StoryForge – AI Short Film Script Studio

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Inspiration

I wanted a simple way to turn one creative idea into something that feels like a film—structured scenes, dialogue, and visual direction—not just a paragraph-style short story. The inspiration was the gap between “writing a story” and “creating a short-film draft” that a filmmaker or content creator can actually use.

What it does

StoryForge – AI Short Film Script Studio turns a user prompt into a film-ready 5-scene screenplay.

Users provide:

Prompt (core idea)
Genre (Sci-Fi, Horror, Romance, Thriller, etc.)
Tone (Dark, Funny, Suspenseful, Epic, etc.)
Characters (tag input)
Setting
Optional controls (POV, time period, twist, etc.)

It generates:

Title + logline
Estimated runtime
5 structured scenes (setting, visual notes, action, dialogue)
Trailer pack (voiceover lines + quick cuts)
Export options (Markdown / JSON / TXT)

How we built it

Frontend: A cinematic UI with a two-panel generator layout, scene cards, tabs (Story/Scenes/Trailer/Export), loading states, and export tools.
Backend: A single API endpoint POST /api/generate that sends a structured prompt to Gemini and requests strict JSON output.
Prototype scope: No database or authentication—kept intentionally minimal so the core experience works end-to-end.

Challenges we ran into

Framework mismatch: Some generated UI components used SPA routing patterns (e.g., react-router-dom), which conflict with Next.js. We replaced those with Next.js routing (next/link) to fix build errors.
Output reliability: AI responses can vary, so we enforced a strict JSON schema and structured prompting to keep rendering predictable.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A working end-to-end prototype that produces cinematic, structured screenplay outputs (not just text blobs).
Clean UI/UX with tabs, export tools, and strong presentation that feels like a real pre-production tool.
A backend flow that returns consistent JSON ready for future upgrades.

What we learned

How to design an AI app around a stable output schema so UI stays reliable.
How to prompt for structured results (scenes, dialogue, visual notes) with consistent formatting.
How to debug and adapt generated code to match the framework (Next.js) and deploy cleanly.