KitCutHow a film is made
Claude Opus 5.5 makes each film as a program. It directs, writes the narration, draws or places every scene in code, and reviews its own frames. KitCut records the voice, mixes the music and sound, renders the video at 60 frames a second (30 on Free) and puts it online. Nothing is picked from a library of clips; every film is made new.
The steps
| Step | What happens | Shown in the making log as |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Queue | The film waits for a free place. Pro films go ahead of the others. Waiting does not count against Claude's time. | "Waiting for a free studio: N films ahead" |
| 2. Direction | Claude first decides who the film is for and its mood (it does not assume children unless the idea says so) and holds the film to looking professionally made for them. Then it chooses the direction: the drawing style and ground (code-drawn), the painting style and shots (painted) or the pictures' medium, papers and typefaces (collage), the narrator's voice and how it speaks, and the music's instruments and tempo. | Claude's notes |
| 3. Narration | Claude writes the narration and records it with Gemini's text-to-speech. Each word is timed, so the picture can change on a word. A line that reads badly is recorded again. A line Gemini refuses to read is read by a backup voice instead, so the words stay as written. | "recording the narration" |
| 4. Paintings (painted look) or cut-outs (collage look) | The scenes are painted by Muse, Meta's image model, or the cut-outs by GPT Image, OpenAI's, from Claude's descriptions. Claude checks them and repaints ones that are wrong. GPT Image paints a draft (a project whose style is painted by GPT Image, and every collage film): a sharper version can be asked for once the film is finished (Sharper pictures). | "painting the scenes", "painting the cut-outs" |
| 5. Picture | Claude writes the film as code on KitCut's sketch engine: drawings, camera moves, text on screen, and pictures the person attached. | "wrote film.js" |
| 6. Review | Claude renders stills from across the film and a motion check, looks at them, and fixes what is wrong. This is repeated up to twice. | "looking at the review sheet" |
| 7. Music and sound | Claude writes an instrumental score and sound effects; KitCut plays them on sampled instruments and synthesised effects, keeps the music under the voice, and masters the sound. | "Mixing the soundtrack" |
| 8. Render | Every frame is drawn and encoded to an MP4 video. | "Rendering N frames" |
| 9. Keeping the cast | The characters, places and props the film drew in code are kept for the person's next films, or the project's next episodes. Shown only for a signed-in account, when something new or changed is kept. | "Keeping the cast for the next films" |
| 10. Online | The video, its poster and its subtitles are copied online, so the film plays from anywhere. | "Putting the film online" |
Which AI does what
| Model | Its part |
|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic) | Direction, script, narration text, every drawing and animation (as code), on-screen text, music and sound-effect scores, and reviewing the result. It runs at a high reasoning effort on every film. |
| Gemini (Google) | The narrator's voice (text-to-speech), and writing out voice notes as text. |
| ElevenLabs | The backup narrator: reads a line Gemini refuses to say (its content filter can block a name or a topic), in a low or high voice chosen to go with the film's narrator. Only that line; the rest stays Gemini's. |
| Muse (Meta) | Painting the scenes of painted films, from Claude's descriptions and, for a recurring character or a project's style, from pictures. |
| GPT Image (OpenAI) | Painting the cut-outs of collage films, each on a transparent background, and the scenes of a project whose style is painted by GPT Image; as drafts first, and again at Standard or High when asked (Sharper pictures). |
| Whisper | Timing each spoken word, so the picture follows the narration. |
The music is played on General MIDI instruments from a sampled sound font, and the sound effects are synthesised. KitCut makes no sung vocals.
A map that shows where a real place is (a pin, an address) is not drawn by an AI. It is the real street map of that place, made from OpenStreetMap data (© OpenStreetMap contributors, credited on the map): the streets as they run, with their names, and the pin at the address. When the map knows the street but not the house number, the pin stands on the street. When the street is not on the map at all, the film shows the address in words and no map.
How long it takes
A film takes about this long once its turn comes. Time spent waiting in the queue comes on top.
| Film length | Time to make it, once its turn comes |
|---|---|
| 10 seconds | 9 to 14 minutes |
| 30 seconds | 16 to 24 minutes |
| 1 minute | 26 to 39 minutes |
| 2 minutes | 35 to 54 minutes |
| 4 minutes | 53 to 84 minutes |
| 8 minutes | 1.5 to 2.4 hours |
The figures for films past 2 minutes are estimates; fewer long films have been measured.
Claude's working time
Claude has a working limit that grows with the film's length. Time spent waiting in the queue does not count against it.
| Film length | Claude's working time | Paintings (painted look) | Cut-outs (collage look) | Narration sentences |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 seconds | 20 minutes | 8 | 10 | 6 |
| 30 seconds | 23 minutes | 8 | 14 | 12 |
| 1 minute | 31 minutes | 12 | 20 | 20 |
| 2 minutes | 46 minutes | 12 | 40 | 40 |
| 4 minutes | 76 minutes | 12 | 40 | 80 |
| 8 minutes | 136 minutes | 24 | 40 | 160 |
When the time runs out:
- If the film is complete and passes its checks, it is finished and rendered.
- Otherwise Claude gets one short last turn to write what is missing.
- If it is still not complete, the film fails and its credits come back.
Priority and the queue
- Pro films go first. Pro films go ahead of other films at every step that waits: the queue, the voice and the mix, and the rendering. Among Pro films, first come is first served.
- Several films are made at the same time. A film only waits when all places are taken.
- A Pro account can have 2 films being made at once; Free, 1. Each takes its own place.
- A limited number of films can wait. Beyond that (5), a new film is refused with "the queue is full".
When a film fails
- A film that fails, is stopped, or is interrupted gives its credits back automatically. Only finished films are charged.
- A film that is not finished after 6 hours, plus 45 seconds for every second of film, has its credits given back. For an 8-minute film that is 12 hours.
- A film paused for its narrator's own voice (its ElevenLabs account stopped speaking) is not failed: it keeps its credits held while it waits, up to 7 days, and Continue picks it up. See Narrator voices.
- The film's page says why it failed, e.g. "Claude ran past the 20-minute limit".
- A failed film can't be resumed. Make it again; the idea is still in the box on its page.