Storyboards and Shot Lists for an AI Commercial

Start from the length you are allowed

Contest ad categories set hard limits, and they differ. Runway's Big Ad Contest took spots "between 15 seconds and 30 seconds in length." Atlanta AI Ad Fest asks for a primary film of 30 to 60 seconds, and the Formula E Creators Challenge allows up to 60. The AI Film Awards Bali splits ads into social pieces under a minute, ads of one to three minutes and commercials under five, and Golden Dunes Dubai takes commercials under five minutes.

Platforms set the rest. YouTube's bumper ads last "between 5 and 6 seconds," viewers can skip in-stream ads "After 5 seconds," and non-skippable in-stream ads run 15 to 60 seconds depending on the campaign. In the UK, Thinkbox says "The standard length of a TV ad is 30 seconds long and approximately half of all ads are 30 seconds." TikTok advises you to "Prioritize your hook in the first 6 seconds." Pick the length first, because every other number on the shot list follows from it.

How many shots fit

Divide the length by the pace you want. At one cut every 2.5 seconds, a 30-second spot is 12 shots and a 15-second cut is 6. At one every 2 seconds, it is 15 and 7 or 8. There is no fixed rule, so time a few commercials you admire with a stopwatch and choose a pace on purpose.

Then check each shot against what the tools make in one generation. As of September 24, 2026, Runway Gen-4.5 makes clips of 2 to 10 seconds, Kling 3.0 3 to 15 seconds, Google's Veo 3.1 4, 6 or 8 seconds (8 only when you use reference images), Seedance 2.0 4 to 15 seconds and Seedance 2.5 up to 30. OpenAI removed Sora 2 from its API on September 24, 2026. Most commercial shots are shorter than one generation, which helps. Render a clip a little longer than the shot and trim the start and end in the edit.

Board with the real first frames

In live action, a storyboard is a drawing of a shot someone will film later. In AI production the board can be the shot. Make each panel as the actual first frame, from your look bible and character sheet, at the delivery aspect ratio, so the approved board goes straight into image-to-video. A loose sketch hides the problems you most need to see early, such as a label the model cannot hold or a face that drifts in a wide.

Then time the boards into an animatic, with each still held for its planned duration and cut to a scratch voiceover and temp music. Merriam-Webster defines an animatic as a preliminary sequence of shots, images or sketches "viewed to determine its effectiveness before being finalized." Watch it at full length before you render a single clip. A spot that feels long as an animatic will feel long as video, and a shot you cut at this stage costs nothing.

One block per shot

Write the shot list as one block per shot, in the order the spot plays. Every field answers a question someone will ask during production.

SHOT 03 | 0:05.0 to 0:07.5 | 2.5 s
Size and angle: Close-up, eye level
Action: A hand lifts the can off the counter
Camera: Locked off, slight push in
Product: Label to camera, cold, beads of condensation
Light: Key from the window, left, per look bible v2
References: Character sheet v2, product front, look frame 01
First frame: Still, approved yes/no
Motion prompt: One line, motion only
Tool and clip: Image-to-video, 5 s clip, cut to 2.5 s
Budget: 8 stills, 3 video tries

The last two lines matter most in AI work. The tool line tells you whether the shot fits one generation, and the budget line tells you, before you start, what the shot will cost. Keep every block in one shared document and update the first-frame and budget lines as shots are approved, so anyone on the job can see what is done and what is left.

A worked example: 30 seconds, 12 shots

Here is a hypothetical 30-second spot for a made-up canned sparkling tea, the kind of fictional product Runway's contest asked for, planned at 2.5 seconds a shot.

• Shot 1, 0:00 to 0:02.5. Wide, a kitchen at dawn, light across the counter, the can at frame left.
• Shot 2, 0:02.5 to 0:05. Close-up, condensation forms on the can.
• Shot 3, 0:05 to 0:07.5. Close-up, a hand lifts the can off the counter.
• Shot 4, 0:07.5 to 0:10. Insert, the tab opens with a burst of mist.
• Shot 5, 0:10 to 0:12.5. Medium, she drinks, eyes closed.
• Shot 6, 0:12.5 to 0:15. Wide, she steps out onto a balcony.
• Shot 7, 0:15 to 0:17.5. Close-up, the city wakes and windows light up.
• Shot 8, 0:17.5 to 0:20. Medium, a friend waves from the street.
• Shot 9, 0:20 to 0:22.5. Insert, a second can handed down.
• Shot 10, 0:22.5 to 0:25. Two-shot, both laugh.
• Shot 11, 0:25 to 0:27.5. Packshot, the can on the balcony rail, a clean plate.
• Shot 12, 0:27.5 to 0:30. End card, logo and line set in the edit.

The budget follows from the list. Eleven generated shots need eleven approved first frames, and at the 8 tries per usable image that the agency 100 Creatives averaged across its 2026 campaigns, that is 88 stills, about $5.90 on Google's Nano Banana 2 at $0.067 each. Three video tries per shot at about five seconds each is 33 clips and 165 seconds of video, about $19.80 on Veo 3.1 Fast at 1080p ($0.12 a second) or $66 on Veo 3.1 with audio ($0.40 a second). The end card is a still in the edit and costs nothing to generate.

The model fees are small. The list earns its keep by showing which shots are hard before you start, here the hand on the can, the burst of mist and two faces in one frame.

Plan the deliverables on day one

Decide every size before you frame shot 1. A 16:9 master with the action in the center third crops cleanly to 9:16 and to 4:5 or 1:1, and a frame composed to its edges does not. Instagram Reels ads are 9:16, the Facebook feed takes 4:5 and TikTok recommends 9:16, and Meta asks you to keep the top 14%, the bottom 35% and 6% on each side of a Reels ad clear of text and logos. Plan a 6-second cut too, since YouTube bumpers run 5 to 6 seconds. If the brand also wants stills, add them to the list now, since they can come from the same approved frames. Our guides to the packshot and end card and to pricing AI commercial work cover the last seconds and quoting every size.

Plan the stills in Overs, then animate them

Overs does the planning this page describes, for stills. Its ten steps run in order like a real shoot: research, brand rules, visual style, art direction, product analysis, casting, shot planning, prompt writing, a quality check and the render. You say what the set is for (store page, feed ads, editorial, hero, banner, billboard) and choose 5, 8, 10 or 12 photos, and the plan covers each use, with every photo getting only the reference pictures it needs.

Nothing is charged until you approve. You see the shot plan and an estimated cost first, and for worn products you approve the character sheet before any scene. Then you approve, change or reject each photo, and Overs writes a text motion prompt per photo for Seedance or Veo, which turns an approved still set into the first frames of your spot. Overs does not make the video itself.

100 Creatives, the agency Abhi Chawla founded, built its 2026 campaigns on canvases with three zones, inputs, a locked set of AI roles with fixed instructions and a fan-out of about ten shots, and Overs grew out of that process. Across four of those campaigns, 361 renders gave 45 keepers, about 8 tries per usable photo, which is $0.27 to $1.69 in AI fees per keeper at published prices of $0.034 to $0.211 a render. Abhi's own businesses make their images with Overs today. Overs' shot list template for an AI campaign has a filled ten-shot set sized for each placement.

Overs is a sister product to AI Film Contests, from the same founder. The free plan covers 40 photos a month on your own OpenRouter key, with no markup from Overs. Try Overs free at www.overs.studio and see the plan and the cost before a single frame renders.