Love&Hate

Inspiration

We wanted a grounded, chaotic story about divorce and co-parenting where “war with the ex” is both funny and painful—and slowly shows that nobody is completely right.

What it does

Love & Hate is a short vertical dramedy about a divorced mom, her ride-or-die best friend, and an ex-husband who turns getting their son back into a series of absurd schemes.
What starts as “protecting the kid” becomes a rivalry where it’s harder and harder to tell who’s actually going too far.

How we built it

We built the project around a few key beats: his stunt, their counter-attack, school/public fallout, and the moment they realise the war is affecting their son.
Characters and everyday locations (apartments, school, street scenes) were created with AI image/video tools, then edited for 9:16 in CapCut with AI-assisted dialogue and ambience.

Challenges we ran into

• Keeping comedy and pain balanced so it doesn’t feel either too slapstick or too dark.
  
• Making three leads (mom, ex, best friend) visually consistent and easy to read in fast vertical scenes.
  
• Showing the son’s point of view without turning him into a prop.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We found a tone where viewers can laugh at the escalating chaos and still feel the emotional cost.
We also created a clear mini-arc that moves from petty revenge to the question: is anyone here actually doing what’s best for the child?

What we learned

We learned that for family dramedy, small details—text messages, side glances. We also saw how important it is to give every adult character at least one moment of vulnerability, not just “villain” or “victim” scenes.

What's next for Love & Hate

Next, we plan to explore more “rounds” of this war: mediation attempts, new partners entering the picture, and moments where the adults are finally forced to team up.
We want to test lighter comedy-cuts versus more dramatic edits to see which balance resonates most with audiences.

Built With

• capcut
• dreamina
• elevenlabs-sfx
• elevenlabs-tts
• flux
• ideogram
• imagen
• kling
• ltx-studio
• luma
• minimax-tts
• openai
• pixverse
• qwen
• runway
• thinksound
• topaz-upscale
• veo
• wan