Build your own video studio.
A repeatable system that turns one feature, product or moment into a finished, on-brand film — in multiple languages, in a few hours, with no agency and no shoot day. This is how we run ours, and how you can build your own.
The film above was made by the studio it explains — the same leader, forge hook, real screens and brand grade. 41 seconds, one build.
The two-minute version
This film explains the system behind the studio: teach it once, it never forgets — and every lesson compounds across projects. Made, of course, by the studio itself.
Let the skill run on our server
Same studio, none of the setup. Send a URL and the Video Suite builds a real, shareable social video for you — one of six types, every step shown (the storyboard included), an honest price per video. You see it first, for free.
Brand Teaser · Explainer · Product Spotlight · Promo · Social Proof · Tips — pick a type, send your URL, get a free storyboard, and pay a fair price per video only when you accept it.
One studio, several formats
You choose per goal — teach, launch, or reach — and per channel. The same pipeline drives all of them.
Instruction videos
Clear how-to films on your real screens, step by step. Ideal in-app and in the help centre.
Launch films
Warm, story-first films that make a feature felt — not just listed.
Promo & social
Short cutdowns for reach — vertical 9:16 and horizontal 16:9 from one master.
On-brand imagery
Generated visuals for non-human elements — posters, backgrounds, title cards.
Full-AI scenes
End-to-end generated films: consistent keyframes → image-to-video → montage.
Edit existing footage
Phone clips, event recordings or screen captures, auto-selected on subject and cut into a finished film.
Intake first — then the film
You describe the film in chat; from there every film runs the same path. The two red steps are gates: intake (before anything is produced) and your storyboard sign-off. The rest the skill runs on its own; you approve twice.
Brief, brand, storyboard, keyframes
This is the part most people skip — and it is what separates a repeatable studio from a one-off video.
The brief
Goal (teach / launch / reach), format & aspect (16:9 · 9:16), length, channel, languages — and one sentence: what must land?
Brand style guide — adopt or create
Always check first: does a guide exist? Adopt its colours, type, logo canon and tone. None? Create a minimal one and save it as the brand kit — never build on a guessed identity.
brand-kitLeader & outro
Every brand gets one reusable intro/outro bracket, built once to the quality bar and reused on every film — not improvised per video.
The lines you set
Fix the hard, brand-specific rules up front (for example: only real music, only real people). They apply to every film of that brand.
Storyboard
Narrative or multi-shot? A shot-by-shot storyboard — beat, on-screen copy, shot type, source — approved before production. Nothing is produced until you pick one.
your sign-offKeyframe plan
For AI imagery: which shots need a generated start-frame, and from which consistency anchor. Validate one cut before fanning out to every shot and language.
A leader and outro, built once
Here is our own brand bracket — the Theuws Consulting leader and outro. Built once to the quality bar, it opens and closes every film we make, so each one is unmistakably ours without any per-video work. This is exactly what intake step 3 produces for your brand.
16:9 · 1920×1080 · real motion, brand grade, brand music. A 9:16 cutdown of the same bracket runs on social.
See it before anything moves — for the price of a coffee
A storyboard doesn't have to be a table you read. For AI films the studio renders it as real key-frames — the actual opening, middle and closing images — laid out as one board you approve before a single second of video is generated.
Our own board — ten key-frames (3 leader · 5 content · 2 outro) for a Theuws brand film, generated for €0.62 at delivery quality. Watch the arc warm from forge fire and cool into the steel-blue network — the same warm→cool hand-off our leader and outro use. No motion was generated yet; that step waits for your yes.
Why that order matters is pure economics: still images cost cents; motion costs euros. Ten key-frames — three for the leader, five for the content, two for the outro — run about €0.60; turning them into image-to-video costs roughly ten times that. So the board comes first. You point at a concrete result and steer it, and no expensive motion is generated until you've said yes.
One rule keeps it honest: the board is generated at delivery quality, never prettier. Key-frames are the peak a film can reach — motion can hold them or soften them, never improve them. So the board is a floor you can trust, not a shop window.
The six steps in detail
Research
Understand the subject and the audience — what it does, who it's for, the one thing that must land.
Storyboard
A shot-by-shot storyboard with two or three concept directions. Nothing is produced until you pick one.
your sign-offCapture or generate
Drive the real product and record the exact screens, edit existing footage, or generate keyframes → image-to-video. Real people always come from real footage.
Edit & grade
Crafted transitions, heavy readable titles with backing, one rich colour grade, real music. Held to the bar below.
Localise
Every language from the same build — on-screen copy matches your exact product strings.
Deliver + docs
Final approval, then the same walkthrough produces a written manual and FAQ in every language.
