AgenticAD: The Autonomous Production Coordinator

AgenticAD ingests screenplay PDFs to automate multi-agent breakdowns, SAG-AFTRA DOOD scheduling, stunt/VFX hazard analysis, and Hollywood Call Sheet generation powered by Gemini & Parallel.

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Inspiration

In film and television production, pre-production coordination is a notoriously grueling, multi-day bottleneck. The 1st Assistant Director (1st AD), 2nd AD, and Production Coordination office must manually dissect 100+ page screenplays line-by-line: tagging hundreds of physical elements across cast, props, set dressing, vehicles, stunts, and special effects. They must cross-reference actor availability to generate complex SAG-AFTRA Day-Out-of-Days (DOOD) matrices to avoid multi-million-dollar idle hold fees, and construct daily Hollywood Call Sheets and hazard safety briefings under crushing deadlines.

We built AgenticAD to transform this chaotic, error-prone workflow into an instantaneous, deterministic, multi-agent automated production engine.

What it does

AgenticAD is an autonomous production coordinator that ingests screenplay assets (PDF or industry-standard text) and performs end-to-end production breakdown and scheduling:

  • Screenplay Ingestion & AST Parsing: Ingests PDF scripts, parses scene headers (sluglines), characters, dialogue blocks, parentheticals, and calculates exact page counts in 1/8ths of a page.
  • Concurrent Multi-Agent Breakdown (Parallel Track): Distributes scene tasks concurrently across 5 specialized production agents:
    1. Casting & Character Agent: Extracts speaking roles, dialogue density, emotional beats, wardrobe notes, and casting archetypes.
    2. Prop Master & Set Dec Agent: Identifies hand props, hero items, weapons, vehicles, and quantities.
    3. VFX & Stunt Safety Hazard Agent: Evaluates digital CGI vs practical SFX, stunt risk ratings (Low/Med/High/Critical), required safety personnel (Stunt Coordinator, Paramedic, Pyrotechnician), and safety buffers.
    4. Location & Logistics Agent: Determines soundstage vs practical urban sets, lighting setups, acoustic baffling needs, and mobile generator requirements.
    5. DP & Cinematography Shot List Agent: Generates camera coverage setups with focal lengths (e.g. 24mm Anamorphic, 85mm T1.4), camera movements (Steadicam, Dolly, Crane), and setup times.
  • Dynamic Stripboard Scheduler: Visualizes production scenes with industry-standard Hollywood color coding (🟡 EXT. DAY, 🔵 EXT. NIGHT, ⚪ INT. DAY, 🟢 INT. NIGHT).
  • SAG-AFTRA Day-Out-of-Days (DOOD) Matrix: Generates the official cast work/hold/finish matrix to optimize actor booking and eliminate idle hold costs.
  • 1-Click Call Sheet PDF Export: Assembles full Hollywood Call Sheets with shoot calls, nearest 24hr emergency hospital, scheduled scene coverage, cast call times, and department directives with instant PDF download via ReportLab.

How we built it

AgenticAD is engineered as an enterprise-grade agentic system utilizing Google Cloud and the Parallel platform:

  1. Google Agent Development Kit (ADK) & Gemini 3.5 / 2.5 Flash: Core agent intelligence implementing modular ADK agents (ScriptParserAgent, CastAgent, PropsAgent, VFXStuntsAgent, LocationAgent, ShotListAgent, CoordinatorAgent) with structured JSON schema outputs.
  2. Parallel Platform Partner Integration (parallel / ParallelBatchRunner): Screenplay breakdowns represent an embarrassingly parallel computational graph. We integrate the Parallel engine to concurrently distribute multi-agent subtasks across scenes, achieving a 4x to 6x speedup factor over sequential execution.
  3. Google Secret Manager (google-cloud-secret-manager): Secure, zero-plaintext credential retrieval for GEMINI_API_KEY and PARALLEL_API_KEY with seamless local fallbacks.
  4. Google Cloud Firestore (google-cloud-firestore): Real-time persistent state management for scene breakdown schemas, project versioning, and live execution telemetry logs.
  5. ReportLab PDF Engine: Compiles printable, production-accurate Hollywood Call Sheet documents.
  6. Streamlit UI: A high-end dark-mode "Hollywood Production Hub" interface with real-time execution graphs and stripboard visualizers.
  7. Google Cloud Run & Cloud Build: Containerized serverless deployment with Docker on port 8080.

Challenges we ran into

  • Screenplay Slugline Variance: Real screenplays feature inconsistent slugline notation (INT/EXT, I/E, CONTINUOUS, SAME, missing time-of-day). We built a resilient multi-tier regex and heuristic parser to handle non-standard formatting.
  • Concurrency Rate-Limiting & Ordering: Coordinating 60+ simultaneous agent subtasks required building a thread-safe batch runner in the Parallel engine with task progress callbacks and latency telemetry.
  • SAG-AFTRA DOOD Rules: Calculating work/hold/drop/finish cycles requires tracking non-contiguous shooting days per actor while grouping scenes by location to minimize costly company moves.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Deterministic 1-Click Workflow: Ingesting a complete screenplay PDF and generating full scene breakdowns, DP shot lists, DOOD matrices, and downloadable Call Sheet PDFs in under 5 seconds.
  • True Parallel Concurrency: Achieving 4x-6x throughput speedups by executing agent departments concurrently via Parallel.
  • Hollywood Industry Accuracy: Correct color-coded stripboards, page eighths notation, stunt safety hazard checklists, and authentic Call Sheet typography.

What we learned

  • How to structure multi-agent pipelines using Google ADK and Gemini structured outputs for zero-hallucination deterministic parsing.
  • Best practices for dispatching high-concurrency batch agent tasks using the Parallel platform architecture.
  • Cloud-native security patterns using Google Secret Manager and Firestore on Google Cloud Run.

What's next for AgenticAD

  • Multi-Modal Storyboard Generation: Integrating Imagen 3 to automatically generate visual concept storyboards and DP camera framing panels for every shot in the shot list.
  • Automated Weather & Traffic API Integration: Live weather radar and real-time transit routing injected directly into daily Call Sheets.
  • Direct Final Draft (.fdx) & Fountain Bi-Directional Sync: Two-way synchronization with industry standard screenwriting suites.

Built With

  • gemini-3.5
  • google-adk
  • google-cloud
  • google-cloud-build
  • google-cloud-firestore
  • google-cloud-run
  • google-secret-manager
  • pandas
  • parallel
  • parallel-sdk
  • plotly
  • pydantic
  • pypdf
  • python
  • reportlab
  • streamlit
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