How to Make an AI Film for a Contest: From the Rules to the Export

1. Read the rules before you have an idea

Contest rules decide more of the film than people expect: which tools you may use, how long it runs, when it had to be made, what music is allowed and where it has to be posted. A few real examples from contests open right now:

• The 1 Billion Followers Summit AI Film Award wants an original 5 to 7 minute film, at least 70% generated with Seedance.
• The AKOOL AI Film Challenge allows other tools, but AKOOL has to be meaningfully used, its logo has to appear at the top of the video, and the film has to be posted publicly with set hashtags.
• Chroma Awards Season 2 takes any AI tool, but only projects made after February 1, 2026, and each project goes in one category.
• The Curious Refuge x Epidemic Sound holiday competition takes any AI tool, with music from Epidemic Sound.
• The NEXTALE Award is for a complete AI series of 20 or more episodes, not a single short.

Every contest page on this site lists the tools it allows. Before you start, write the answers down:

Tools required or banned:
Runtime (min / max):
Made after (date):
Music and sound rules:
Aspect ratio and resolution:
Where it must be posted, and any tags or logos:
Entry fee and deadline (with time zone):
One category per film, or several?

2. Write one line, then a shot list

Write the film in one sentence: who, what they want, what goes wrong. If you can't, the film isn't ready to shoot.

Then break it into shots. For a 60 to 90 second film that is usually somewhere between 8 and 15 shots. For each shot, write what we see, what moves, and roughly how long it lasts. Writing the movement now matters, because each clip will carry one movement well and two badly.

Shot 4 (5s): Close on her hands turning the old key. The key stops halfway. Camera holds.
Shot 5 (4s): Wide. The door swings open on its own into darkness. Slow push in.

The storyboard and shot list guide goes deeper on numbering, coverage and timing.

3. Fix the look before the first shot

AI shots stop cutting together when each one is prompted fresh. Decide the look once, in words: palette, light (source, direction, softness), lens and framing, grain, and aspect ratio. Paste the same description into every shot.

If the film has a person or a creature in it, decide what they look like the same way and keep the same reference pictures for every shot they appear in. The look bible guide and the consistent characters guide both have templates you can copy.

4. Make stills first, and choose them

Make a few stills for each shot before you make any video. Stills are cheaper and faster than clips, and they let you choose composition, light and performance before you pay for motion.

Pick the still that already looks like the middle of the moment: the hand halfway through turning the key, the coat caught in the wind. That still becomes the first frame of the clip, and a still that is already in motion gives the clip somewhere to go. The first frame guide covers what makes a good starting frame.

5. Turn each still into a clip, one movement per shot

Start each clip on its chosen still and describe one movement: what moves, which way, how fast, and where it settles. "The door swings open and stops against the wall; the camera pushes in slowly and stops at the threshold" works better than a list of five things happening at once.

Make two or three takes of each shot and keep the best. If a clip keeps going wrong, change the still, not the prompt: most broken clips come from a first frame that doesn't fit the movement.

Keep clips short. A few seconds each, cut together, reads as a film. One long clip usually drifts.

6. Sound does half the work

Picture alone rarely carries a contest film. Plan three layers: the room (wind, traffic, a hum), the action (footsteps, the key, a door), and music or voice. Some video models generate sound with the clip; check that it fits before you keep it.

Music is where entries get disqualified. Use music you made, music you licensed, or music the contest supplies, and read the music rule from step 1 again. Some contests require a specific library, the way the Curious Refuge holiday competition uses Epidemic Sound.

7. Edit, export, and check the entry against the rules

Cut on movement: end a clip as something moves and start the next one moving. Trim every clip to the moment it works, even if that is two seconds. Add titles and credits if the contest asks for them, and note every AI tool you used, because many contests ask for a list.

Then go back to the rules you wrote down in step 1 and check each line against the finished file:

[ ] Runtime inside the limit, credits included
[ ] Only allowed tools used, and required ones used enough
[ ] Made after the cutoff date
[ ] Music cleared or from the required library
[ ] Right aspect ratio and resolution
[ ] Logo, tags or public post done if required
[ ] Submitted before the deadline in the contest's time zone

Doing it in Overs

Overs is a studio for exactly the stills-then-clips way of working above. In Overs you type a shot and get stills. Click a still to put it on the bar, switch to Clip, describe the movement, and the clip opens exactly on that frame. Put several pictures on the bar and the clip works from all of them instead. An art direction keeps every shot in the same look, which covers step 3.

It runs on your own OpenRouter key, so you choose the image and video models your key has, and you pay them at their price with no markup from Overs. If a contest requires a specific model rather than a specific app, as the 1 Billion Followers award does with Seedance, check that its rules accept the model used through another app before you rely on it.

People who join the AI Film Contests list get Overs Pro for $3 a month for their first 3 months, along with this guide and the Creatives Club community. That's the free creator pack.