Handmade Stage Film: AI stop-motion brand film Skill for Claude Code and AI agents
Turn a brand's campaign photos into a 9:16 stop-motion brand film for TikTok, Reels and Shorts. The stills come to life, props cut out of them fly around as paper puppets, hand-written captions tell a little story, and it ends on your wordmark and product.
An open-source Agent Skill from Reelity, the library of AI video Skills for marketing. Your agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or any agent that reads SKILL.md) runs the whole pipeline: it extends the stills to 9:16, animates them with Nano Banana 2 and Kling 2.5 Turbo, then renders the puppets, captions, sound and end card locally with headless Chrome and FFmpeg.
▶ Watch the full 18-second film on Reelity · Download the MP4 · Read the guide
Contents
What it makes
- A 15–20-second brand film from 4–8 stills of one shoot, as an H.264 MP4 at 1080 × 1920, plus a poster frame.
- Stop-motion stage-show look: stepped motion at 12 frames a second, hand-held jitter, moving grain, paper puppets cut from your own photos, torn-paper captions, scribbled tags with arrows that draw themselves, and a TV screen that switches on.
- Your photos kept as shot: the AI only paints the extra space around each still, the original pixels go back on top, and any product label a clip smudges is laid back sharp.
- Original sound: a synthesized music-box waltz and a sound on every event (clicks, pops, whooshes, a sip, a chime), so there's nothing to license.
- An editable
effect.json: change captions, puppets, timing or the end card and re-render for free.
Good fit for seasonal drops, limited editions and brand collabs in food and drink, fashion, beauty and lifestyle, and for agencies turning a key-visual campaign into social video.
Example: Molly Tea Halloween
Halloween night, nothing on: a girl sits inside a painted cardboard sofa, pink drink in hand, and clicks the cardboard remote. The TV switches on into static, a little ghost dances on the screen, then peels off it and floats away after her cup. One sip later she's sitting on a giant witch's hat while stars pop on around her. The last card has the Molly Tea wordmark, the cup and "Halloween limited".
Every frame comes from seven of Molly Tea's own campaign photos, made for an official collaboration. examples/film.json lists every step and prompt behind it, and examples/example.json is the finished film you can re-render.
Install
Claude Code
git clone https://github.com/DarthManly/handmade-stage-film-skill ~/.claude/skills/handmade-stage-film
cd ~/.claude/skills/handmade-stage-film && npm install
Other agents (Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI…): clone the repo anywhere, run npm install, and tell your agent to follow SKILL.md.
Requirements: Node.js 20+, Google Chrome (or CHROME_PATH), and a fal.ai API key set as FAL_KEY in your own terminal. FFmpeg comes with npm install.
Prefer to browse first? See the Skill page on reelity.app/skills/handmade-stage-film.
Quick start
Ask your agent:
Turn our seven Halloween campaign photos into an 18-second brand film for TikTok: a ghost climbs out of the TV and goes after her drink, and one sip later she's sitting on a giant witch's hat. End on our wordmark, the cup, "Halloween limited" and where it's on sale.
Or try the render step on the bundled example, free and offline:
node scripts/validate.mjs examples/example.json
node scripts/render.mjs examples/example.json --out film.mp4 --poster poster.png
The full pipeline, for your own stills:
node scripts/generate.mjs extend --in still.jpg --out keys/sofa.png --cover 130
node scripts/generate.mjs clip --start keys/sofa.png --prompt "…" --out clips/sofa.mp4
node scripts/generate.mjs cutout --in keys/sofa.png --box x,y,w,h --out props/ghost.png
node scripts/reel.mjs effect.json --out reel.mp4
node scripts/sfx.mjs effect.json --out stage.m4a
node scripts/render.mjs effect.json --out film.mp4 --poster poster.png
How it works
| Step | Script | What happens |
|---|
| 1. Brief and script | your agent | Collects the stills, product name, line, note and CTA; writes the plot, captions and puppets, and shows the cost before generating |
| 2. Keyframes | generate.mjs extend | Nano Banana 2 extends each still to 9:16; the original pixels are laid back on top |
| 3. Clips | generate.mjs clip | Kling 2.5 Turbo brings each shot to life with one or two small movements, camera locked |
| 4. Props | generate.mjs cutout / relabel / wordmark | Cuts puppets out of the photos, re-lays smudged labels, keys out the wordmark |
| 5. Reel and sound | reel.mjs, sfx.mjs | Cuts the clips onto the film's clock; synthesizes the waltz and sound effects |
| 6. Render | render.mjs | Plays it all back as a stage show in headless Chrome and encodes the MP4 |
All the details, field reference and tips are in SKILL.md.
Cost
Model usage is billed to your own fal.ai key: $0.08 per still extended to 9:16, $0.35 per 5-second clip, and a fraction of a cent per cut-out (October 2026 prices). A film of seven stills with five clips costs about $2.30. The reel, puppets, captions, sound and final render are free on your machine.
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