From one film to a whole series
The real leverage isn't one film — it's a series. Point the studio at a product and it produces a set of short teasers plus a long-form film that embeds them, on one brand, in every language. The quality bar doesn't change; only the order of work does. Three moves make it repeatable.
Storyboard the series, not the film
One arc across every episode, and a long-form film the teasers are cut from. A fixed beat structure — same leader, hook, detail, outro — so every episode is unmistakably one set. Signed off once, before anything is built.
Prove the hardest shot once
Before committing to five features × three languages, generate a single proof-of-concept of the signature move. If it holds, scale it. If it doesn't, you've spent one film — not fifteen.
One template, then fan out
A deterministic rig records the real product identically on every run. The first episode becomes a reusable template; the rest are the same pipeline with the copy swapped — produced in parallel, held to the same bookends, grade and loudness.
What makes it feel expensive
A studio is only worth building if the output looks paid-for. Four defaults we never ship with:
No hard cuts by default
Premium leans on crafted transitions — cross-dissolves, dip-to-white, speed-ramps, J/L-cuts. A hard cut is a deliberate choice on the beat, never the default.
Heavy, readable titles
Text is always bold (700–900), large, and sits on backing (scrim, glass plate, bar). One type system. Never thin text on busy footage.
One consistent grade
A single rich colour grade across every shot, plus grain. No flat, jumping look between clips.
Craft the motion
The hero shot breathes, cuts land on beat or motion, the hook lands in the first 1.5s, audio is levelled and ducked.
The lines you set, and never cross
Every brand should fix a few non-negotiable rules. They protect trust, and they make the studio's output unmistakably yours. As an example, here are two we hold for a founder-led brand we run:
Only real music
Every film uses a real, licensed track or a neutral bed — never a synthetic "AI song". The soundtrack has to feel as real as the room.
Only real people
Faces on screen are always real photos of real people. Generated imagery is used only for non-human elements — posters, backgrounds, title cards.
What it's built on
Honest and boring on purpose — proven, scriptable tools, glued into one pipeline by a Claude Code skill. No black boxes.
| Job | Tool | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Orchestration | Claude Code skill | A SKILL.md + reference docs + scripts. You invoke it from chat; it runs preflight, intake, storyboard, montage and delivery — automatically, and improves itself after every job. |
| Montage & grade | ffmpeg | Transitions, transcode, frame extraction, colour grade, audio. |
| Stills & keyframes | nano-banana | Consistent images via an anchor reference, keyframe-first for video. |
| Lettering | ImageMagick | Heavy titles and caption boxes composited at exact dimensions. |
| Image-to-video | fal.ai (Veo / Kling) | Animate a validated keyframe — never blind text-to-video. |
| Footage sourcing | yt-dlp + ffmpeg | Download and scene-detect, auto-select clips on subject. |
The one rule behind the whole stack
Before every job the studio runs a preflight that checks the tooling for the chosen mode. If something required is missing, it stops and asks — install, switch approach, or cancel — rather than silently degrading to a lesser result. A missing capability is a decision you make, never a hidden assumption. That single rule is what keeps the output trustworthy.
Don't just read it — run it
The whole thing is a free, open-source Claude Code skill. Install it, point it at your own brand, and make your first film today. Requirements check included — it tells you exactly what your machine needs.
git clone https://github.com/RichardTheuws/video-studio.git ~/.claude/skills/video-studio
bash ~/.claude/skills/video-studio/scripts/doctor.sh
Then just ask Claude Code, in any project: "make a launch film for our new feature, adopt our brand, vertical cutdown too."
How far this goes: Friet Fighter
This studio was born here. It started with one image — a fighting frikandel — and instead of building a game, we built a trailer first. The trailer came out so good it inspired the actual game, and the pipeline that made it became this video studio. Here is that origin in about 90 seconds — including the full trailer.
Friet Fighter — the origin. One idea → a trailer → a game → a studio. The complete trailer is embedded inside. This is how far you can take your own material.
We pointed it at other products
To show the studio travels, we ran it end-to-end on several different live products — each with its brand adopted as it already is, each shipped in 16:9 and 9:16 for about $0.61 in generation. Dark, light, hand-lettered; opposite looks, one studio.
Plus proof films for real small businesses — see them play below.
Real walkthroughs, start to finish
Films we made — for our own demos and for real businesses. Each links to the live site it was made from. Order your own video and, at the end, you decide whether to add it here too.
You build the system, not one film
Intake → storyboard → capture or generate → edit → localise, with docs included. Point it at a feature, a product or a moment, and it produces a finished, polished film in a few hours — on-brand, at your own quality bar, with the lines you set held on every single film.
Proof, not a promise: this film is the studio explaining itself. Same pipeline, same brand bracket, one build — exactly what you would point at your own product.
Brief it. Storyboard it. Capture the real thing. Keep it yours.