Shot Designer and CineLog get compared because both make a shot list, both attach storyboard frames to the shots, and both run on a phone, a tablet and a laptop. But Shot Designer starts from the floor, with an overhead diagram where you place the cameras and the actors and animate the moves, and CineLog starts from the script, with a shot list that comes off the scenes and runs into the schedule and the call sheet. So the overlap is one document in the middle. What I usually like to do is pick on the shape of the job instead of the feature list, because a director blocking one scene the night before and a crew of 25 shooting twelve days lose things in completely different places. So if you got here by searching for a Shot Designer alternative, or for apps like Shot Designer, this is the long answer.
One thing before we start. Everything in here was checked on November 2, 2026. The CineLog side against the app itself, version 1.5.6. The Shot Designer side against Hollywood Camera Work’s own site and support forum, the App Store listing and its version history, and the Google Play listing. Prices are from the US stores on that day. Shot Designer’s developer calls the current app the legacy 2D version and has a 3D successor in the works with no release date, so read every claim as being about the app you can download today.
Short summary
CineLog is the pick when the shot list has to run the day. When it has to come off the script, in script order and in tomorrow’s order, with the cast numbers from the breakdown on every row. When it has to sit next to the stripboard and feed the call sheet. When several frames per shot have to print next to the rows. And when six people need to change the plan at once from phones with no signal, because CineLog is a native app on every platform with real collaboration, and Shot Designer’s sync, by its developer’s own word, is primitive.
Shot Designer is a camera-blocking app. You draw the set from above, place the cameras, the actors and the lights, animate the moves, and the shot list writes itself from the diagram, both ways: change the diagram and the list updates, change the list and the diagram follows. Storyboard frames come in from the built-in viewfinder or from images you made elsewhere, as keyframes in the diagram. It’s free for one scene at a time and $19.99 once for the Pro version with saving, export and team sync. For blocking a scene, it’s been the tool for over a decade.
Those two paragraphs are the article. Everything below is the reason for it.
Let’s put a real production on the table
So we’re not talking in the abstract, let’s invent one. Let’s call it Harbor. It’s a scripted feature, about 90 pages, twelve shooting days, a crew of 25. Four locations, and two of them are out of town where phones drop to one bar. Six people need to change things in the plan. That’s the director, the first AD, the DP, the producer, the script supervisor and the production designer. The other nineteen need to get a call sheet every night and open it in the morning. We’ll come back to Harbor in every section, because the numbers only mean something on a real crew.
When CineLog is the pick
| Production shape | Why CineLog |
|---|---|
| A scripted shoot of two to twenty days, like Harbor | The shot list comes off the script and runs through the stripboard into the call sheet. Shot Designer’s file is one scene. |
| A shot list in shooting order across days | A shot list per production day, next to the one in script order. Shot Designer orders shots inside a scene. |
| Cast numbers on the shots | The breakdown numbers the cast once, and the number lands on the shot, the strip and the sheet. |
| Six people changing the plan | Real-time collaboration with view or edit rights per tool. Shot Designer syncs files on timestamps and its developer says two people shouldn’t edit the same file. |
| A call sheet tonight | Built from the schedule day with weather, sun times and the hospital, sent per person with a status. Shot Designer has none. |
Head to head
Prices are in US dollars, checked November 2, 2026.
| Shot Designer | CineLog | |
|---|---|---|
| Script | No import, no editor, script integration has been on the roadmap since 2018 | Yes, editor with locked pages and revision colors, imports .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF, text |
| Breakdown and stripboard | No | Yes, tagged from the script text, cast numbered, stripboard with day breaks |
| Shot list | Yes, generated from the diagram, two-way, shooting order inside a scene, PDF and Excel on Pro | Yes, in script order and per production day, seventeen columns plus your own |
| Camera diagrams | Yes, animated overhead diagrams with cameras, actors and lights, set and lighting designers | No |
| Storyboards | Keyframes from the built-in viewfinder or imported images, no drawing | Several frames per shot, image import, no drawing |
| Call sheets and AV script | No | Yes, with per-person delivery tracking and a client review link |
| Collaboration | Pro sync and team sharing on timestamps, no real-time editing | Real-time, with roles per tool |
| Works offline | The app is local and saves the current scene, the vendor doesn’t state offline behavior | Yes, every tool, up to seven days |
| Native apps | iOS (last updated October 2024), Android (September 2026), Mac, Windows, no browser | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, plus the browser |
| Price | Free for one scene at a time, Pro $19.99 once, per user, with group discounts | Free plan, then $15, $40 or $90 a month |
Six things I compare, in order
There are six things I compare when I look at tools like these, and those are the script and its revisions, the breakdown and the schedule, the shot list and the storyboards, the call sheet, where you can actually use the thing, and who pays. I go in that order because that’s the order a scripted production moves in. With Shot Designer, the third section is the whole comparison, so skip to it if that’s your question.
