Reels

A Reel is a short vertical video made from a reel script, counted against your plan as one Reel. It is planned as a storyboard with one subject card, the person who appears in every scene, and shown as stills before any video is drawn. You approve the storyboard, choose its sound, and it is rendered once and then edited. Every edit says what it costs before it runs, and most cost nothing.

Video is the one thing here that costs real money per attempt, and a video model charges for every second it draws, including the ones you throw away. Left alone, a few rounds of "try again" cost more than the plan.

So the expensive step comes last and happens once. The script and the storyboard are words, and the stills are cheap pictures, so you see the look before paying for motion. After the render, an edit is sorted by what it really needs. A change to captions, the words on screen or the order re-assembles the clips you already have, for nothing. A change to how one scene looks redraws that scene alone. A scene whose description did not change keeps its clip. A clip that fails costs nothing.

The same person has to appear in every scene, or the reel reads as four strangers. So the storyboard carries one subject card (who, their age range, clothes, setting and light) and its words go into every still and every clip, the same each time. You change it once, above the scenes, and every still is drawn again to match.

Each Reel runs up to one length, the same on every screen, with three revisions included. Going past its render budget or its revisions asks for one more Reel from your allowance, and never happens without your yes.

1. 01Reels wait behind the reel_budgets flag. With it on, press AI reel anywhere: Studio, AI reel in the sidebar, the AI reel tile in Studio, Create AI reel on Home, or AI reel at the top of the post composer. The New AI reel page says what it will do and what it costs, and nothing is written until you press Write my reel, so opening or reloading the page never makes a reel. Studio, Reels lists every reel at its step (Script, Storyboard, Stills, Video, Scheduled or Published) with its first still, and New AI reel starts another.
2. 02Write my reel runs in one go: your team writes the script from your GTM plan, plans the storyboard and who is in it, and the Reel composer opens with the stills drawing. It stops at Approve the storyboard. A script written before this, opened from the list, still offers Plan the storyboard.
3. 03The composer shows its steps at the top in order: Script, Storyboard and stills, Approve the storyboard, Sound (where your account has it), and Render, locked with its reason until you approve the storyboard. Beside them is how many reels you have left this month, the same line Studio shows.
4. 04Who is in this reel sits above the scenes: who, their age range, clothes, setting and light. With your likeness consented in the brand kit, it is you, drawn from your own photos. Press Change to set it once for every scene. A Reel made before this card existed reads Not set yet and offers Use one person in every scene: it takes the person from scene 1 and draws the other scenes again to match, for free.
5. 05The stills draw on their own, one scene at a time, with Drawing scene 2 of 4 while each is drawn and each card filling as its still lands. Stills come with the Reel and never use your picture allowance. Press a still to see it full size, and Redraw this still on any scene. How many stills are left for this Reel shows once, above the scenes, and first stills and redraws come out of that one number.
6. 06Change any scene’s length, what it shows, its caption and its words on screen; the boxes grow with the words, and before the render it is free. The storyboard shows one length, its seconds of the most a Reel runs.
7. 07Approve the storyboard. Then choose the sound and the quality, and read what the render will use. Where 360p previews are on (Admin, Reels, on by default), the main button is Preview in motion (360p): every scene drawn in motion at 360p, at a lower cost per second, using one Reel from your allowance, with the cost of the 720p final shown beside it. Skip to the final render (720p) sits under it with its own cost. Where previews are off, the button is Render this Reel, at 720p, as before.
8. 08Watch the reel in the phone frame as the clips arrive. Change captions, words, order or trims straight in the scene cards; that is free and never a revision. During the preview, an edit that redraws a scene redraws it at 360p, and its cost says so.
9. 09When the preview is right, press Render final (720p). It draws each scene once at 720p from the words you approved, is not a revision, and uses no more Reels unless the budget left cannot carry it, which it says first. The finished file, scheduling and Approve this Reel appear only after the final: a 360p preview never goes out.
10. 10For anything else, write what should change and press Check the cost. Apply it, or choose to re-render instead; the cost shows either way. With Reels everywhere on, one button schedules the finished reel to every network; without it, approve the Reel when it is right, and it is locked.

• Brand kit
• Creative concepts in the GTM plan
• Winners and their variants
• Posting and scheduling