SallyRS/video-director

README preview

# Video Director

**A Claude Code skill that directs short videos from brief to finished render.** Product launch films, explainers, brand films, designed demos, vertical social shorts, event and data videos, and live-action story ads, from about 6 seconds to 3 minutes, mixing motion graphics with photos, footage and generated clips.

You direct; Claude designs and builds. Nothing is animated until you have approved it as still frames, and every visual decision is a pick from 2-3 real options, never a reaction to one take.

![Reviewing a storyboard: flipping through a scene's frames and pinning a note to one](docs/images/storyboard-walkthrough.gif)

*Every example on this page is from a real project: a 52-second ad for [Best Light](https://bestlight.ai), a Mac webcam app. All the people in it are AI-generated.*

## What's inside

- **Rules measured from real films, not guessed.** Text sizes, positions, reading times and motion rules come from measuring 59 films across seven types. The visual ideas come from studying 34 films and ads. The lessons from building real films were checked against 56 more before they became rules.
- **8 video types**, each with its own defaults, films worth studying, and a "default versus better" table: product launch, explainer, brand film, demo or tutorial, social short, event, recap or data, showcase, and live-action story.
- **57 animation styles**, grouped by lead medium, each with an example film to look up.
- **A zoomable storyboard page** you can pin notes to, a motion spec with a named move, timing and easing for every change, and an animated test before the full build.
- **Sound made by film type.** Live-action films take their sound and spoken lines from the video model, checked with speech-to-text. Motion-design films get a few real recorded effects. Every film's music is fitted to the cut on its bar lines (`scripts/fit_music.py`). Every sound file is listed with its source and licence, and `scripts/check_sources.py` checks the list.
- **A sound engineering step for effects.** Every sound is planned with the motion spec, one moment at a time. Video Director's own copy of [real-sfx](https://github.com/Clipwing/skills/tree/main/skills/real-sfx) by Clipwing places a real recording from your own sound library on each planned frame. `scripts/sound_handoff.py` hands it the plan and brings its effects track back. It checks every sound against the plan (nothing missing, nothing extra, nothing off its frame) and fills in the sources list. Then the levels are measured against the music, and you listen.
- **Render checks** in Python: frames on both sides of every cut, choppy motion, text size and reading time by role, sound levels, continuity between shots, delivery specs, and an optional motion watch by a video model.

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