The script and its revisions
The first thing is the script, because on a scripted production the script is where every other document starts.
Shot Designer doesn’t hold the script. There’s no import and no editor, and script integration has sat on its roadmap since at least 2018, with the developer noting that some of the code is in there, hidden. You read the scene somewhere else and block it here, one file per scene. Hollywood Camera Work’s writing app is a separate product, and the developer has said the two won’t be the same program.
CineLog has a full editor, and it imports .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF and plain text. The part I lean on is what happens on the second import, because a scripted production gets new pages every week. CineLog shows the new draft as a diff against what you already have, scene by scene, and you accept what changed. It doesn’t wipe your breakdown and your shot list to make room for the new file. And once the script is locked, it does the real production thing. A new scene between 12 and 13 becomes 12A, a new page after 16 becomes 16A, and a cut scene prints as OMITTED and keeps its number for good. Every revision round gets its color, the changed lines get their asterisks in the margin, and you can export only the revised pages on that color.
So for Harbor, where the script gets locked about two weeks before day one and then revised every few days, the shot list in CineLog knows the scene changed. In Shot Designer the scene file is whatever you drew.
The breakdown and the schedule
Now that the script is in, the next thing is the breakdown and the schedule, and this one is short.
Shot Designer has no breakdown and no schedule. The only ordering it does is inside one scene, where you rearrange the shooting order, renumber the shots to match, and export the list in that order. The developer has said a production system would be a separate product, down the line.
CineLog does the breakdown by selecting text in the script and picking one of twelve categories, and it marks the page with the underline, the circle, the asterisk and the box that people know from paper breakdowns. The thing I like most is what happens with cast. CineLog tags every character on every line they speak, gives each one a numbered talent slot, and that number sits on the strip, in the shot list’s cast column and in the cast grid on the call sheet. You tag once. It shows up everywhere. The stripboard has day breaks, a boneyard for the scenes you haven’t placed yet, the standard strip colors, and it lets you split a scene across two days. A finished day flows straight into that day’s call sheet, and the board exports as a PDF. What CineLog doesn’t print yet is the day out of days report.
For Harbor, twelve days and 25 people, the AD builds the board in CineLog and the shot list follows it into day order. Shot Designer never enters this part of the job.
Shot lists and storyboards
Now that the days are laid out, the next thing is the shot list, and this is Shot Designer’s home ground, so let’s give it its due.
Shot Designer builds the shot list from the diagram. You draw the room from above, or import a production drawing as the background, place the cameras, the actors, the furniture and the lights, and animate the characters and the cameras moving through the scene in real time. Every camera position is a shot, with a type, a lens, props, gear and crew on it, numbered the way you like, A-1 or 1-A for multi-cam, and the list and the diagram stay in step both ways. Storyboard frames come in as keyframes, shot through the built-in viewfinder with the device’s camera and the lens recorded, or imported from a drawing you made elsewhere. There’s no pencil in the app, and a store review is still asking for one. The Pro version exports the diagram and the list as PDF, JPG and Excel, with your production details on the page. What it doesn’t do is cross scenes. Each file is one scene, and the only way to get a dozen scenes out is a batch export of the folder. There are no custom columns that I could find, no per-day view, and no stated number of frames a shot can hold.
