Beats that branch

Lay out story moments, link them into a spine, and explore alternate versions side by side, with tones, slug lines, shot type, duration and a live runtime meter. Start from classic structures: three act, Hero's Journey, Save the Cat, the story circle.

03

Write it as a document

Writing Mode shows your board as a live written document, side by side with the canvas. Type in the document and the card updates; edit a card and the document follows. Add, reorder and remove beats from either side, all undoable.

SC 03From script to set

One file, from first read to wrap.

Beat 2.0 carries a film from the written page to the shoot day without leaving the board. Five steps, one project.

01 — The script

Drop a screenplay on the canvas

Drag in a Fountain or Final Draft file, the same script you already have.

02 — The board

The board builds itself

One group per act, one beat per scene, and every character arrives as a card with its name woven into the text.

03 — The shot list

The shot list listens

Link a shot to a beat and its type, description, duration, cast and location flow in live, so the list and the board always agree.

04 — The call sheet

The call sheet writes itself

Give the day its date, location, call time and crew, and Beat prints a proper call sheet with sunrise, the schedule and per-person calls.

05 — The wrap

Wrap the day

One button ends the shoot, shows what is in the can, carries unshot setups to the next day, and prints a wrap report.

SC 04On set

A room for the shoot day itself.

A full screen mode built for the one day when everything happens. One operator runs it while the crew reads the board from across the room.

  • Mark shots done or skipped, step the chosen take, and type observations as they come.
  • A day clock anchors to your call time and says how far ahead or behind you are.
  • A strip on the shot list stacks every shot's estimated minutes from call to wrap, over bands of night, daylight and golden hour, so you can see whether the day fits before you are standing in it.
  • The day can run in a different order than the story without touching the film, and a printable day sheet goes to set in your pocket.
SC 05The Set Plan

The Set Plan.

A full screen, overhead scene planner you attach to any beat. There's no simple way to plan lighting and blocking visually, so I built one that thinks the way a director and DP do on set.

  • Cameras with a real field of view by focal length, and blocking paths with facing at every point.
  • Real fixtures, softbox, fresnel, LED, kino, china ball, practical, with beam falloff, color temperature and intensity.
  • Light that bounces, blocks and passes through bounce cards, flags, diffusion, walls, doors and windows.
  • Every symbol at real-world scale, all 48 of them: a car is 4.5 m, a chair half a metre. Set the room size in metres or feet and export the plan as an image.
SC 06Locations · References · Claude

Three more rooms.

Scout real places, pull references from anywhere, and let Claude work on the project itself. Pick a room.

Scout locations on a map, next to the story.

Drop a real place on a map, pull up street view, and grab the exact angle as a still. Each location lives on the board with your beats and references, so the place and the scene that happens there stay together.

  • Pin any spot on a real map and keep its coordinates with the card.
  • Open street view and capture the exact frame you want straight into the project.
  • A pinned location gets the sun's true path for any day of the year: drag the sun on the graph or right on the map, with golden and blue hour marked on the path itself.
  • A beat carries its planned moment, 16:42, golden hour, and it prints in every document.
Planned 16:42 · Golden hour

Pull references from anywhere.

Drop in a link and Beat grabs video and images from almost any site. A custom video player gives you frame by frame control to lift the exact still or GIF straight into your project's media pool.

Custom player
frame by frame
Media pool

An AI that sees the whole project, via MCP.

One click links Beat to Claude through MCP. Instead of copying and pasting into a chatbot, the AI works on your real project, and in 2.0 it can build a whole one: create the project, write the beats and groups, place images, build linked shot lists, dress set plans, export treatments, and check its own work for errors.

Your project
via MCP
reads · edits · builds
Claude
SC 07Where we are now

Completely free. Local first.

Free, and never for sale

No price, no business model, no upsell. I built it for myself and I give it away. That is the whole idea.

No account, no tracking

Nothing to sign up for, nothing watched. Open it and work.

You own your files

Every project is a folder on your Mac. Offline and yours, back it up however you like.

One honest heads up: Beat is signed but not notarized with Apple yet, so the first time you open it your Mac asks once. The guide below walks you through it in a minute.

The story so far.

Beat is young and moving fast. Here is what is live today, and this list grows with every update.

Get in touch, tell me what's missing

Beat is for the community, and the best version of it comes from the people who actually use it. I want your honest take: what helps, what breaks, what's missing. Send it my way and it gets better for everyone.

