Build videos through a shared staged Director that can cut source footage, design and animate scenes, inspect rendered holds and cut boundaries, run deterministic QA, and attempt one bounded repair cycle.
Where: AI assistant (video project) → describe the video — Ask the AI to make a video
Key ideas
- The 7 stages: Visual direction → script → design system → design scenes → animate → effects → sound & captions.
- GSAP-authored: Scenes come with real animated timelines (stagger, text-split, draw/morph), not static slides.
- Media-first: It prefers your assets, then stock (Pexels/Unsplash), then generation.
- Footage stage: Connected source footage can be analyzed, cut into exact source ranges, assembled on the master timeline, reframed to keep its subject visible, and speed-ramped.
- Rendered-frame art direction: The Director captures mid-hold plus pre/post-cut frames from the render bundle and compares each scene with its ordered shot and legibility requirements.
- Repair only where a lever exists: Unreadable text, missing media, and empty frames can enter the bounded repair path; composition judgments without a safe redesign lever remain warnings.
Steps
- Open the AI in a video project.
- Describe the video (and approve the visual direction when asked).
- Let it design, animate, and score the scenes.
- Review and tweak per scene.
Seven-stage build
- Visual direction.
- Script.
- Design system.
- Scene design.
- Animation.
- Effects.
- Sound and captions.
Review gates
Approve the direction/script before generation-heavy stages. Review each scene’s duration, framing, legibility, motion, media rights, and relationship to voice/music before final export.
Visual review vocabulary
- Unreadable text.
- Cropped subject.
- Composition collision.
- Dead-center drift.
- Flat background.
- Type too small.
- Missing media.
- Empty frame.
Tips
- Provide target duration, aspect ratios, audience, platform, voice, and must-use assets in the first brief.
- Lock the script before expensive scene/media generation where possible.
Limitations and important notes
- The vision gate can be unavailable; when that happens the build continues and records the reason instead of claiming a visual review.
- Only one bounded repair cycle runs, and composition warnings may require manual redesign.