CineLog runs two shot lists off the same shots, a linear one in script order and one per production day, with seventeen default columns, your own columns on top, and your own dropdown values for shot type, angle, lens and movement. You can populate the first pass of the list from the script and then reorder by drag, whole scenes at a time. The Cast & Crew column shows the cast by the same numbers the schedule uses, so one look tells you who’s in the shot. Each shot holds several storyboard frames, and the shot list PDF prints the frames next to the rows. What CineLog doesn’t have is a diagram. There’s no floor, no camera positions and no animation, and no drawing tool either. You bring the frames in as images, from a sketch, a photo or a previs render.
So on this section the two are good at different halves, honestly. Shot Designer blocks the scene on the floor. CineLog runs the list across the shoot. For Harbor, the DP wants tomorrow’s shots on an iPad at the location scout with the cast numbers on them. That’s CineLog. If the DP also wants to animate the dolly move through the kitchen, that’s a Shot Designer scene file next to it.
Call sheets
The next thing is the call sheet, and this is the document the whole crew judges the tool by, because it’s the only part nineteen of our 25 people will ever see.
Shot Designer has no call sheet, and it doesn’t claim to.
CineLog’s call sheet pulls the day from the stripboard and the shot list, so the schedule block is a live copy of the day and not a re-typed one, and the cast grid carries the numbers the breakdown gave the cast. It fills the weather and the sunrise and sunset from the location and the date, it carries the nearest hospital and the parking you saved on each location, and it autocompletes the addresses. It sends a personal PDF to each person by email, and for every person you see delivered, opened, confirmed or bounced. And the night before day five, the sheet for day five starts from what day four already knew.
For Harbor, that’s nineteen people who need a sheet every night, from the same project the shot list lives in.
Where you can actually use it
Now that we’ve gone through the documents, the next thing is where you can open them, and here Shot Designer covers more ground than most single-purpose tools.
Shot Designer runs on iPhone and iPad, on Android, and on Mac and Windows as a desktop app, and a Pro purchase on a phone unlocks the desktop too through an account. There’s no browser version. The iOS app was last updated in October 2024 and the Android one in September 2026, the desktop is on the same build as iOS, and the developer calls all of it the legacy 2D version while the 3D successor, promised since 2012, gets most of the attention. Sync and team sharing come with Pro, through Hollywood Camera Work’s own servers, and the developer’s own description of it is that it just syncs on timestamps. Scenes are files on the device, so the current scene is always saved, but the vendor doesn’t say anything about working offline.
CineLog is a native app on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android, and it also runs in a browser at app.cinelog.com. Every device keeps a local copy of the project, so the shot list, the script and the call sheets open with no signal at all. You can work offline for up to seven days after you’ve signed in, and when the connection comes back, your changes and everyone else’s merge in the background. The people you invite get view or edit rights per tool.
For me, for example, this is the one that decides it, because I’ve never been on a location where the signal was good in every room, and I’ve never had only one person touching the shot list. On Harbor, the DP changes the order at the scout and the AD changes it again at the production meeting. On CineLog that merges. On Shot Designer, the later timestamp wins.
Pricing, and who pays for the crew
And the last thing is the money, and here Shot Designer is the cheapest tool in this whole series, so let’s say that plainly.
Shot Designer is free to use on one scene at a time, with everything but saving, exporting and sync. Pro is $19.99, once, on the App Store, on Google Play, and as €19.99 on the site, and it unlocks file management, the Mac and PC Pro versions, sync and team sharing, and the PDF, JPG and Excel exports. There’s no subscription. Each person who syncs needs Pro, licenses float across a team with the owner deciding who gets one, and there are discounts for group purchases. For twenty dollars a head, once, that’s a very easy decision for a blocking tool.
CineLog has a free plan with one project, every tool, offline mode, and two collaborators. Filmmaker is $15 a month with three projects and twenty collaborators. Production Company is $40 with ten projects and fifty collaborators. Studio is $90 with thirty projects and a hundred collaborators. There are no seats. The people you invite make a free account and get view or edit rights on the project, based on what you give them, and one subscription unlocks the app on every platform.
So let’s put Harbor on it. Six editors, nineteen readers, one project.
| Tool | Plan for Harbor | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Shot Designer | Pro for the six who sync, once | About $120 once, for the diagrams and the per-scene lists |
| CineLog | Production Company, all 25 on the project | $40 a month, for the chain from script to call sheet |
That’s not a comparison of two prices. It’s a comparison of two jobs. Shot Designer is the cheaper way to block a scene, and CineLog is the only one of the two that runs the shoot.
