A repeatable short-form pipeline.

• 01Veo 3 — hero shotsweekly
• 02Runway Gen-4 — motion & editsweekly
• 03Higgsfield — camera movesmonthly
• 04ElevenLabs — voice & SFXweekly
• 05Topaz Video AI — upscalemonthly

Veo makes the shot. Runway moves it. Higgsfield handles cinematic camera. ElevenLabs is the voice across everything. Topaz is the polish before the export.

1. 01template

   Lock the template — once, then never again.

   15 seconds, three beats. Open Resolve, create a project at 1080×1920, 30fps, 16-bit. Save as Template — Shorts v1.drp. Set defaults you'll never touch again:

   — Color grade: one LUT applied at the project level (not per clip)
   — Caption font + size: locked across the project
   — Outro card: 2-second clip with your brand mark, imported as a media pool item
   — Click track at 90 BPM in the audio bin (cuts land on the beat)

   hook

   point

   payoff

   01HOOK1.5s

   02POINT10s

   03PAYOFF3.5s

   The template is invisible to viewers and load-bearing for you. It's why you can ship five pieces this week and one took you all month last quarter.

2. 02hero · 90 min

   Hero shot in Veo — three rolls, pick one.

   Fill in the 6-axis prompt scaffold (in the Build-along tab): subject, action, environment, camera, light, style, plus a negative list. Generate three variants per piece. Pick one. Never re-roll past three.

   If no shot lands in three rolls, the prompt is wrong, not the model. Rewrite one axis at a time — change the lens, then the lighting, then the time of day. Don't grind the same prompt.

   Save the chosen file to your project's 01-hero/ folder with the prompt as the filename so you can re-find it later.

3. 03motion · 2 hrs

   Motion & edits in Runway.

   Batch all five pieces in one Runway session. Same camera moves, same transition style, same color profile. The session is where the consistency lives.

   Cuts are on the beat. Pre-define the beat with a click track. Random cuts are the giveaway that the piece was made in a hurry.

4. 04voice · 60 min

   Voice over in ElevenLabs.

   Single voice across the campaign. Fixed pace, fixed stability setting (lock it at 0.5). Mix audio at -16 LUFS for social, -23 for ads.

   Never switch voice models mid-campaign. The viewer hears it before they see it.

5. 05ship

   Upscale, export, queue.

   Topaz batch on all five files with the same model and the same artifact threshold. Export to 1080×1920 H.264 at 12 Mbps. Queue all five posts at once. Walk away.

• ×Reinventing the format every week. Format consistency is what reads as a brand.
• ×Mixing voice models in a campaign. Ears notice faster than eyes.
• ×Editing in different software for "look variation." The look comes from the grade, not the editor.
• ×Posting whenever. Same time, same day. Algorithms reward consistency.
• ×Rolling a hero shot ten times. Three rolls. Pick one. Move on.
• ×Custom transitions per piece. One transition family per campaign. Save the rest for the next campaign.

Output isn't about better tools. It's about fewer decisions made each week. Lock the template once. Vary the content. The pipeline's job is to be boring — that's what makes it fast.

Steal one thing: the three-roll rule on hero shots. If the model can't land it in three, the prompt is wrong. Rewriting prompts is faster than rolling.

Three template variants: hero (15s, generative-heavy), talking-head (20s, mostly face), B-roll (12s, montage). Same color grade, same caption style, same outro across all three. Branches let you serve different feeds without abandoning the system.

Once a quarter, run a 50-shot Veo session on generic visuals — abstract motion, environment shots, hands at work, screen close-ups. Tag them. The library cuts an hour out of every future piece.

ElevenLabs voice clone of your founder/host removes the "is this AI?" question. Use it for narration only — keep one human take per piece for the hero line. Mix the two and you sound human without paying the studio bill.

The first 1.5 seconds is the only thing worth testing at this volume. Two hooks per piece, same body. Track watch-through to second 3. The winner becomes the template's hook template for next campaign.