The app that held my film together

Here’s the truth about filmmaking: no matter how much you think you’ve got it under control, the details pile up until you’re drowning.

Props, costumes, locations, schedules, casting notes, shot lists, references… it’s enough to make your head spin.

For The Lost Fortune of Oliver Brody, I needed something that could corral all of that chaos in one place. That’s where Milanote came in.

Milanote is like a giant digital corkboard where you can dump every idea or reference or detail, organize it visually, and keep the whole team on the same page automatically.

I used it constantly during pre-production, and honestly, it became one of the most important “crew members” on the film.

Here are some of the ways it saved my sanity:

1. Location Scouting

We shot Oliver Brody across two very different environments: the wilderness of Washington State and a soundstage in Los Angeles.

That meant tons of scouting, reference photos, and notes to keep track of.

With Milanote, I was able to drop our scouting photos straight onto a board, annotate them with pros/cons, and compare different options side by side.

Since we were looking at so many similar-looking areas for forests and stream locations, it was really crucial to be organized like this and know where each scouting picture and video came from.

So instead of digging through random iPhone albums or email chains, I could see the whole location at a glance easily.

2. Mood Boards

As director, I wanted to know the tone and atmosphere from the start.

For this project, I pulled together references from Google Images and FrameSet.app (which is a handy tool for searching film and music video stills).

I could quickly copy and paste any image directly into Milanote, arrange them, and then rearrange them as my ideas evolved.

It became a visual North Star for me and the crew.

Anytime someone asked, “What vibe are we going for?” I just shared the board.

3. Production Design

We had to make 1890s gold-rush props and sets feel authentic on a short film budget.

Milanote gave us a space to gather aesthetic inspiration, prop lists, and rental options all in one place.

This way, when our production designer came on board, I could hand off all my prep in a single link.

4. Story Beats

I even used Milanote to help with the script itself, visually mapping out the architecture of the story.

I built a beat sheet that laid out every dramatic turn, so I could see the film’s structure at a glance. This was a helpful step in realizing we needed to greatly simplify our story!

Having a bird’s eye view of your story is super handy. I used to do it with index cards on my wall, but this made it even quicker to make and easier to share with my co-writer who lives across the country.

Visual & Collaborative

I love that with Milanote you’re not trapped in spreadsheets or buried in text documents. You can see the movie taking shape way before you shoot it.

And since it’s collaborative, you can loop in your DP, production designer, or AD without endless back-and-forth emails. In fact, any time someone made a change in a board, we’d get notified via email. And I was able to tell who had seen the updates, which is also really handy.

If you’re gearing up for a short film (or even just wrestling your next script idea into shape), I encourage you to give it a shot… especially since it’s free to try. 👉 ​