Picture Lock

What this is about

Everything downstream references timecode. A sound designer places effects to the frame, a colourist grades shot by shot, a graphics artist tracks a title onto a moving surface — and each of them loses that work if a cut shifts by twelve frames afterwards. Picture lock is therefore a scheduling instrument as much as a creative one: it is the date from which parallel departments can start without risk. Late changes are still possible, but they arrive as a documented change list with a cost attached rather than as a quiet update.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• Sound, grading and graphics start only after lock, because all three reference exact timecode
• Late changes travel as a documented change list with a named cost, not as a silent update
• Put the lock date in the schedule early; every department downstream plans against it

With TillyGen

An approval recorded in TillyGen turns picture lock into a documented decision with a date and a name attached, not a sentence in a chat thread.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.