How do you make a ReelShort-style series with AI?

The format, not the brand

Apps like ReelShort popularised a specific format: vertical, serialized melodrama sold episode by episode. This page describes that format and how we rebuild it with AI. It makes no claims about how any particular app produces its shows; if you want to know whether a given series used AI, ask its publisher.

Step 1: write the series bible in one page

Name the lead, what they want, who stands in the way and the secret that flips the story. Keep the cast to about 5 core characters and the locations to 6–8 sets; give each character a signature colour so viewers recognise them in a thumbnail. Melodrama works because the stakes are personal and obvious, so resist subplots.

Step 2: write a 30-plus episode guide

1. One paragraph per episode: the hook, the turn and the cliffhanger.
2. A reversal every five to eight episodes, so the arc keeps escalating.
3. The first big reversal lands before your paywall; viewers pay to see what happens after it.
4. A payoff episode at the end that resolves the main revenge or romance.

Step 3: turn episodes into shots

Vertical drama is mostly close-ups and two-shots. Blood Sun: The Fall of Kratos used 268 shots for 45 episodes, about 6 shots of 12 seconds each per episode. Write each shot with one action, the exact line of dialogue and the characters and set it uses. Put emotion in the action and the face, not in adjectives.

Step 4: lock the cast and sets

Generate one approved reference per character and set and attach it to every shot. For a glow-up, a costume change or an injury, make a separate reference for that version of the character. Most of the visible quality of a short drama is whether the lead looks like the same person in episode 1 and episode 30.

Step 5: render on one model

Pick one video model for the whole series, pilot included. We rendered High Note entirely on Seedance 2.0 Mini at 720p and the look stayed uniform from the first episode to the last. At list prices, a 30-episode series of 72-second episodes costs about $302 in video on that model with retakes; in Arc it is about 23,391 credits.

Step 6: finish like an app series

• Burned-in captions, large and centred low, aligned to the real speech. On Blood Sun, aligning to speech-recognition word timings fixed 396 of 400 lines that the planned timings had placed early.
• Music under every episode and a consistent loudness; ours are mixed to -14 LUFS. High Note used 9 original songs.
• A recap-free opening: viewers binge, so each episode starts where the last one stopped.
• A cover image with the lead's face and the conflict in one glance, and three to five trailers of 30–45 seconds.

Step 7: choose where it lives

Short-drama apps license or commission series; TikTok has a short-drama programme for creators and studios; YouTube and Instagram take full episodes or compilations. Our series also went out as single long films on YouTube, such as High Note at 56 minutes and Blood Sun at 52 minutes. See publishing on TikTok.

What AI does not solve

• Writing. The format rewards tight, escalating plotting, and AI drafts tend to be flat. Edit the episode guide hard.
• Originality. Borrow the format and the genre beats, not another series' characters, dialogue or scene order.
• Audience. A finished series still needs trailers, a cover and distribution.

Where Katechon Arc fits

Arc covers steps 3 to 5 in one project: script plans you confirm per episode, shared references, storyboards and per-shot rendering at 9:16, with episodes exported individually.

Arc does not distribute to short-drama apps or TikTok, does not handle paywalls and has no music generator; you finish and release elsewhere.

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