CBB: The Decision That Ships Films

What CBB Actually Means

Could Be Better. That's it. A CBB shot is a shot that clears the bar — it works in the cut, it does its job, it doesn't break anything — but it fell short of what was hoped for. It gets flagged. It stays in the film. Production continues.

CBB is not a failure state. It is a production decision. The alternative to CBB is holding production until a shot is perfect. That alternative is how projects stall. A 5% improvement that costs two sessions and blocks everything downstream is not a good trade.

Several shots in the Arctic thriller are CBB in the final cut. None of them break the film. The film shipped because of CBB, not despite it.

Why It's Harder Than It Sounds

The tools make iteration feel free. One more generation costs one more credit and thirty seconds. There's no physical cost to trying again — no burned film stock, no lighting rig to rebuild, no actor to call back. The feedback loop is so fast that stopping feels like giving up.

But production time is not free. Creative momentum is not free. The accumulation of one-more-tries is how projects stall at 90% complete — technically still in progress, practically abandoned. Every session spent chasing a shot from 80% to 85% is a session not spent on the shots that are still at zero.

The question to ask before generating again is not "could this be better?" Everything could be better. The question is: does this shot break the film at its current state? If not — flag it CBB and move on.

The Shot Tracker

CBB only works as a system if you have a way to track it. Every production needs a shot tracker — a document with a row for every shot and a status flag that tells you at a glance where things stand. Six flags, used consistently throughout The Last Analog:

TBD — not started. WIP — something exists but isn't locked. Done — complete, no further action. CBB — in the cut, usable, flagged for revisit. Redo — rejected, must be regenerated. Reuse — existing footage, no new generation needed.

The tracker does two things. It shows you what's left — which matters when production is in full swing and the remaining work can feel abstract. And it gives you permission to move forward. A row marked Done or CBB is closed. You're not coming back to it unless you choose to. That permission is more valuable than it sounds.

The 80/20 Rule

A shot at 80% of what it could be is a shot that's done. Not perfect — done. There's a difference, and conflating the two is one of the most reliable ways to never finish anything.

The Last Analog had three shots flagged CBB in the final cut. I know which ones they are. I could point to the frame where each one falls short of what I wanted. None of them break the film. Viewers don't know they exist. The film is better for having shipped with those three shots than it would have been if production had stalled trying to fix them.

That's the trade CBB makes explicit: a slightly imperfect film that exists, versus a perfect film that doesn't.