How to Make a Diwali Brand Film With AI in Two Weeks

You can make a Diwali brand film with AI in two weeks: one week to agree the script, look, cast and storyboard, and one week to render, cut and get sign-off. Our 30-second Hindi film for Shilp Group took 941 credits and about four hours of logged production, so most of the two weeks goes on decisions, not on renders.

Diwali 2026 fell on 8 November. The plan below works for any festival. Count back 14 days from the day the film must go out, whether that is Christmas, New Year, Uttarayan on 14 January, Holi in March or the next Diwali.

Key takeaways

• Two weeks, two halves. Week 1 is script, look, cast, places and a signed-off storyboard. Week 2 is shots, sound, edit and client review.
• The Shilp Group film: 30 seconds, vertical 9:16, Hindi, 7 scenes, 8 shots, 11 cast and 5 places. 941 credits.
• 31 video renders for 7 video shots. 24 cheap tries at 720p to find each shot, then one 4K render per shot, 7 of 7 with no redo.
• The script took 36 minutes: 7 versions covering 6 different ideas.
• Give it the brand's real material. The logo and 8 screenshots of real buildings fixed a first pass that looked wrong.

What did the Shilp Group film look like?

Shilp Group builds apartments in Ahmedabad. The film's idea is called "In Their Own Words". At Diwali, five residents in five different Shilp homes each say one line to camera while they carry on with what they are doing:

1. A father playing ball with his son in the garden: "He plays freely here, and I don't worry."
2. A boy in a cushion fort with two friends: "My home is my friends' hangout!"
3. A woman making laddoos beside her husband: "Everything here is thoughtfully made."
4. A young woman dancing for a reel: "Now there's room for my hobby too!"
5. A bride-to-be having mehndi applied, her mother beside her: "A new beginning. The trust is Shilp's."

The lines are spoken in Hindi. The English here is our translation. A closing voice lands the brand line on the logo: "शिल्प — हर दिन त्यौहार", or "Shilp, every day a celebration". A last shot, added during production, brings everyone into the garden at night to watch an anar fountain in slow motion.

The last shot's still frame: the residents gather around an anar in the garden at night.

The full record is in the Shilp Group case study.

What is the two-week plan?

We did the making in three days: the script on 5 November, production on 6 November and final renders on 7 November. That is too tight to recommend. The two-week version leaves room for a client to say no twice.

The rule behind the plan: get every sign-off before the step that costs more. A script change is free. A storyboard change costs a few picture credits. A change after final renders costs the renders.

What Diwali ad ideas work for an AI film?

Ideas built from short, simple moments. These held up on our film:

• One person, one line, one action. Each of the five speaking shots runs 5 or 6 seconds and holds a single line.
• Many homes, not one long scene. Five households gave five looks at the brand and no shot had to carry a long performance.
• Small festive details. Laddoos, mehndi, an anar in the garden and warm evening light read as Diwali without a crowd scene.
• Slow motion for the big moment. The anar fountain was shot at half speed, as the longest shot at 10 seconds.
• The logo as a still. The end frame is a still of the logo on warm ivory, not a video shot.

And what to write around:

• Fast physics. We simplified shots where a thrown ball went the wrong way and a plate vanished.
• Long speeches. Keep each spoken line to one breath.

If you are stuck for a concept, write several fast and throw most away. We wrote six ideas in 36 minutes and made the second.

How do you make the homes and people look right?

Show the model the real thing.

Our first pictures showed a bungalow and cramped rooms. Shilp builds apartments. We corrected the brief, uploaded 8 screenshots of real Shilp buildings and the logo file, and the places were made again from those.

In Director, each place gets one reference sheet in the Places step (the wide, the reverse, the middle and the details) and each character gets one in the Cast step (four full-body views head to toe and four expressions). The logo went in as a product. We made 16 character sheets for the 11 cast members.

Every video render but one was then given between 1 and 7 of those pictures. That is how the same residents could come back for the last shot in the garden. More on the method in how to keep characters consistent.

How do Hindi lines and music work?

The five residents speak on camera. The video model, Gemini Omni 1.2, made the picture and the Hindi line in one render. For one character we used "Change the voice" in the Sound step to give the line a voice we picked.

The closing line was read by a voice from the Eleven v3 library. The score was a 30-second track from Lyria 2. If you want a song with singing in a brand film, use Eleven Music. Songs from Audio One are for personal use only, on every plan.

For other languages, see making AI films in any language.

How many renders and credits should you budget?

Here is what our 30-second film used.

That is 4.4 video renders per video shot. The first pass is where the tries happen, at 720p. The final pass at 4K needed one render per shot.

Five more requests failed or were refused. None was charged.

Director is on Pro and up: $99 a month with 2,000 credits (checked on /pricing, 10 November 2026). This film fits inside one month. A longer film or more retakes will cost more. The sums are in the cost of an approved AI film.

What went wrong?

• The first picture pass was wrong for the brand. Fixed with real building photos.
• Three picture requests got no answer from one image model. Nothing was charged, and the frames were made on Nano Banana 2.1.
• One video model turned a shot down. Nothing was charged.
• One upscale to 4K failed and was not charged. The final shots were each rendered at 4K.
• The final cut was not made in the app. We cut it in outside editing software. Director's own export makes an MP4 at up to 1080p, so a 4K cut has to be finished elsewhere.

How do you make one in Hyperdream?

1. Open Director, paste the brief and pick the shape. Ours was 9:16 for Instagram.
2. Add the logo and real photos as references when you start the film.
3. Work through Script, Look, Cast and Places. Stop and get sign-off on the script and on the faces.
4. In Storyboard, check the still for every shot. Download the "Pitch deck (PDF)" for the client.
5. In Shots, render with the quality set to Draft (720p) until each shot works. Then raise the quality and render each keeper once more.
6. In Sound, set the lines, the narrator and the music.
7. In Edit, put the cut together and export. Then use Share for review so the client can comment and approve without an account.

Agent mode did about half of our first-pass renders itself. We started the rest, and all the final renders, by hand. The AI movie maker page shows each step.

When is another route better?

• A film that must show real residents or real flats. Film them. AI pictures are invented, even from references.
• A big campaign film with a known face. That needs the person, a crew and their sign-off.
• A simple greeting with your logo. A ready-made animation from a design tool is faster and cheaper than a film.

How we checked

Every number about the film comes from its project record and credit ledger, read on 10 November 2026. The Pro price was read on /pricing the same day. What we could not confirm: where and when the finished film was published, and the final 4K cut itself, which is not stored in the project (the stored cuts are 720p and run from 13 to 33 seconds). Facts about Shilp Group come from the brief and the client's own material, not from an outside source. Refresh this page in September 2027, before the next Diwali.