Introduction to CinemaDrop: Step-by-Step Guide

Creating captivating AI videos and films is easier than ever with CinemaDrop. Whether you're an experienced filmmaker or a hobbyist exploring video creation, CinemaDrop offers intuitive features to help you effortlessly generate visuals and sounds for your next AI video. Let's walk step-by-step through creating an engaging AI film with a consistent character, called "The Great Outdoors."

Create Storyboard

Start by logging into your CinemaDrop account. Once you're in the main dashboard, click "Create Storyboard" in the left sidebar and choose "Blank." CinemaDrop opens a fresh storyboard for you. As your story evolves, you can easily add more scenes and shots.

The first thing to do is give your storyboard a clear and descriptive title. Click on the storyboard title at the top and type "The Great Outdoors," then click away and it will save automatically. This ensures your storyboard is easily identifiable later on.

Before jumping into video generation, it's crucial to carefully plan your story. We will do this by first generating images for each shot, then after we are satisfied with our images, we will then create videos out of them.

We also may want to adjust our storyboard settings. To do this click on the gear icon to the left of your storyboard.

Here in "General" settings, you can adjust your storyboard dimensions, in our case we will keep all settings the same.

Next, click on "Image" settings. Here you can change your image model and style for the entire storyboard. Depending on your AI video, you may or may not need to have consistent characters or scenes. If you do, then you must choose an image model that supports image references (look for the image with plus icon in the bottom right corner of each image model). We recommend GPT Image 2.5 (CinemaDrop's default image model, up to 16 reference images) or Nano Banana Pro / Nano Banana 2 (up to 14 reference images) for consistent visuals.

If you scroll down the image settings, you will see "Style" section where you can change the style of the images being generated. We will choose "cinematic" in our case, but you may choose whatever you'd like. Click "Save Changes" to proceed.

Create Character

Let's start by clearly visualizing our protagonist and creating a reference image. CinemaDrop allows you to keep your characters consistent, and not just characters, any subjects, props or other visuals. In this case, we will only keep our character consistent. The first thing we will do is create a reference image.

Start by opening Elements in your project and creating a new Character Element.

Then click on "Create" to create your own reference

Here you have two options: upload your own photo OR generate a photo using AI

We will generate a photo using AI, by typing this into the textbox: "late 20s, backpacker against white background, closeup shot, looking straight into camera." We want to mainly capture the character's face without any background noise, hence why we specified "closeup shot" and "white background."

Once you are happy with your generation, then tag your reference and click "Add To Library" button. This is simply a way to distinguish your reference from other image references in your storyboard. If you aren't happy, close the popup and try again. We tagged our character reference as "Ryan."

Now that we have created our reference, close the popup "Create & Edit Your References" and you should see your storyboard again.

You can repeat the steps above to create any other references you want. For example, if you need to keep consistent clothing, or other props, you may create references for that.

Create Images

To start, let's generate our first image. We will type this into the first shot description: wide shot of @Ryan​ hiking in Montana wilderness, sunny day, he's wearing gray pants and large green backpack. Notice that when you type "@" a menu appears letting you choose the references in your library. In our case, we select "Ryan."

And this is the image that we get.

Click the plus icon at the top of "Shot 1" twice to add two more shots to the scene. We will repeat the same steps for images 2 and 3, one being a medium shot and one being a closeup shot. One thing to note here: to keep the environment consistent for images 2 and 3, we also used the previous shot's image as a reference. In CinemaDrop today you can do this by adding that image to an Environment Element and tagging it in the shot description, just like @Ryan. In the two images we just generated, we also included the image that was generated in the previous shot. So for image 2, we included the image from shot 1, and for image 3, we included the image from shot 2. This way we keep our environment consistent.

Next, let's add some conflict into our story by adding a grizzly bear on the opposite side. We will add another shot to the scene and type: medium shot of giant grizzly bear roaming in Montana wilderness, sunny. In this particular instance we don't necessarily have to use a reference image for this shot since we are generating the opposite view of our character that hasn't been seen yet. It just so happens that the environment is nature where it's easy to create the opposite angle by just prompting "Montana wilderness, sunny." But more often than not, you will need to create reference images of different angles of the scene, especially for scenes that take place in locations that are difficult to generate by prompt alone. We will explore this in another tutorial. For now, let's focus on the grizzly bear in our shot 4.

This is what was generated. It looks nice, but we want the grizzly bear to be looking towards the camera and be more angry, so what we can do is edit the image. Click on the image and you should see a large popup show up. In this popup, you can edit your image just by describing the changes with a simple prompt. You can also replace the image with any other image or video you previously generated, you can upload a new image, or select an image from our stock image gallery. In this case we will stick with the "Edit Image" tab and type: make the grizzly bear look angry and towards the camera.

Click "Generate" and this is what we get. Not bad.

Remember you can always edit your images, so don't worry if the image you generated in your storyboard the first time didn't turn out well or if it was missing something, you can always change it.

In our case, we like the image so we will click on "Save Changes" to proceed.

Create Videos

So far we have 4 images in our storyboard, in normal circumstances this isn't enough for a full video (unless you're making 10 second reels of course), but for the purposes of this tutorial we will proceed forward to show how to generate videos.

Under each generated image, you'll see the "Generate Video" button. Clicking this opens up several AI video model options. Video generation starts on CinemaDrop's $8 Basic plan. To save credits, draft on a cheaper setting first and re-render only the takes you like: on Plus, Seedance 2.5 costs 20 credits per second at 480p versus 100 at 1080p, and Seedance 2.0 Fast at 480p costs 16.

For a professional, high-quality result, try Seedance 2.5 (up to 30-second clips, Plus plan) or Kling 4.0 (3–30-second clips at up to 1080p, Basic plan). Each model excels differently, so feel free to experiment to find the best fit for your story. When you're ready to plan a whole short, our hybrid AI filmmaking workflow guide walks through each step.

Selecting each video model gives you the various options associated with that video model. Check the duration and resolution options for your selected model. Type what you want to happen in the video into the prompt.

Remember, generating AI videos is a creative process similar to real filmmaking. It often takes multiple attempts to achieve your desired quality and detail. This iterative process is entirely normal and is part of the artistic experience. Think of yourself as a director, with CinemaDrop as your talented film crew. Next, try our AI video prompts guide to write shot prompts that hold up from the first frame to the last.

Export

Once satisfied with your video clips, download them by clicking on the "Download" button associated with each generated video. You can also click the Export Storyboard button on left side to export all assets at once into a zip file. CinemaDrop provides excellent visual assets but isn't a video editor itself. Therefore, export these downloaded clips into your preferred video editing software, such as CapCut, Adobe Premiere, or DaVinci Resolve. Here, you'll piece together your clips, add sound effects, music, and finalize your story into a polished video.

Congratulations! You've successfully completed the 'Introduction to CinemaDrop' tutorial. Stay tuned for future tutorials, where we'll dive deeper into AI filmmaking and explore new ways to bring your stories to life with advanced tools and creative techniques.