Building the storyboard

Open any shot and you'll see three tabs laid out as a pipeline: Screenplay → Image → Video. This order is deliberate. runime locks a shot's look in its still image first, then treats the video model purely as a motion engine — so the identity you approve in the frame is exactly what moves.

Before you can generate a shot's still, it needs two things: a screenplay (the shot's action text) and a location (required — it's the scene's memory). Ideally the characters in the shot already have their own reference images too. If something's missing, the Image tab stays locked and tells you what to add first ("Write the screenplay for this shot first", "Select a location for this shot first").

On the Image and Video tabs you'll find an AI Reference link. Click it to preview the exact reference board runime hands to the AI for that shot — a labeled sheet of the prompt-relevant views of your selected characters, location and assets, each with a caption. This is the same board used for both the still and the video, so what you see is literally what the AI receives.

Use it as a sanity check before generating. If a character or the location is missing from the board, that's why a shot might drift off-model — go design that entity's image first. If the board comes up empty, runime tells you to generate the characters' and location's images before building this shot. Reviewing the board takes seconds and saves you regenerations.

On the Image tab, tune the shot before you generate: shot technique, camera angle, lighting and the image model (each model shows a rough consistency rating so you can favour the ones that stay most on-model). The image prompt is fully editable, and the wand button lets you refine it with AI — just describe the change in your own words ("make the jacket red", "push the camera in") and runime rewrites the prompt into a generation-ready form.

Press Generate image and the still appears in a few seconds. Every generation is kept as a variation, so you can flip between takes or hit Regenerate to try again with your current settings. You can also add an end frame: the clip will then animate from the start frame to the end frame. Setting a shot's start to From previous scene carries the previous shot's last frame straight in, so motion flows seamlessly across the cut.

You don't have to build every frame by hand. The Generate storybook action runs the stills for all shots that are ready — the ones that have their screenplay, a location and the reference images they depend on. Shots that are missing a prerequisite aren't silently skipped; runime surfaces them so you know exactly which ones still need attention.

Track the whole thing in the Production panel, where Storyboards and Videos show how many shots are done versus remaining, alongside your estimated token spend. It's the fastest way to see, at a glance, where your film stands and what's left to generate.

Once a still is approved, switch to the Video tab. Your still becomes the clip's first frame, so the video prompt is about motion, camera and atmosphere rather than describing the scene again — the identity is already baked into the frame. Set the camera movement, the duration (clips are short and snappy, capped at 10 seconds) and the video model, then press Generate video. Rendering takes a little longer than a still, and you can keep working while it runs.

As with images, each render is saved as a variation you can switch between, and you can leave a like or dislike on the finished clip. For fine motion control, some shots support motion keyframes — an editable filmstrip of Start → Mid → End poses that the video is rendered through; adjust the timing and action of each waypoint, then regenerate. When you're happy, the shot is done — repeat across the film and your storyboard becomes a moving picture.