Three Nights of Watching – 80 Episodes – Bible + Storyboard

A professional watcher who has sat forty corpses through three nights each has never once been spoken to by the dead, until the night he breaks the single rule that was keeping them silent.

Dane Relling is forty-four and has watched forty corpses through three nights apiece at the Mourning House. The trade has one rule that matters: sit, stay awake, say nothing, and do not answer when the dead speak to you on the third night. Dane has never had cause to obey it, because the dead have never spoken to him, and he has quietly taken that as a compliment. His forty-first vigil is for Elin Ward, a woman from the harbour end he half-remembered and never spoke to. On the second night he sleeps for the first time in twenty years and the candle dies, and on the third night Elin asks him a question he already knows the answer to.

Part A – the script bible

• Logline, premise, setting and the story engine that generates episodes
• World rules written as hard story constraints
• Character bible – 5 roles, each with a stated voice and a stated arc
• Relationship map
• Three-act structure with act-by-act episode ranges
• Turning points mapped to episode numbers
• Episode hook map for episodes 1-10: the closing beat of each episode
• Three written scene samples
• Marketing copy you may reuse on your own platforms

Part B – the storyboard

• Episodes 1-5 broken down panel by panel
• Every panel gives shot size, camera move, panel duration, the drawn action, the dialogue, the sound cue and the transition out
• Panel budget for episodes 1-20 with effect and motion counts
• Full art asset list: character sheets, background plates, props and effect overlays, with reuse notes

Series facts

• 80 episodes at 60-90 seconds per episode
• Genre: Occult Horror & Mystery
• Vertical 9:16, motion-comic panel animation
• Production tier: Low-Mid
• Board 3 episodes per week with 2 boarders; line art 5 days per episode, colour 3, composite 1. 80 episodes in 18 weeks with a 6-person team

Production notes

• Cast: 11 speaking roles, 5 principal (3 male, 2 female), 6 supporting, plus single-line corpse roles
• Backgrounds: 6 standing backgrounds: the vigil room, the mortuary slab, the day-book desk, the town lane at night, the chapel, the barred door; 2 swing backgrounds
• Key props: the day book, one tallow candle in a tin dish, the watcher’s stool, a winding sheet over a fixed body form, a bell rope
• Cost tier: Low-Mid – one room carries most of the run and the dead are a single static figure under cloth
• Art assets: 34 character sheets (5 principal x 4 expressions x 2 poses, plus one clothed body form for the dead), 8 background plates with 4 parallax layers each, 11 prop cutouts, 7 overlays (candle bloom, sea light, rain on glass, wax, sheet drift)
• Panel load: 1,152 panels across 80 episodes at 13-17 panels per episode; the vigil room background appears in 31 episodes unmodified

Format note: this is a complete development package for a vertical motion-comic series, not a finished shooting script. Episodes 1-5 carry full panel dialogue; from episode 6 the budget and hook map carry the beats and you write in your own register.

Delivery and licence

• Instant download. One plain-text package file, no software required.
• Licensed for development, adaptation and production of the material described above.
• Adaptation, translation and sub-licensing require the extended licence supplied with the All-Access Master Library.
• Because the files are delivered immediately and cannot be returned, all sales are final once the download link has been used. See our Refund Policy.