Films

Films turns a few lines of writing into a short film. You describe what happens, you get back a shot list to approve, and nothing is made until you say so. Finished films go at the top of your homepage or on the page of the dish, bottle or other menu item they are about, and are always saved to your Library.

The rule

Nothing is generated, and nothing goes live, without you pressing a button for it.

How it works

1. Open Growth → Films and press New film.
2. Choose something on your menu, or leave it on No — a film of its own and name it.
3. Write the story in plain language — or press one of the samples underneath and change it.
4. Set how long and in how many scenes, what shape it is, and how good it should look.
5. Press Create and read the shot list you get back.
6. Work down the steps: Images makes one picture per scene, Clips turns each pair into moving video, Film joins them.
7. Publish, then choose where it goes: your homepage, that item’s own page, or both.

You can stop after the shot list, change the wording, and try again.

Finding the right thing on your menu

Press the box at the top and start typing. It searches your item names and your section names, so typing red wine brings up every bottle in that section even though none of them is called “wine”.

The list is grouped under your own sections, in your own order. If your menu has both food and drinks, the buttons above it — Food, Drinks, Shop — cut it down first, and each shows how many things are behind it.

A film can be about a bottle, a cocktail or a coffee just as well as a dish. Once you pick one, the page follows your lead: pick a wine and it talks about that drink’s page, not that dish’s page.

Starting from a sample

Under the story box are three short samples you can press. They fill the box, and you change the words from there.

They follow what you picked. A bottle gets a bottle being opened, a cocktail gets one being built, a pizza gets one coming out of the oven, and a film with nothing picked gets your room at night. If you have already written something, pressing a sample asks before it replaces it.

While the scenes are being written

Press Write the scenes and the step fills with a row of empty scene cards that write themselves in, one after another, in the shape your real scenes will take. A line underneath says what is happening — reading your story, planning how the camera moves.

It takes about ten seconds. You can leave the page; it carries on without you, and writing the scenes costs nothing. When it finishes the scenes stay on screen so you can read them.

Shape, length and quality

Shape is decided at the start, not at the end, because the pictures are drawn to fit it: Wide 16:9 for your pages and Facebook, Reel 9:16 for Instagram, TikTok and Stories, Square 1:1 for feed posts. It costs the same whichever you pick.

Want the same story in a second shape? Open the film and press the shape you want in the Shapes row at the top. It keeps your scenes and makes the pictures and clips again for the new shape — a second run, at the same price as the first.

Length and scenes work together. Each scene is one picture, and the video runs between them, so four scenes make three clips. A clip can’t be shorter than 4 seconds or longer than 15, and the form tells you what your two numbers will really produce before you press.

Why the clips are made one at a time

Each clip starts on the exact frame the clip before it ends on, so the cuts don’t jump. That frame doesn’t exist until that clip is finished — so clips are made in order, not all at once. A film takes longer to build than it used to. It costs the same.

While it waits, a clip says Waiting for clip 2 rather than sitting on a silent queued.

Choosing the model for a shot

Each clip has its own model picker, next to its Another take button. Open it and you see every model you can use, what each one is good at, and what that shot would cost on it. Pick one and the price on the button changes to match.

You can use a different model for each scene. A slow pour and a wide view of the room aren’t best served by the same one, and you no longer have to choose once for the whole film. The picker above the clips sets the model for everything you generate in one go; after that, each clip is on its own.

A model that can’t make a shot that long, or isn’t switched on at the quality you picked, is greyed out and says which it is.

Knowing what made what

Each clip and each picture shows the model that made it, just under it. That’s what it was made with — not what the picker next to it will use for your next try, which you can change freely.

A picture you uploaded yourself shows nothing, because no model made it.

Trying a shot twice

Every clip you make is kept. Press Another take and you get a second version beside the first, not instead of it — so you can run the same shot on one model, then again on another, watch both, and press Use this one on the winner.

Picking a different take changes where that shot ends — so the next clip now starts in the wrong place, and shows an old join tag. Press Redo on that next clip when you’re happy with your choice. Nothing re-runs on its own, because that would spend your credits without asking.

The film checks the cuts before it joins them

When you open Film, it looks at every cut — the last moment of one clip against the first moment of the next — and tells you if any of them jump. It names the clip to redo. It never stops you rendering; you can ignore it and look for yourself.

If it says nothing, the cuts all land.

Each take shows what made it, how sharp it is, and what it cost. Switching between them is free, so you can change your mind as often as you like. You only pay when you make a new take, and the button shows that price before you press. A clip keeps its last six.

Ask Nina

Nina sits in the bottom-right corner, with a light moving around her so you can see she is there. Her name and her job are on the card, so you always know who you are talking to.

Not sure what to ask? Press What can you do with my films? and she will tell you what she can change here, what she can make, and what it costs. Or just say what you want — “add a scene where the steam clears and the fork lifts”, “make the first shot longer”.

Wording changes happen straight away and you watch them appear in the form beside her. Anything that costs credits comes back as an orange button instead, so she can never spend for you. If a change wasn’t what you meant, press Put it back.

On a phone she opens full screen, like a messaging app. Press the ✕ at the top right to go back to the page.

Good to know

• Every clip is one unbroken shot. The camera travels from one picture to the next and never cuts. So scenes that stay in one place film best — across the room, in towards the plate, around the dish. A story that jumps to another town or another day between two scenes gives the video model nowhere to travel, and it may cut instead.
• Making a film uses your credits — the pictures and the clips each cost some. Writing, choosing shots and publishing are free.
• Asking Nina uses a small amount too, the same as anywhere else in the app. Her edits to your wording are included; the orange buttons show their own price before you press.
• At the Film step you can still save it in another shape — but that one crops the footage to fit, so anything near the edge is lost. Filming it in that shape from the start doesn’t lose anything.
• Leave “Also make a tall version for phones” ticked on a wide film. It doesn’t re-film anything — it fits the same footage into a tall shape, so the edges are cut off, but your titles stay on screen. Free. A film you shot Reel 9:16 doesn’t show this — phones already get it as shot.
• The last step costs nothing. It turns the film you’ve already made into the version that plays as someone scrolls. No credits, and you can run it again any time.
• Phones download one version, not two. Whichever shape fits their screen, and only that one.
• Your homepage shows one film at a time. A new one takes the old one down, and the moving header comes back when no film is up. Nothing is deleted.
• A menu item shows one film too — if you have the same story in two shapes, publishing one takes the other down.
• Start on Draft quality and raise it once the story is right — the How sharp buttons sit in the Clips step, next to the button that spends, and there is nowhere else to change it.
• The pictures and clips are shown in the shape you filmed in. A tall film looks tall on this page. If one picture shows grey bars beside it, that one is a different shape from the rest — usually an upload.
• Each menu item gets one story; films about nothing in particular have no limit. Anything that already has a film is left out of the picker.
• Owners and managers only — view-only Growth access can’t reach it.

Related features

• Text on the footage — put words on top of the video, and choose when they come and go.
• Trimming on the timeline — drag either end of a clip on the Film step, and watch the two frames either side of the cut as you do.
• Ending a clip early — grab a frame and the film cuts away there, so two shots meet instead of overlapping.
• Make a video from a dish — one clip for social, not a multi-scene film.
• Library — where finished films are kept, with Use in a post.