“I built this tool entirely for myself, and it's completely free. I'm sharing it because I think other people like me could use it too.”

— João Lutz

Beat will always be free. If it helped you, you can buy me a coffee.

Get in touch Instagram
Questions

Common questions.

What Beat is, what it replaces, and how to start, free.

Is Beat really free?

Yes. Beat is completely free, with no account, no tracking, and no upsell, and it is never going to be for sale. I built it for myself and I give it away.

Is Beat a free alternative to StudioBinder, Shot Designer or Milanote?

Many people use it that way.

There is another Mac app called Beat. Which one do I want?

Both are free, both are Mac, and his came first. Beat by Lauri-Matti Parppei is a screenplay editor. You write the script in it, in Fountain, and it does that properly. If writing the screenplay is what you need, that is the one to get.

This Beat starts after the script exists. It plans the production around it: the story as connected cards on a canvas, a shot list that reads live from those beats, set plans drawn at real world scale, locations that know the sun’s path on any date, call sheets that write themselves, and a full screen mode for the shoot day. It reads Fountain and Final Draft so a script written anywhere, including in his Beat, becomes a board here in one drop.

Different jobs, same unfortunate name. Plenty of people will want both.

What is the Set Plan?

An overhead scene planner you attach to any beat.

Does Beat use AI?

It connects to Claude through MCP.

What can I export?

A zip of all your media, Markdown, Word, PDFs.

Does it run on my Mac?

Yes, universal for Apple Silicon and Intel.

How do I plan a film shoot for free with Beat?

Download it and build the board.

Partnerships

Free for filmmakers. Open to partners.

Beat is free for everyone who uses it, and it always will be. Beyond that, I am looking for partners, sponsors and investors to help it grow, I am open to building custom versions of Beat for the institutions and teams that want them, and I would love to connect Beat with the tools filmmakers already use. If any of this sounds like you, let's talk.

Education institutions

I would love to build custom versions of Beat for film schools and education programs, shaped around how you teach and made for your students.

Production companies

A custom Beat for production teams, with cloud based project storage where anyone on the production can explore the board, gather insights and stay in sync.

Integrations

If you run a tool filmmakers already use, from reference and image libraries to design and storyboard apps, let's connect it with Beat so they work together. I think there is something good here for both of us.

Sponsors and investors

If you want to back where Beat is going, as a sponsor, an investor or a partner, I would love to hear from you.

If that sounds like you, write to me directly and let us figure out something good.

SC 08Download

Get Beat. It's free.

Native macOS · no account · always free, never for sale.

Download Beat for Mac Free · universal app for Apple Silicon and Intel · downloads straight from this site, then follow the steps below 933downloads and counting

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Opening it the first time, it takes a minute

How to open Beat the first time

Beat is free and not from the Mac App Store, so the first time you open it your Mac warns you once. It is completely safe. The app is signed and runs on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. You do this once, then Beat opens with a normal double click forever.

Step 1. Download Beat and drag it to Applications

  1. Click the button above. Beat.dmg downloads straight from this site, about 60 MB.
  2. Open your Downloads folder and double click Beat.dmg. A window opens showing the Beat app next to an Applications shortcut.
  3. Drag Beat onto the Applications folder in that window.

Step 2. Open it once

The first time, your Mac shows a message like Apple could not verify Beat is free of malware. That is the normal prompt for any app made outside the App Store, and it is safe. Here is how to get past it, one time:

  1. When that message appears, click Done, not Move to Trash.
  2. Open System Settings, then Privacy and Security. Scroll down and you will see a line saying Beat was blocked, with an Open Anyway button. Click it.
  3. Confirm with your fingerprint or your Mac password. Beat opens, and from now on it opens with a normal double click.

On older macOS there is a faster way: right click Beat in your Applications folder (or hold Control and click), choose Open, then click Open in the dialog.

Still see “damaged”? (rare now)

That almost always means the download did not finish, or the file got re-compressed along the way. First, simply download Beat.dmg again, a fresh copy usually fixes it. If it still happens, open the Terminal app (press Command and Space, type Terminal, press Return) and paste this line, then press Return:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Beat.app

Then open Beat normally. You only ever do this once.

Prefer to watch someone do it? Short videos: opening an app from an unidentified developer, and if you ever need it, clearing the “damaged” message in Terminal. Still stuck? Email me at beat@joaolutz.com and I will personally help you get it running.