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Back-to-One
Blocking apps stop after the blocking. This one doesn't.
Back-to-One is a blocking and shot list tool for directors and cinematographers, built by a working TV director. Place actors, cameras and lights on a top-down canvas, and the shot list comes out grouped by camera setup, with time estimates that add up to a day and shots you tick off live on set. Dim and red-light modes keep it readable on a blacked-out stage. For iPad and Mac, synced through iCloud, no account and no tracking.
Hi Product Hunt,
I'm Erik, a working television director in Germany. I've directed comedy series like Pastewka, Sketch History and Ladykracher, and I co-created a children's character called Bernd das Brot. About twenty years on set.
Blocking apps exist. I used them for years, and they all stop at the same place: right after the blocking. The shot list came out flat in scene order, although you shoot by camera position, so I re-sorted it by hand every time. There were no time estimates, so it was never really a schedule. And on the shoot day itself none of them helped, because there was nothing to tick off and a white screen is unusable on a blacked-out stage. The app stayed in prep and paper came to set.
So I built the second half. In Back-to-One you place actors, cameras, lights and walls on a top-down canvas, and the same setup generates the shot list, an animated playback of the blocking and a viewfinder preview in your shooting format. Move a camera and the list updates; edit the list and the canvas follows.
The shot list is grouped by camera setup, so it reads in the order you actually shoot. Every shot carries a time estimate with totals per setup and per day, which makes it a schedule you can argue about with your first AD. Shots get ticked off live on set, and full-screen, dim and red-light modes keep it readable in the dark.
A few things underneath: field of view computed from real sensor sizes and focal lengths across six formats including anamorphic, a 180-degree checker that flags axis breaks during prep instead of in the edit, real sun position for exterior shoot dates, and script import from FDX or PDF that builds the project scene by scene. Out the back come set PDFs per camera position, call sheets, lighting plots and the shot list as PDF, Excel or CSV.
It's Apple-only on purpose: iPad and Mac, synced and shared through iCloud, with no server of mine anywhere in the product, no account and no tracking. Unreleased scripts stay in your own iCloud. German and English throughout, including the exported paperwork.
Free to download with a 7-day full trial, then EUR 8.99/month, EUR 89.99/year, or EUR 199.99 once for lifetime.
I'd genuinely love feedback from people who block for a living. Where does the tool stop and the paper start for you? I'll be here all day.
https://back-to-one.de
About Back-to-One on Product Hunt
“Blocking apps stop after the blocking. This one doesn't.”
Back-to-One was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 3 upvotes and 1 comments, placing #90 on the daily leaderboard. Back-to-One is a blocking and shot list tool for directors and cinematographers, built by a working TV director. Place actors, cameras and lights on a top-down canvas, and the shot list comes out grouped by camera setup, with time estimates that add up to a day and shots you tick off live on set. Dim and red-light modes keep it readable on a blacked-out stage. For iPad and Mac, synced through iCloud, no account and no tracking.
On the analytics side, Back-to-One competes within iPad, Design Tools and Productivity — topics that collectively have 927.5k followers on Product Hunt. The dashboard above tracks how Back-to-One performed against the three products that launched closest to it on the same day.
Who hunted Back-to-One?
Back-to-One was hunted by Erik Haffner. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
For a complete overview of Back-to-One including community comment highlights and product details, visit the product overview.
Erik Haffner