A shot list you can film alone
Describe the video and pick a length. You get a timed shot list - what the camera sees, what the hands do, the on-screen text and the line to say - plus the b-roll to grab in advance, one note on sound and the three things to put on the table before you press record.
The AI Storyboard Generator turns a scene into a shot-by-shot board with the length and the visual style you choose, so the order of the shots is decided before filming. The board comes back as text you can hand to a camera operator.
Thirty seconds is six shots, not one idea
A short video fails in the edit far more often than in the idea. The idea survives; what does not survive is five seconds of holding one frame while a voice explains. The frame is the rhythm, and the rhythm is what keeps a thumb from moving.
Six shots, thirty seconds, five seconds of setup for every second of payoff. A storyboard is a shooting schedule that happens to have pictures on it.
Notice where the information sits: the first shot carries the promise, the last shot carries the reason to stay, and the four in the middle carry the demonstration. A storyboard that puts the point at second twenty-two is a storyboard for people who already follow you.
It is a schedule before it is a drawing
The useful part of a storyboard is not the sketch. It is the decision, made before the camera comes out, that this video has six shots and each one lasts five seconds. That decision tells you how many times you have to move the phone, whether you need a second location, and whether the thing you planned to demonstrate can be shown in one continuous take.
Most videos that take an afternoon to film take that long because the shot list was discovered during the shoot. You film the intro, realise the light is wrong, move to the window, realise the audio is now bad, and reshoot the whole thing. A shot list with timings turns that into a sequence of small tasks: set up here, shoot these three, move once, shoot the rest.
It also makes the edit shorter. Footage shot against a list has a beginning and an end, so the timeline is assembled rather than excavated. The clips you do not need never get filmed, which is the only real way to save time on a video.
How many shots a length actually needs
| Length | Shots | What has to go | What the last shot does |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 seconds | 4 | the setup, the context, the explanation | repeats the hook as a result |
| 30 seconds | 6 | the second example, the caveat | asks for the follow |
| 60 seconds | 9 | nothing, if the middle earns it | points at the next video |
| 90 seconds | 12 | the third example, unless it proves something | closes the loop opened at 0:00 |
Sixty seconds is the length that catches people out. It is long enough to need a structure and short enough that a viewer expects a payoff before it ends, so a 60-second video with a 15-second idea feels longer than a 90-second one with three. If the script will not fill nine shots, cut the video to thirty and keep the good half.
From the list to the card
Describe the ending first
What does the viewer know or feel at the last second? Every shot before it exists to make that landing work.
Shoot in shot order once
Not story order. Group the shots that share a setup, then reassemble in the edit - it halves the moving.
Film two versions of the hook
The first three seconds decide everything. Shoot the hook twice, differently, and choose in the edit.
Grab the b-roll while set up
Four extra shots, ten seconds each. They are what covers a jump cut and what makes a flat section move.
Rules for a one-person shoot
Move the phone as little as possible. Three shots from the same angle look like a sequence; three shots that required moving the tripod look like three videos stitched together. Decide the geography before you start: where the camera is, where the hands are, where the window is.
A phone in a room records the room. Get within half a metre of the person speaking, or record the voice separately and replace it. The viewer forgives a soft image in a second and never forgives echo, and the fix costs nothing before the shoot and an hour after it.
On a vertical platform the bottom fifth is covered by the caption, the handle and the buttons. Keep faces and text in the upper middle, and check a frame on the phone before shooting the rest. The safe zone checker on this site shows exactly where the overlays land.
What comes back with the shot list
Timings, not guesses
Each shot gets a start and an end that add up to the length you chose, so the list fits the video instead of describing a longer one.
Camera, action and line
What the frame shows, what the hands do, the on-screen text and the sentence to say - four separate decisions, written separately.
B-roll you can grab
Four shots to film while the setup is still standing, which is what covers the cuts in the edit.
Props and sound
Three things on the table and one note about music, including where it should drop out.
Shooting a short video from a list
The hook is a shot, not a sentence
The first three seconds of a short are usually described as a line of text or a spoken sentence, and that is half of it. The other half is the frame: a hand already in motion, a screen that is visibly wrong, a result shown before the explanation. A hook that only exists in the audio has to be heard; a hook in the frame is understood before the sound comes on, which is how most people watch.
Write the hook twice in the shot list and shoot both. It costs twenty seconds and it is the difference between a video that gets watched and one that gets skipped, and you cannot tell which is which until the edit.
Plan the middle as a demonstration
The middle of a short is not an explanation, it is a demonstration with the explanation underneath. Show the action at full size, then show the result. A viewer who can see the thing working will accept a rough edit; a viewer watching a person talk about the thing working will not.
If the demonstration needs more than four shots, the video is longer than thirty seconds. That is not a problem - it is a decision to make before you start, not after you have filmed half of it.
Write the on-screen text before the script
On a phone, most viewers read the text and listen second. If the text says the same thing as the voice, one of them is wasted. Good captions carry the claim in four words and let the voice carry the detail: ONE STEP on screen, the explanation in the audio.
That also makes the video accessible without a separate subtitle pass, and it makes the silent autoplay version work, which is where most of the views come from.
Shoot in blocks, edit in order
Group the shots by setup, not by position in the video. Three shots from the desk, two from the window, one to camera: that is three setups for six shots, and it is twenty minutes instead of an hour. Keep a note of which take is which, because six clips that all start with a hand entering frame are indistinguishable in a file browser.
The edit is where the list pays off
With a shot list, the timeline is assembled in the order the list already has, and the cuts fall where the shots were designed to end. Without one, the edit becomes a search for a structure inside the footage, which is the slowest part of video work and the least enjoyable.
Cut on movement, not on silence. A hand leaving the frame is a free cut; a pause is a reason for a thumb to move.
One video, three platforms
The same six shots work on Shorts, Reels and TikTok, but not with the same first frame. Shoot the opening with a little air around the subject so a square crop still works, and export the vertical as the master. Re-shooting a hook for a second platform is cheap; re-shooting the demonstration is not.
What to do when nothing fits
If the shot list comes back and the shots do not add up to a video you would watch, the idea is a paragraph, not a video. That is worth knowing before the camera comes out, and it is the fastest possible outcome: one run of the tool instead of an afternoon of filming.
Five runs a day is enough for a week of shorts. Plan them together, shoot them in one session, and spend the time you saved on the hook.
Before you film
Do I need to draw the frames?expand_more
Why is the timing even?expand_more
Can it plan a video with two people?expand_more
Does it write the script as well?expand_more
What if the shots are too ambitious?expand_more
Plan the shoot before you pick up the phone
Describe the video, choose the length and take a shot list with timings to the set.
fact_checkQuick facts
- A storyboard fixes the order of the shots; the same scene as a list of shots and as a script produces two different films.
- Each shot on a board describes one camera position, so a scene with two people talking is already three shots before anyone moves.
- A language model reads text in tokens, and one token is roughly four characters of English, so a 300-word answer is about 400 tokens.menu_bookOpenAI Cookbook
- The output depends on the prompt: the same request with a different tone or length instruction produces a different text, not a different answer quality.menu_bookOpenAI Cookbook
helpQuestions people ask
What is a storyboard in filmmaking?expand_more
How many shots do I need for a short scene?expand_more
Is an AI storyboard enough to film from?expand_more
hubWhat this page is about
- Large language modelopen_in_new
A model that predicts the next token of a text; the site sends the prompt to a hosted model and returns its answer.
library_booksOfficial sources cited on this page
- How to count tokens with tiktokenOpenAI Cookbook
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