Director mode makes a reel from any footage, not just a talking head: drone shots, a trip, an event, product clips, a folder of B-roll. Claude looks at your clips and your music, tells you what it sees, asks a few questions with frames from your own footage, and then edits the whole reel in Resolve.
Director mode is included in Pro, Agency and the trial. See Plans and limits.
Start it
In Claude, point at the footage and say what you want:
- "Make a reel from the clips in
~/Movies/Drone/Sunset." - "Edit my drone footage to this song." (with the song in the folder, or its path)
- "Here's a folder of clips. You decide the edit."
One talking-head clip in a named style uses the normal style flow instead (Editing styles).
1. Claude looks at the footage
Reelport makes a contact sheet of every clip and measures the light, the movement, the cuts within the clip and the sound. For music it finds the tempo and the beats. If someone speaks, Resolve transcribes that clip too. Claude then tells you in two or three lines what the footage is, the story it can tell and its strongest moments.
2. You answer a few clickable questions
Claude writes three to six questions for this footage, each with two to four concrete options, its recommendation first and real frames to look at:
- The angle of the reel (for example "golden hour over the lake" or "the city waking up").
- The opening shot, shown as frames from your clips.
- Length and pace.
- Sound: your music by name and tempo, the original sound, or none.
- Hook text Claude wrote for it, previewed in a title look. You can type your own.
- Captions look, only when someone speaks.
- Colour: each look previewed on your own frame.
The questions appear as cards in the chat. Click your answers and send them.
3. Claude builds the reel
Claude assembles the reel in Resolve as a new timeline:
- Shots in story order, each framed for 9:16 with small zooms, pans or tilts, or reframed onto the subject when the footage is horizontal.
- A strong open, a second beat two to three seconds in, varied shot lengths, and an ending on the best moment or on a frame that loops into the first.
- With music, cuts on the beat (unless you asked for slow). With talk, a visual change every 1.5 to 3 seconds.
- Slow motion for drone and B-roll where it helps, mostly hard cuts, and a dissolve, blur or push only for a change of time or place.
- The hook as a title at 0.3 to 0.8 seconds, captions when someone speaks, your logo if your brand kit says so, and the safe zone of your platform kept clear.
Then Claude tells you in a few lines what it made, and offers another cut, another opening, other music or publishing. Every change is a new timeline.
Variations
"Make three versions" builds two to five reels from the same footage in one go. Each differs in one clear way (the opening, the hook line, the length, the look or the pace) and is named after that difference. With render on, Claude renders them all and can spread them over your next free slots on reelport.io. See Render, publish and schedule.
Tips
- Put everything for one reel in one folder, music included.
- Long clips are fine: Reelport picks the moments. Very many clips take longer to look at.
- Name the platform ("for TikTok") so the safe zone and length fit.
- Not happy with the opening? Say "open on the boat shot instead". Claude knows every clip by what it shows.