The Complete Workflow

StoryDirector turns a written story into a directed film. Between those two things sit five screens, and each one asks you for something different. This guide walks the whole path in order, says what you decide at each stage, and — the part that matters most — tells you when a decision stops being reversible.

Every other guide goes deep on one stage. This one is the map.

The five surfaces

1. 1 Creative intent — three questions Before your story exists, you answer three questions: how it should be built, what it should look like, and how it should feel. These are chosen once and locked to the story.
2. 2 The wizard — write the story You write the story itself, in one text field or in Director mode's labelled sections. Then an editor reads it and offers a cut, which you review one change at a time — keeping some, reverting others, or declining the whole thing.
3. 3 Director Review — fix things before compiling The engine has read your story and found your cast, your locations and your beats. This is where you approve character identities, generate or upload set images, and correct beats.
4. 4 Director Output — render the shots Your story is now a shot list. You choose a video model and quality, then render — one shot, a chain of shots, or the whole film.
5. 5 Your final cut — assemble and export Once every shot has rendered, StoryDirector stitches them into one video. You can render new versions, upload your own cut, and export your assets.

What you decide, and when it locks

Most of what you do in StoryDirector can be changed later. Three things cannot, or cannot cheaply, and they are worth knowing before you start rather than after.

Your three creative choices lock at creation

Format, style and tone are chosen before the story exists, and they stay with it. There is no re-styling an existing story today — and the reason is practical rather than arbitrary. Those three choices feed the prompts that generate your set images and your character identity images. By the time you might want to change them, those images already exist in the old look, and nothing on the page could reconcile the two.

If you want the same story in a different visual style, create it again with different answers. Writing a Story the Engine Can Direct covers what each of the three axes actually changes.

Approving the Director Review starts compilation

When you approve, StoryDirector compiles your prompts in the background and moves you to the output page. That is the moment your beats, cast and sets become the shot list. You can still edit individual shots afterwards — but the cheap time to fix a wrong character description or a bad set image is before you approve, not after.

Rendered shots depend on each other

Many shots continue directly from the previous shot's final frame. That is what gives a scene its continuity — and it means re-rendering a shot leaves everything built on top of it out of sync until those shots are re-rendered too. This is the single most useful rule in the product, and The Director Output is entirely built around it.

Where the money goes

Not everything in StoryDirector costs credits, and the things that do are not all the same size. In rough order of how often you meet them:

• Writing, analysing and reviewing your story — included. Editing beats, editing character descriptions, and saving a set description are free and reversible.
• Character identity images — the first generation for each character in a story is free. Generating another one for the same character uses credits.
• Set images — the first image for each scene is free. Generating another one for that scene uses credits. Uploading your own doesn't touch the free one.
• Rendering video — the real cost, and the one that varies most. What a shot costs depends on the model, the output quality, the shot's duration and whether audio is on. The render console shows you the number and your balance before you commit to anything.

See current pricing.

A realistic first run

If this is your first story, the shortest path to something you can watch:

1. 1 Write something short Three or four beats, two named characters, one or two locations. A long story is not a harder story to direct, but it is a slower one to learn on.
2. 2 Generate every character before you approve Use "Generate all characters" on the Director Review. Each character's first image is free, and identity is what keeps faces the same across shots.
3. 3 Look at every set image full size The set image is the quality ceiling for every shot in that scene. If it is wrong, nothing rendered from it will be right.
4. 4 Render one shot before you render twelve Pick a shot, choose a model, and render it alone. You will learn more from watching one finished shot than from any amount of planning.
5. 5 Then render the rest with the same model Mixing models across one story costs you visual consistency. The render console says this too.

Where to go next

• Writing a Story the Engine Can Direct — how the engine reads prose, and what structure survives.
• Choosing Your Video Model — what actually differs between the models, in plain terms.
• Character Generation & Identity — keeping a face consistent across a whole film.
• Set Generation — one image per scene, and everything built on it.
• The Director Review — the last cheap place to fix things.
• The Director Output — rendering, chains, and re-rendering in the right order.
• Editing & Your Final Cut — the editor, assembly, versions and exports.