What neither of them does
A quick word on what both leave out, because it’s the reason every production I’ve been on still had a spreadsheet open.
Drawing. Neither has a pencil. Shot Designer takes frames from its viewfinder or from images, and CineLog takes several images per shot.
The budget. Neither has one.
Post. Both stop at wrap. Review, approval and delivery are a separate tool and a separate bill.
A quick exercise before you pick
So here’s a quick exercise before you move on to a trial.
First, figure out what the shot list is for. If it’s for blocking one scene with the DP, with the camera moves animated on the floor, that’s what Shot Designer was built for. If it’s the document the AD runs the day from, read on.
Second, count the scenes. Shot Designer keeps one scene per file. Write down how many files Harbor would be, and how the AD gets tomorrow’s shots out of them in shooting order. On CineLog that’s the production day view.
Third, count the people who will change the list, and check the signal where they’ll do it. Two people and a timestamp sync is a lost edit waiting to happen.
The bottom line
Shot Designer is a camera-blocking tool that does the overhead diagram better than anything in this series, for $19.99 once. CineLog is the pick for the scripted shoot with a real crew, because the shot list comes off the script, runs in day order with the cast numbers on it, feeds the call sheet, and six people can change it at once on any device, with or without a signal. That’s Shot Designer vs CineLog.
Questions people ask
Is CineLog an alternative to Shot Designer?
For the shot list on a production, yes. CineLog builds it from the script, orders it per shooting day, holds several frames per shot and ties it to the schedule and the call sheet. What CineLog doesn’t do is the camera diagram. Shot Designer’s animated overhead diagram is its own thing, and nothing in CineLog replaces it.
Which one is cheaper?
Shot Designer, by a long way, for what it does. Pro is $19.99 once per user. CineLog is $40 a month on Production Company for a whole crew and every tool from the script to the call sheet.
Does Shot Designer work across a whole shoot?
Each Shot Designer file is one scene, and shots are ordered inside the scene. There’s no per-day shot list and no schedule. CineLog runs the shot list per production day next to the stripboard.
Which one works offline on set?
CineLog, on every device, for every tool, up to seven days, with everyone’s changes merged after. Shot Designer saves scenes locally and doesn’t state offline behavior, and its sync works on timestamps.
Can two people edit at the same time?
On CineLog, yes. On Shot Designer, the Pro team sharing syncs files, and the developer describes the sync as primitive and timestamp-based.
Which one has camera diagrams?
Shot Designer. It draws the set from above, places cameras, actors and lights, animates the moves, and writes the shot list from the diagram both ways. CineLog has no diagrams.
Which one handles the script and its revisions?
CineLog. It imports .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF and text, locks scene numbers and pages, colors revisions and exports the revised pages. Shot Designer doesn’t hold the script.
Does Shot Designer still get updates?
The Android app was updated in September 2026. The iOS and desktop apps are on a build from October 2024, and the developer calls the current app the legacy 2D version while working on a 3D successor with no release date.
Which one makes the call sheet?
CineLog, from the schedule day, with the weather, the sun times and the nearest hospital, sent per person with delivery and confirmation tracking. Shot Designer has no call sheet.
Can I switch from Shot Designer to CineLog?
Yes. Export the diagrams and shot lists from Shot Designer Pro as PDF or Excel for reference, bring the script into CineLog as .fdx, Fountain or PDF, populate the shot list from it, and attach the diagram and keyframe images to the shots. The breakdown is tagged on the page, with the cast done for you.
To recap
To recap, in this article we talked about picking on the shape of the job instead of feature count, we walked six things in order, the script and its revisions, the breakdown and the schedule, the shot list and the storyboards, the call sheet, where you can use it, and who pays, and we put a twelve-day, 25-person feature on both. Shot Designer blocks the scene on the floor for $19.99 once. CineLog runs the shot list through the shoot, with the whole crew on it, on any device.
If you want to see the CineLog chain for yourself, the Free plan is one project with every tool, and you make the account inside the app after you download it. So put your own Harbor on it, and then move on to the part that matters, which is the shoot.