Make the Whole Film Rough First (Pre-Visualisation)

Why this matters

Pre-visualisation ('pre-viz') is the practice of generating rough, fast, disposable versions of your shots BEFORE you commit to the expensive high-fidelity versions. With AI tools, pre-viz is almost free — any model can produce a rough 5-second clip in under 2 minutes. The workflow: make the entire film in pre-viz quality first; edit it; iterate; THEN go back and re-generate the shots you kept at final quality. This is how professional AI filmmakers avoid the 'generate 200 beautiful clips that don't edit together' trap.

Demo

The entire 2-minute short assembled as 12 rough pre-viz clips in 40 minutes total. You edit these together in iMovie or DaVinci. You watch. You cut 2 scenes. You realise shot 7 needs to happen 20 seconds earlier. You re-arrange. You re-cut to music. NOW you know what the film is. THEN you regenerate the final-quality versions — and you've saved 80% of the budget that a 'generate-and-hope' workflow would have burned.

# Pre-viz workflow
 
Day 1 — Rough generation (4 hours)
  For every shot in the shot list, generate ONE take at the cheapest/fastest setting.
  Accept first-draft quality. Don't polish.
  Label each clip: shot1A_previz.mp4, shot1B_previz.mp4, etc.
 
Day 1 — Rough edit (2 hours)
  Drop all clips into DaVinci / Premiere / CapCut on a single timeline.
  Arrange per the shot list order.
  Watch it. Is the story working?
  Cut any scene that doesn't earn its screen time.
  Add placeholder music.
 
Day 2 — Refine (re-edit)
  Tighten the rough edit. Audio timing. Cuts to beats.
  Iterate until the pre-viz cut WORKS narratively.
 
Day 3–4 — Final generation (10–20 hours)
  Only now: regenerate each surviving shot at the highest quality your tool offers.
  Slot them into the locked timeline one at a time.
  Don't re-cut — the edit was locked in pre-viz.
 
Day 5 — Finishing
  Color grade. Sound design. Score.

Try it yourself

1. Pick one scene from your shot list. Generate rough pre-viz for every shot in the scene in under 30 minutes. Total: 5-7 clips. Edit in 15 minutes. Does the scene work?
2. Resist the urge to polish any single shot until the whole film is edited in rough form. This is the hardest discipline for perfectionists.
3. Identify the 3-5 shots that WORK in pre-viz and become the backbone of the film. These get the high-quality re-generation budget. The rest may stay pre-viz or be cut.
4. Timebox yourself: 8 hours total for the full pre-viz cut. If you blow the timebox, something in your planning is off — the script is too ambitious, or the shot list is too long.
5. Show the pre-viz cut to a trusted friend. Their feedback is vastly more useful at this stage than on the finished film, because you can still fix everything cheaply.

References

• Runway — advanced prompting guide
• Kling — character reference docs
• Luma AI — Dream Machine shot-by-shot workflows
• Veo 3 / Imagen — Google DeepMind documentation
• Syllabus — story structure (Robert McKee, Story)