Movie Star
Write a story. Get a movie.

Step by step

How to make a movie, from story to screen

Every step below is the real one, in order. Nothing here needs a camera, an editing timeline or a download.

1. STEP 01

   Open Movie Star and start a movie

   From your workspace, open Movie Star and create a movie. Give it a title and, if you have one, a logline — the one sentence that says what it is about. Both are yours; nothing is generated for you.

2. STEP 02

   Write your story as scenes

   Add a scene and fill in the slug line: interior or exterior, the location, and the time of day. Then write the action — what happens — and the dialogue, line by line, with the character who says it.

3. STEP 03

   Cast your characters

   Assign each line to a person from your install's directory. If a character is not a person who signs in, create them as a name to write under. The cast appears on the title card and in the credits.

4. STEP 04

   Choose the aspect and the light

   Pick the shape of the finished film — 16:9 for the screen, 9:16 for the feed, 2.39:1 for cinema scope, 1:1 or 4:5 for posts — and a lighting preset for each scene. The preset is a default you can override per scene.

5. STEP 05

   Render the movie

   Press render. The job is queued on the worker with a progress line, and the result is one video file stored on your own disk. A short preview cut renders first so you can see the shape of it before the full render finishes.

6. STEP 06

   Add a music bed, if you have one

   Upload a track you own and attach it to the movie. It is stored and served the same way your other media is, and deleting the movie frees the bytes.

7. STEP 07

   Publish to your feed

   Publish the finished movie as a post on your own domain. It appears on your feed where anyone can watch it, and it can be sent to the networks you have connected.

8. STEP 08

   Or line several up as a series

   Because an episode of a TV show is a movie, you can add finished movies to a running order and give the show a weekly slot — the same films, arranged into a channel.

What it does

Everything a movie needs, without a camera

• Write a screenplay, scene by scene

  Every movie is a list of scenes. Each one is a slug line — interior or exterior, the place, the time of day — an action paragraph and the dialogue. It is the shape a script has always had, which means the story is the work and the software stays out of the way.

• Cast the characters from your own people

  The people you have on your install — the handles from your own directory — become the cast, so a movie credits real names rather than placeholders. A character can be someone who never signs in, because a person and a login are two different things.

• Choose the look, and the app applies it

  Pick an aspect once — widescreen, vertical for the feed, cinema scope, square or portrait — and a lighting preset per scene. Golden hour, interior warmth, night blue or noir are a small set of real colour grades, applied by the renderer rather than described in a menu.

• It renders on your own server

  The render is a queued job, not a request that blocks the page, with a progress line you can watch. It runs on your own machine using our own media engine, so a story never leaves the hardware you own.

• Dialogue as captions, the script as subtitles

  The lines you write become timed captions, and the whole script ships inside the file as a soft-subtitle track — so the movie is watchable with the sound off and searchable by what is said, not only by its title.

• Publish it to your own feed

  A finished movie goes out as a post on your own domain, in the same content model as everything else you publish, so it can reach your feed and, when you connect them, the networks you already use.

• Music you own

  A movie can carry a music bed you upload and own, stored the same way your videos are, with a delete that really frees the bytes. Nothing is licensed on your behalf and nothing is fetched from anywhere else.

• One movie, many cuts

  The aspect decides the render canvas, so the same story can be cut for the feed and for the screen. A movie is also the unit a TV episode is made of — line a few up and you have a show.