Cut · Heist1:02
The Last Reel
Logline: A retiring projectionist and a nervous usher have one closing night to lift a reel of unreleased footage from the cinema vault before the chain demolishes the building.
Survival · 2 minute target
A micro film generator that generates structure first
A micro film is not a clip. It is a story told in a minute or three, and the difference is structure. Flicks generates the structure as a beat sheet you can read, then shoots it one beat at a time.
Blue Ice, a cut in the Survival genre. Logline: A glacier guide separated from her group by a whiteout has one flare, a cracked thermal camera and six hours of daylight to find the orange tent.
What gets generated, and in what order
The word generator usually promises a single step. Here there are four, and each one leaves something you can inspect. First the beat sheet: from your logline and genre the drafter writes eight to twelve beats with a shot size and a duration each. Second the scenes: every beat is rendered as its own widescreen shot with reference images for the people, the costumes and the place. Third the cut: the scenes in beat order between a title card and an end-credits card. Fourth, optionally, the trailer and the poster.
Because the stages are separate, you can stop at any of them. Some people draft three beat sheets for three loglines and shoot only the one that reads best. Some shoot a single beat to see how a character renders before committing to the rest. Credits are only spent on the step you take.
Keeping a micro film coherent
The thing that makes a micro film feel like a film is continuity. The same face in beat two and beat nine, the same coat, the same kitchen. The cast library is how that happens: a character is a generated portrait that is sent to the renderer as a reference on every beat they appear in, and a costume is a separate reference so the wardrobe does not drift. Sets work the same way. A beat that names a set gets the set plate as a reference, and a wide shot and a close-up in the same set look like the same room.
The genre you pick adds a tone block to every scene: the lighting, the pace of the camera, how people perform and what the soundtrack is made of. A noir micro film and a screwball micro film shot from similar beat sheets will not look alike, because the tone block tells the renderer how the genre looks before it reads your line.
Runtime targets
Sixty seconds gives you eight beats of about seven seconds. One hundred and twenty gives you ten beats of about eleven. One hundred and eighty gives you twelve beats of up to fifteen seconds, which is the longest single shot the renderer makes. The sheet shows a live total as you edit, including the six seconds of cards, so you always know what the cut will run.
Where micro films end up
The cut downloads as a 1920 by 1080 file with stereo sound. If you publish the flick, it gets a page with the poster, the logline, the cut and the trailer, and the cut appears in the showcase. Anything you keep private stays in your library and never appears anywhere public.
Made the same way
Each with the logline or beat that made itCut · Road Movie1:58
Salt Flats
Logline: Two estranged sisters drive their late father’s pickup across the desert to scatter his ashes at a drive-in that closed thirty years ago.
Scene · Ghost Story10s
Lamp Room
Beat: Hyacinth climbs the last spiral stair into the lamp room with a candle. The lamp is already lit. She says, quietly, "I thought you had gone." Slow push in on her face.
Questions
- Is a micro film the same as a short film here?
- Yes. We call everything a flick. Micro film usually means the one-minute end of the range; three minutes is the longest runtime target.
- Can I generate the whole thing in one click?
- No, and that is deliberate. The beat sheet is drafted in one step and you read it before any scene is shot. Shooting is per beat so you can reshoot one shot without paying for the rest again.
- What resolution are micro films?
- The cut is always 1920 by 1080. Scenes can be shot at 480p, 720p or 1080p and are scaled into the frame; a 720p scene looks good in the cut, 480p is fine for drafts.
- Who owns the micro films I generate?
- You own what you make, as set out in the terms of service. Copyright on generated work is handled differently by different countries, so get advice locally if it matters to you. Read the terms.
- Do scenes have sound?
- Scenes are rendered with audio: ambience, and spoken lines when the beat includes dialogue. Voice styles are descriptions that steer delivery, not recordings of anyone.
Start with the sample logline, or your own
The studio opens with this logline, genre and runtime filled in. Change anything.