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Ozu turns a written script into a visual pipeline — characters, environments, storyboards, and a finished animatic — using AI models curated for filmmakers. This page walks you through your first project.

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Before you start

You’ll need an account and a script (or a rough scene you want to visualize).
  1. Sign up at ozu.studio. Verifying your email grants 200 free credits — enough to take a short scene from script to storyboard.
  2. Have something to film. A one-page scene, a draft screenplay, or just a moment you want to see. Fountain, FDX, or plain text all work.
New to writing for visual media? A clear Action line (“INT. KITCHEN — DAY”) and a handful of lines of dialogue are enough. Ozu’s AI fills in details you haven’t specified, and you can adjust as you go.

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Your first project

The creative loop moves through five stages: Script → Assets → Storyboard → Timeline → Export. Each stage is a Node on the canvas, connected to the next.
  1. Create a project. From your Projects shelf, click New Project. Name it and you’ll land on the Flow canvas — an infinite workspace where nodes live.
  2. Add your script. Open the Script Node and paste or upload your screenplay. Ozu will read it, ask you a few clarifying questions (the Ozu consult step — optional, you can skip), and then analyze the script to extract:
    • Scenes — distinct story sequences
    • Shots — subdivisions of each scene
    • Beats — the atomic units, one per frame you’ll eventually generate
    • Actors, Props, and Sets — everyone and everything your story needs
    Each beat gets a tag like 1.1.3 (Scene 1, Shot 1, Beat 3). You’ll see this notation everywhere.
  3. Generate your Assets. Ozu auto-creates an Actor, Prop, or Set node for every named character, object, and location. Open each one to generate a hero look (the canonical image) plus wardrobe variants for actors if you need them. Approve, reject, or reshot any asset. Rejected assets block downstream generation until replaced.
  4. Pass the Director Review Board (DRB). The DRB Node is a quality gate. Every asset must be approved here before the storyboard can run. This prevents a weak actor design from propagating through 50 frames.
  5. Generate the Storyboard. Open the Storyboard Node. Ozu generates one Frame per beat — organized in a scene/shot/beat grid. Reframe any beat with the crop tool, regenerate individual frames, or batch-regenerate a whole scene.
  6. Assemble the Timeline. The Timeline Node turns your frames into a playable animatic. Arrange beats, add voiceover via the Audio Node, add music via the Song Node, color-grade per beat, add transitions and keyframes. Hit play. Scrub with J/K/L (reverse / pause / play). You’re watching a rough cut of your scene.
  7. Export. From the Timeline, choose your format:
    • PDF Storyboard — beats laid out as a printable booklet
    • ZIP Frames — every frame as a separate image
    • MP4 Animatic — the full video with audio, color, and transitions

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What you just made

Ozu produces three distinct things:

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Core concepts worth knowing

You don’t need to master these before you start, but they’ll make everything else click.

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Tips for your first project

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Frequently asked questions

Do I need to know how to use screenwriting software? No. Plain text works. If you have a Fountain or FDX file, Ozu will parse it — but a paragraph of prose describing your scene is also valid input. How many credits does a typical scene use? It depends on your script length, how many assets Ozu generates, and which models you use for images and video. A 6-beat scene with 2 actors and 1 set usually fits inside the 200-credit free tier with room to spare. Can I reuse actors and sets across projects? Assets live inside the project you created them in. Cross-project reuse is on the roadmap. What happens if a generation fails? Ozu doesn’t charge you for failed generations. Credits are held when a job starts and released (not debited) if it fails. You’ll see a status indicator on the node — retry from there. Can I edit the final video outside Ozu? Yes. The MP4 export is a standard H.264 video; open it in Premiere, Final Cut, DaVinci Resolve, or any editor. What if I want to skip the AI and just use my own images? Drag any image file onto the canvas — Ozu creates an Imported Asset that slots into the pipeline alongside generated ones.

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Where to next