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Lock Approved Elements

Goal: Lock scenes, shots, or script sections so no one on the team — including you — can accidentally change them during later production work.

As a project grows, protecting finished work becomes as important as creating new work. Locking is ACT3 AI's safeguard mechanism: a locked element cannot be regenerated, edited, re-assigned, or deleted until it is explicitly unlocked. Use locking whenever a director, producer, or client has signed off on something and that approval needs to stick.

If you are working solo: locking still protects you from your own future self. It is easy to accidentally overwrite a great shot three days after you created it.

Steps​

  1. Understand what locking protects. A locked shot cannot be re-generated, and its camera, performance, or set parameters cannot be edited. A locked scene blocks edits to all shots within it and prevents the scene's set assignment or script text from changing. A locked script section prevents dialogue and action lines from being altered by AI rewrites or manual edits.

  2. Lock a single shot. Open the shot in the Shot panel. In the top-right corner of the Shot panel header, click the padlock icon. It changes from open to closed and turns gold. The shot thumbnail in the Timeline also shows a small gold padlock badge.

  3. Lock an entire scene. In the Scene panel (left sidebar → click the scene name), look for the padlock icon in the Scene panel header — next to the scene title. Click it. A confirmation dialog appears: "Lock this scene? All shots inside will also be locked." Click Confirm. Every shot in the scene locks at once.

  4. Lock a script section. Open the Script view in the Editor. Select the lines you want to lock (click and drag to highlight, or click a scene heading to select the entire scene block). Right-click and choose Lock Selection. The locked lines gain a subtle gold left-border in the Script editor and cannot be changed until unlocked.

  5. Identify locked items at a glance. In the Timeline, locked shots display a gold padlock badge on their thumbnail. Locked scenes display a padlock on the scene row header. In the Script view, locked sections have the gold left-border. In the Shot List panel, a filter option — Status: Locked — shows all locked shots across the project.

  6. Unlock an element when changes are needed. Click the gold padlock icon on the shot, scene, or script section again. A confirmation dialog appears: "Unlock this element? It will no longer be protected." Click Confirm. The padlock returns to open state and the element is editable again.

  7. Understand role requirements for locking and unlocking. Any member with the Modify-Edit role or higher can lock elements. Unlocking a locked element requires the Owner or Modify-Edit role. Members with Run AI or Read-Only roles cannot lock or unlock anything. This means a director can lock a scene and a client with Read-Only access cannot accidentally undo that.

  8. Review the full lock status of a project. Go to Project Settings → Production Status. A per-scene table shows how many shots are locked, approved, pending, and flagged. Use this view before sending a project to a client or before exporting for delivery.

Next steps​