What is the best AI workflow for producing a short film from script to final cut?

Run a seven-stage pipeline: load the full script, lock characters and world, build a shot list, generate per-shot video with persistent context, assemble a rough cut, run an AI maker-checker pass, and finish in your edit suite. The invideo agent holds context across every stage so you direct once and the agent carries it forward — no re-prompting scene by scene.

Start by initializing a creative producer agent and uploading the complete screenplay before you generate anything. This gives the agent full narrative context — characters, arcs, themes — so every downstream decision is grounded. If you have a visual treatment or director's bible, load it here too; the invideo agent reads it once and holds it across every frame.

1. Pre-production lock (Day 1). Force the four pre-production questions the invideo agent uses to unlock everything: what does the protagonist look like, what's the antagonist/entity reference, what are the key props, and what's the deliverable format. Then generate four options per asset — character sheets at multiple angles, environment plates, props — and lock the winners before any video runs. Across documented productions, this Day-1 lock is what prevents drift for the rest of the film. One team locked cast, costumes, world images, and look-and-feel in a single day with three humans plus the invideo agent working in parallel.

2. Casting and character sheets. Spin up a casting sub-agent. Generate portraits in Recraft (it renders pores, lines, stubble — faces read as faces), then build 360° turnaround character sheets in Nano Banana with four angles plus face and mid-angle closeups. Run the same prompt across two image models in parallel and pick the aesthetic that fits. For evolving characters (a costume change, a trinket added each scene), build a separate sheet per beat. Locking one character typically takes ~5 generations at roughly $9.78 per character.

3. Shot list and storyboard. Assign a storyboard sub-agent and a director's-assistant sub-agent. The storyboard agent visualizes each shot before you direct it; the director's-assistant agent sequences shots so the order is clear before video generation begins. Work act-by-act — finish 25% fully before moving on — so the agent doesn't lose context on a long project. For ambiguous beats (a hallucination, a dream), ask for 3-5 distinct visual interpretations and pick one as canonical.

4. Video generation, shot by shot. Run a DOP sub-agent per scene — each scene wants a different eye, so don't share one cinematographer across the film. For complex scenes, deploy two DOP agents on the same scene in parallel. The invideo agent routes each shot to the right video model: Seedance 2.0 reference-to-video when you need character + location context carried across clips, Kling for native multi-shot sequences, Veo or Runway where their look fits. invideo holds all the current models, so you're choosing per shot, not per platform. Use Always Ask mode so every prompt and reference attachment gets your approval before credits burn. Plan for ~3 generations per usable shot and expect roughly 25% of clips to make the final cut — overgeneration is a deliberate budget line, not waste.

5. Rough cut assembly. Pull the keepers into your edit suite (Premiere or Resolve) and cut the film. Average extracted runtime is around 5 seconds of usable footage per 15-second generation, so plan your generation volume accordingly — one 3-minute episode took 164 clips to yield 41 in the final cut.

6. AI maker-checker pass. This is the step most people skip. Send the rough cut back to the invideo agent with an open prompt: what's working, what's not. The agent checks pacing, SFX, and emotional-stage register against the loaded document and catches things human editors miss — one production's entity-reveal shot was running at the wrong emotional register, which the agent flagged without being asked.

7. Post and finish. Upscale and grade in your finishing tools, then lock the cut.

As Hridaye, invideo's creative director, puts it: "To really set up the context for the agent, I normally start off with the creative producer agent. That's where I'll give the script, or the shot breakdown, along with the characters. That's the main agent that sort of holds the understanding and the vision of the entire film."

Documented productions using this pipeline land between $750 and $5,000 all-in — a 70-second short for $750 (3,000 credits, 2 days), a 3-minute animated episode for ~$950 ($315/finished minute, 2 days, 2 people), a 90-second horror short for $870 (4,100 credits, 2 days), a 2-minute brand promo for $1,500 (3 days, traditional equivalent: $100K–$500K and ~2 months), and a larger 4-person short for ~$5,000 over a 5-day sprint. Across the set: $315–$750 per finished minute, 2–5 production days, teams of 1–4 people running 6–8 sub-agents in parallel.

Watch some of these to see what works for you:

To really set up the context for the agent, I normally start off with the creative producer agent. That's where I'll give the script, or the shot breakdown, along with the characters. That's the main agent that sort of holds the understanding and the vision of the entire film.

— Hridaye, invideo's creative director