Product ad from product photos

The person brings the product's photos (packshots, front-on, full resolution) and, if it has one, its website. You deliver a 15–30 s photoreal ad: real-looking people in a real-looking place, the product in their hands with its label exact, a turn the viewer remembers, the brand's end card. Rounds and deliverables follow the core skill; record the picks where you keep the job's notes.

Steps

1. Brand and facts (guide-capture-a-brand; guide-pull-product-highlights, website route, or the person's own words): the logo, the CTA, what the product promises, and every variant that appears.
2. Script and shot list (llm-write-an-ad-script, the hook per llm-write-a-hook, the length per guide-make-a-script-from-source): the moment of need → the product in hand → the reveal or payoff → the end card, one action a shot, 3–5 s each, and a close hero shot of the product lit like a packshot. Gate: the script, the shot list and the price, before any spend.
3. The cast and the set (guide-design-a-set): the place designed once, every angle from its main image; invented people only, never a real person unasked (guide-depict-real-people-and-places). Gate: the set and the cast.
4. Stills (nano-banana-stage-cast-in-set, nano-banana-swap-held-product, guide-edit-a-frame-before-animating): each shot staged in the set with the product held the way it's used, the packshot as the label's reference; every label checked at full size (guide-keep-small-details). Gate: a review_choose per shot.
5. One motion test, then the batch (guide-animate-a-shot, guide-choose-a-video-model): draft on H3 Max, the picks on Kling v3 (detail) or Seedance 2.5 (physics: a pour, a crunch); the label through the motion. Gate: the test's motion and the label; then every shot at once.
6. Sound and the base cut: a voice (guide-voice-a-script, A narrator for a short) or a music bed alone (elevenlabs-generate-music), then the cut (ffmpeg-cut-clips-to-a-voiceover); grain on any shot whose skin reads plastic (ffmpeg-grain-for-plastic-skin). Gate: the cut with its sound.
7. End card and titles (hn4a-compositor-brand-ad-titles): the logo, the line, the CTA button; a key phrase or two if the ad needs them. Gate: the live spec (hn4a-compositor, Live spec, then render).
8. Deliver every aspect it ships in, native 9:16 stills redrawn rather than cropped (nano-banana-restage-for-new-aspect, guide-pace-a-short-for-social).

Choices this workflow makes

• A turn the ad hangs on: the moment the viewer sees what the product is for, or who it is really for, shown before it is said.
• The product photographed, never invented: every still takes the packshot as a reference, and a label that drifts is fixed on the still before it is animated.
• Invented people in a designed set: one set holds the shots together; a real person or place switches to guide-depict-real-people-and-places.

Dead ends

• None recorded on this workflow yet; the traps it inherits are in guide-keep-small-details, nano-banana-swap-held-product and guide-choose-a-video-model. Record the job's own as it runs.

Worked example

None yet: this workflow has no finished job or demo clip. The shape it is built for is the realistic product ad's demo (workflow-realistic-product-ad): four photoreal shots in one living room, the product held and opened, the reveal on the last close-up.