# People in a film

Updated 2026-09-30. Web page: https://kitcut.ai/docs/people

A film can have real people in it: the founders introducing their product, a teacher and the class, a couple announcing their wedding. Add a photo of each person under the idea box. Each one becomes a **drawn character** who speaks their own lines in their own voice, with a mouth that moves with the words. It works in every look.

The people are always drawn: a crayon drawing, a paper cut-out, a felt puppet and so on. KitCut never makes a photorealistic video of a person.

![The People row under the idea box on kitcut.ai, with nobody added yet: the Add a person tile shows a photo, an arrow and the same person drawn as a talking character, which runs through every style in turn, circled in red.](https://kitcut.ai/docs/img/people-add.webp "Add a person: their photo becomes a drawn character who talks.")

## Adding people

![The People row with two people added, Alex and Ada, each a photo with a name under it; below them the Drawn as styles, Auto picked; and the permission tick. Three numbered red circles: 1 the people, 2 the styles, 3 the tick.](https://kitcut.ai/docs/img/people-row.webp "① each person and their name, ② the style they are drawn in, ③ the permission tick.")

1. **Add a person** under the idea box, and pick their photo.
2. **Name them** if the film should call them something: "Alex" or "Alex, CEO". Up to 40 characters. A person with no name is still in the film.
3. **Pick how they are drawn**, under **Drawn as**. Every person in a film is drawn the same way.
4. **Tick the box** to confirm you have permission to use these people's photos. A film with people cannot start without it.
5. **Say in your idea what they talk about**, for example "The two of us introduce our bakery and what we bake each morning". Claude writes their lines, gives each person a voice that suits them, and puts them in the scenes.

- **How many:** up to 4 people per film. People are separate from the 6 pictures a film can also have.
- **Credits:** people use no extra credits. A film costs its length, as always.
- **Time:** the people are drawn at the start, while Claude writes the film, so they add little or nothing to the wait.
- **Through an assistant:** `make_film` takes `people` (a photo link or an upload id for each, and a name), `character_style`, and `people_consent`. The assistant asks you about permission first. See [Assistants](https://kitcut.ai/docs/assistants.md).
- **Not yet:** people in a [project](https://kitcut.ai/docs/characters-and-projects.md)'s episodes.

## The styles

The tiles on the home page show each style, drawn from one photo. Point at a tile to see that character talk.

| Style | What it looks like |
| --- | --- |
| Auto | The style that suits the film's look: crayon for hand-drawn, watercolour for painted, paper cut-out for collage. |
| Crayon | Wobbly dark outlines and waxy colour, like a picture book. |
| Paper cut-out | Layers of coloured paper with scissor edges. |
| Newspaper | A black-and-white stipple and hatch portrait, like an old newspaper's. |
| Woodcut | A relief print: bold carved black lines, one muted red. |
| Watercolour | Soft washes and loose brushwork. |
| Pop art | A 1960s screen print: thick outlines, flat bold colour, halftone dots. |
| Courtroom sketch | Quick coloured-pencil and pastel strokes on cream paper. |
| Chalk | Coloured chalk on a small blackboard. |
| Sticker | A round-headed flat avatar with a thick white sticker border. |
| Felt puppet | A fuzzy felt hand puppet with a wide mouth. |
| Knitted doll | A doll of knitted wool, with embroidered features. |
| Wooden toy | A painted wooden peg doll. |
| Sock puppet | A sock puppet with button eyes and yarn hair. |

## A photo that works

- **One person, face to the camera,** head and shoulders in the picture: a profile picture or a passport-style photo is ideal. Crop a group photo to one person first.
- **Their face clear:** good light, no sunglasses, nothing across the face.
- **What stays:** the drawing keeps their face shape, hair, beard, glasses, skin tone and clothes, so the person is recognisable. It is still a drawing, not a copy.
- **A painting or an old photo** works as well as a new one.

## What happens to the photos

- **Drawing:** each photo is sent to an image model (GPT Image, OpenAI's) to draw the person in the chosen style. The same model draws their open and closed mouths and a blink, which KitCut cuts out and moves in time with their voice. See [Privacy](https://kitcut.ai/privacy).
- **When a person can't be drawn:** the image model sometimes refuses a photo. KitCut then tries again as a sticker. If that is refused too, the film shows their photo as a picture instead, without a moving mouth.
- **Their voice** is one of the narrator's voices, chosen by Claude to suit them. It is not the person's real voice. KitCut does not copy voices.
- **Kept with the film:** the photos and the drawn characters stay with the film, like any picture attached to it.

## Permission

Only add people who have agreed to be in the film, and use their photos only if you have the right to. Don't use a real person to deceive, for example to make a public figure appear to say something they did not. Both are in the [terms](https://kitcut.ai/terms).