The Master Guide

The Master Guide is a working reference for directors who make commercials and short films with AI. It follows the making of a film from the brief to the delivered files, with worked examples at every stage and one film, The Cold Seat, followed through all eight.

Everything later rests on what you understand now. This chapter takes a brief, in whatever form it arrives, to the Detailed Brief you bring to the first meeting: the locked items, the analysis, the research, the culture and dialect rules, the insight, the first language decisions and the questions.

The director's treatment decides every department, the casting and the storyboard. The second section designs, checks and sends every client presentation, from the concept pages to the final film page.

Every still a film needs: the one order every still prompt follows, storyboard frames, staging maps and cut-outs, then the photoreal anchors made in Nano Banana Pro and the stylised anchors made in Seedream 5.0 Pro. Voices are anchors too; they are made in Voice and lip sync.

The camera, the light and the details that make a generated shot read as filmed: one designed move and one lens per shot, one motivated light and one look line per film, and the signs that give AI away.

Every recorded voice, Arabic first, made on ElevenLabs: casting the dialect, spelling for the engine, takes and checks. Then every speaking shot: its route, the sound-off plate and the lip sync on the exact approved take.

Every film's music comes from Suno, a hero track included. This chapter writes the music brief, sets Suno's controls, handles sung Arabic and the real singer, then makes and screens three options against the cut and covers downloads and the licence.

The last stage: one gentle grade and one texture for the whole film with the product's colour protected, then graphics, captions, every version, the exports and their checks, and the editable timeline that goes with the files.

Every tool the Guide uses, its job, its key settings and price, and the topic that teaches it. If a figure here ever differs from its home topic, the home topic wins.

The creators, studios, films and makers' guides the Guide relies on most, then what changed in this edition and when each chapter was last reviewed.

How every film moves from brief to delivery: the eight stages and their gates, what the client sees, how notes and approvals work, where the files live, and the quality bar all work must clear before anyone sees it.

From the brief to two or three ranked concepts in one presentation, and the references that sharpen every stage: what counts, how to read one, and how a sourced still reaches a client page.

Your shot plan (the plan, for short) turns the approved treatment into shots, generations, assets and money before anything is built. It only divides what the treatment decided; it never changes it.

Every moving shot is made here, in Seedance 2.5, the one video model in this stack: from approved anchors and references to a keeper, through the prompt, drafts and finishes, and judging and fixing takes. Then eighteen complete shot recipes to copy.

Seedance acts the way you write it: as tasks, timings and visible behaviour, never as named emotions. This chapter directs the faces and bodies inside a generated shot. Speaking shots, the camera and the light have their own chapters.

The edit turns approved takes into the film: voices first, an assembly that grows with every batch, cuts placed by each shot's ending, and an editable timeline that holds every asset. This chapter runs from the locked voices to the client's rough cut.

A film's sound is built in three layers, real sound first, against the locked cut and with the music playing. Both come before this chapter: the cut in Editing, the music in Music. This chapter covers where each sound comes from, the sound effects, the mix, the placed voice, loudness and the stems.

What changes from genre to genre, department by department, and the Seedance levers that carry each change into a generated shot. Each genre is short on purpose: the methods it uses are taught in their own chapters, and its page points to them.

The terms a newcomer to this Guide won't know, each in one line, with the page that teaches it. The definition is a reminder; the home topic holds the method.