How to make a story-driven promo for an organisation with no footage

Last updated 2026-08-17 · 6 min read

What is the short version?

An organisation with a story and no footage used to have no film. Every scene can now be generated, which moves the whole job back to the writing — and to whatever brand material you can dig out of a photograph.

1. Go to Vizard Agent and paste the story, scene by scene.
2. Attach anything you have: a logo file, a photograph, a shirt with the emblem on it.
3. Say the length, the shape and the emotional register.

What do you need before you start?

A story with beats and any brand material at all. Vizard Agent generates the scenes and the narration, so the two inputs that matter are the sequence of moments you want shown and something — anything — carrying your mark.

• The story, in scenes. "A boy stands alone", "a man kneels beside him". Beats, not paragraphs.
• The narration lines. Vizard Agent will write them, and your own words carry more.
• Any brand asset. A logo file is ideal; a photograph of a shirt or a banner also works.
• The register. Warm and inspiring, or restrained and serious.
• The length. Around a minute is what a story-driven promo supports.

What do you type into Vizard Agent?

Paste the brief as written. Vizard Agent reads a scene list as a scene list and builds to it, so a document you have already written for a production company is exactly the right input — there is no need to rewrite it into a prompt.

Prompt

Variants worth knowing:

• Your own photographs. Real pictures of real people beat generated scenes for anything about a community.
• No on-screen text. Some briefs read better with narration alone.
• A shorter social cut. Ask for both; the second comes from the same generated scenes.

What does Vizard Agent actually do?

Here is the order Vizard Agent worked in on a real story-driven promo. The step worth reading twice is the logo: it did not have a logo file, so it took one out of a photograph by looking for the mark's colour in the part of the image where it would be.

1. Reads the attached image to see what reference material exists.
2. Checks the available generation, voice and music capabilities and reads their options.
3. Searches for cinematic inspirational music and downloads the chosen track.
4. Generates the narration lines in parallel in a warm, deep register, then probes each one's duration.
5. Probes the attached image's dimensions and downloads it locally to work on.
6. Runs a script to isolate and cut out the logo, then corrects it to search for the mark's colour only in the chest region of the shirt.
7. Generates the eleven cinematic scenes in batches rather than one at a time.
8. Probes the exact duration of every clip and checks they all share a resolution.
9. Lists the available fonts, builds styled subtitles, regenerates them aligned to the output size, and renders the film.

Step 6 is the resourceful one. A photograph of a shirt is not a logo file, and searching for the mark's colour across the whole image finds the wrong things — so Vizard Agent narrowed the search to where the emblem actually sits.

What does the result look like?

From the run this page is written from, probed on the delivered file: 1280x720, H.264, 24fps, 62.0 seconds, AAC audio. Wide, just over a minute, eleven generated scenes with narration, cinematic music and styled on-screen text, built without a single piece of filmed footage.

Vizard Agent verified that every generated clip shared the same resolution before concatenating them, which is the check that stops a film from changing size halfway through.

A minute across eleven scenes is about five seconds a shot. Vizard Agent holds them at that length because a story-driven promo needs each beat to register, and because generated footage is steadiest over short takes.

This category was not separately measured, so treat the timing as a range rather than a promise: comparable work runs a median of 28 to 38 minutes end to end. Across all projects the median cost by tier is Flash 47, Pro 55, Max 242, Ultra 263 credits.

When does this not work well?

Generated people are not your people. Vizard Agent builds a convincing film about the kind of thing your organisation does, and a promo about a community whose members are never actually in it has a limit worth naming out loud.

• The people are generated. For a film about your members, photographs of your members are better.
• Generated crowds and children need care. Say what should not be depicted; it is easier to constrain up front.
• A logo taken from a photograph is approximate. Use the real file where you have it.
• Eleven scenes is a lot of generation. Cost scales with scenes rather than with runtime.
• Generated wardrobe and settings drift. Vizard Agent holds them with a look sheet, and a long film still shifts slightly between scenes.
• Inspiring can tip into generic. Specific beats from your own story are what stop it sounding like every other promo.

How do you fix a result that came back wrong?

Name the scene that is wrong. Vizard Agent keeps the narration lines, every generated clip, the logo it extracted and the subtitle file as separate pieces, so re-shooting one scene or restyling the on-screen text leaves the rest of the film exactly as it was delivered.

• "Scene four does not fit the line." Regenerated against the same brief.
• "Use the real logo file." Recomposited; nothing else changes.
• "Warmer grade throughout." Applied across the assembled cut.

How does Vizard Agent compare to doing it yourself?

By hand this is a production company, a shoot day, a group of volunteers to organise and a fortnight of post — or, far more commonly, no film at all, which is what most organisations of this size actually end up with.

Common questions

Do I need any footage? No. Vizard Agent generates every scene, and your own photographs and video make it far more personal.

What if I only have a photo of our logo on a shirt? That works. Vizard Agent isolates the mark from the photograph and cleans it up.

Will it write the narration? Yes, from your brief. Paste your own lines and it reads those instead.

How long should a promo like this be? Around a minute. Long enough for a story, short enough to be shown before a service or a meeting.

Can I get a shorter social cut? Yes. Ask for both and the second is re-cut from the same generated scenes.

Can it match a film you made before? Yes. Keep them in one project and Vizard Agent studies the earlier delivery's frames before generating anything new.

Can it avoid showing faces? Yes. Say so in the brief and Vizard Agent frames the scenes accordingly.