A year ago this was a shoot day: a crew, a studio, and a five-figure invoice. We made it in an afternoon on tools you probably already have open. Here is the whole pipeline, every step and every cent. Nothing held back.
FILE PB-01 · VOL.01
The $7 Ad
How one product photo became a finished campaign film
Nothing in this ad exists. Not the bakery, not the flour, not the steam. The brand is real though, a Singapore label we like, and they never asked for this. We took one product photo from their website. That is it.
The finished spec ad · total generation cost $7.35
STEP 01 · $0.00
Start with a shot list, not a camera
Decide the story before you generate a single frame. This spot cuts to music, so we mapped it beat by beat: one scene per beat, nothing longer than three seconds on screen. Ten beats, planned on paper, before spending a cent.
STEP 02 · $0.00
Write the concept, not just prompts
Bakery world for a croissant-shaped bag. Flour, steam, warm morning light, all set by a single art-direction block that every image inherits. This is the step everyone skips, and it is why most AI content looks generic.
The whole thing cost $7.35 to generate. Below is exactly where every cent went, the four steps that turn stills into a finished film, the two mistakes that will cost you money, and the polished PDF to keep.
▸ THE FULL PIPELINE + PDF
STEP 03 · $0.03 ea
Generate scene stills, product locked
Feed the one product photo into your preferred image generator as a reference on every still, so the exact bag (its shape, pleats and colour) stays identical across ten scenes. For the sharpest fidelity we reach for GPT Image 2.0, Nano Banana Pro, or Seedream. That reference is the whole secret to consistency.
STEP 04 · $0.60 ea
Animate each still into motion
Push each still through your preferred video generator, a single line of motion direction each: camera push-ins, drifting flour, a slow rotation. We reach for Seedance 2.0 or Kling 3.0. Render five seconds, then trim to roughly three in the edit.
STEP 05 · $0.00
Cut it hard, add the track
Assemble with hard cuts only. Crossfades make AI footage read like a slideshow. Then drop your music on natively at post, so the licence stays clean.
STEP 06 · $0.00
Grade, then export clean
A quick colour and pacing pass so ten separate clips feel like one film. Then export a clean master per platform in 9:16 and upload it natively. Never cross-post with a watermark.
Every cent, itemised
Shot planning, editing, grade and export, all on tools you already own$0.00
10 scene stills, product-locked and AI-generated$0.15
12 motion clips, image-to-video at 5s each$7.20
Total generation cost$7.35
These are the exact numbers for the film above. We have since tightened the recipe (4-second renders cut to 3), which brings a typical spot in around $5.
The tools are cheap. The taste isn't.
Anyone can now generate a hundred stills for pocket change. That is exactly why the number stopped mattering. Our pipeline does the piecing. We do the picking: which brand world, which shot, which three seconds, what it says, and what to throw away.
A model will hand you fifty variations. It will not tell you which one is worth putting a brand's name on. That judgement is the whole job now, and it is the thing you are actually hiring a studio for.
Before you try it
Check the still before you animate
Every logo, seam, buckle and proportion, checked while it is still just an image. A wrong detail is free to fix at the still stage and expensive once you have paid to put it in motion.
Mind the mid-clip angle
A rotating product can swing side-on and lose its shape for a beat. Our flour-burst shot did exactly that, so we generated the full clip and cut only to the seconds where the bag faced the camera.
Keep the full pipelineThe complete 2-page breakdown as a printable PDF.
Download the PDF →
Unlocked — the full pipeline and PDF are below.
OC
Original Copy
Made in-house · Kurt & Dom
Made in-house · Kurt & Dom