Make a Short Video From Scratch

From a one-line idea to a finished short: concept, visuals, motion, edit and subtitles.

This workflow takes you from a single-line idea to a polished short video ready for social media. By chaining ChatGPT, Midjourney, Kling, Descript, and Captions, you leverage each tool's strength: ChatGPT turns your concept into a script; Midjourney generates striking visuals; Kling brings them to life as realistic clips; Descript lets you edit by simply editing the transcript; and Captions adds professional captions and fixes eye contact. This combination covers the entire production pipeline without needing separate design or video editing skills. It's ideal for content creators, marketers, or anyone who wants to produce engaging short videos quickly and consistently. Each tool handles a specific pain point—scripting, imagery, animation, editing, and finishing—so you never have to switch contexts midway. The result is a coherent, high-quality video that looks like it took a team to make.

The workflow, step by step

1
Draft the script and storyboard
ChatGPT
In this step you feed your one-line idea into ChatGPT and ask for a short video script with scene-by-scene descriptions. ChatGPT excels at generating structured, creative content quickly, and its conversational nature lets you iterate until the script matches your vision. Alternatives like Claude or Gemini could work, but ChatGPT's wide adoption and fine-tuning for narrative tasks make it the most reliable choice for this step.
Hand-off → A script with key visual cues for each scene to guide image generation.
2
Generate visual keyframes
Midjourney
Midjourney transforms your script's visual descriptions into high-quality, artistic images. It offers better creative control and aesthetic fidelity than DALL-E or Stable Diffusion for this use case, especially for cinematic looks. You'll create one image per scene as a reference for animation.
Hand-off → A set of scene images that define the look and composition of each shot.
3
Animate images into video clips
Kling AI
Kling AI takes your still images and generates short video clips that maintain physical consistency and motion dynamics. Unlike Runway or Pika, Kling offers precise camera control and high fidelity, making it ideal for turning static storyboards into lifelike motion. You generate one clip per image, adjusting prompts as needed.
Hand-off → Raw video clips corresponding to each scene, ready for editing.
4
Edit video by editing transcript
Descript
Descript lets you import your video clips and automatically generates a transcript. You can then trim, rearrange, or delete sections by editing the text, which is far faster than traditional timeline editing. It also supports screen recording and multitrack audio, but its core strength is text-based video editing for quick assembly.
Hand-off → An edited timeline with clips in order, trimmed to length, and basic audio synced.
5
Add captions and polish final video
Captions
Captions specializes in adding accurate, stylish captions to short videos and can automatically correct eye contact in talking-head shots. It's designed for social media short forms and integrates well with Descript exports. This step ensures your video is accessible and engaging for silent viewing.
You end with: Final short video with polished captions, corrected eye contact (if applicable), and ready for export.

What this stack costs per month

Running on free tiers4 of 5 steps freethe rest need a paid plan

All entry paid plans$41.98/mosum of 3 published starting prices, one seat each, plus 2 tools without published pricing

ChatGPTfreemium, pricing not published
Midjourneyfrom $10/mo
Kling AIfrom $6.99/mo · free tier
Descriptfreemium, pricing not published
Captionsfrom $24.99/mo · free tier

Computed from each vendor's published monthly prices as we last verified them — tap a tool for its full pricing breakdown and price history.

All tools in this stack

ChatGPT

freemium

General-purpose AI assistant for writing, research, coding, images, voice, agent...

Rating

4.6

Category

通用助手与模型平台

Pricing

ChatGPT uses a freemium plan ladder. Individual plans include Free, Go, Plus, and Pro. Official pricing pages list Free at $0, Go at $8/month, Plus at $20/month, and Pro from $100/month. OpenAI Help says Pro has two usage tiers: the $100 Pro tier has lower allowances than the $200 Pro tier. Business is a self-serve team workspace with standard ChatGPT seats at $25/user/month when billed monthly or $20/user/month when billed annually, with a 2-seat minimum. Enterprise and Edu are managed organization plans with sales-led pricing and optional flexible credit pricing for products such as Codex, ChatGPT for Excel/Sheets, ChatGPT for PowerPoint, and Workspace Agents. ChatGPT for Teachers is free through June 2027 for verified U.S. K-12 educators.

Midjourney

unknown

Premium image and video generation platform for cinematic visuals, style explora...

Rating

4.7

Category

图像生成与设计

Pricing

Midjourney has four automatically renewing subscription tiers: Basic, Standard, Pro, and Mega. Official plan documentation lists monthly prices at $10, $30, $60, and $120. Annual billing is paid upfront and gives a 20% discount, with annual totals of $96, $288, $576, and $1,152. Fast GPU time is included by tier, unused Fast time does not roll over after renewal, and extra Fast GPU time costs $4/hour. The official Free Trials page states that no free trial is currently available on Discord or midjourney.com; only a limited niji journey app trial is listed for iOS and Android.

Kling AI

freemium

AI platform for generating cinematic videos, images, avatars, and native-audio s...

Rating

4.2

Category

视频生成与剪辑

Pricing

Kling AI uses credits for generation. The creator product has a free Basic tier and paid Standard, Pro, Premier, and Ultra memberships with monthly credits, commercial-use rights, watermark removal, faster generation, higher-resolution video, and feature priority depending on tier. The developer API uses Units, where the official API page listed Video API at 1 Unit = $0.14 and Image API at 1 Unit = $0.0035, with 180-day prepaid packages and custom enterprise packages. Official policy states purchased credits are valid for 2 years, regular membership credits for 1 month, 7-day membership credits for 7 days, and daily login credits until 24:00 the same day; failed generation refunds credits, but credits are not cash, are not transferable, and generally cannot be refunded or withdrawn.

Descript

freemium

Transcript-first AI editor for recording, editing, polishing, translating, and p...

Rating

4.4

Category

视频生成与剪辑

Pricing

Descript's official pricing page lists Free, Hobbyist, Creator, Business, and Enterprise. The paid self-serve tiers are priced per person/month: Hobbyist is $24 monthly or $16 with annual billing; Creator is $35 monthly or $24 with annual billing; Business is $65 monthly or $50 with annual billing. The Free plan is $0 and includes 60 media minutes per month, a one-time 100 AI-credit grant, 720p watermark-free export, limited Underlord and AI tools, 1 GB file upload size, and 5 GB cloud storage. Hobbyist includes 600 media minutes / 10 hours per month, 400 AI credits per month, 1080p watermark-free export, Underlord, Studio Sound, Remove Filler Words, Create Clips, AI Speech, 10 GB file upload size, and 100 GB cloud storage. Creator includes 1,800 media minutes / 30 hours per month, 800 AI credits per month, 4K export, full Underlord access, 20+ AI tools, generated video, unlimited royalty-free stock media, top ups, up to 3 seats, 20 GB file upload size, and 1 TB cloud storage. Business includes 2,400 media minutes / 40 hours per month, 1,500 AI credits per month, team-wide Brand Studio, translation and dubbing proofread, custom avatar generation, priority support with SLA, top ups, up to 5 seats, 50 GB upload size, and 2 TB cloud storage. Enterprise is custom and adds SSO/SCIM, granular brand controls, custom AI credits, custom media minutes, custom legal terms, custom AI controls, flexible licensing, and flexible billing.

Captions

freemium

AI video editor and generator for short-form creators, with captions, avatars, d...

Rating

4.1

Category

视频生成与剪辑

Pricing

Captions uses a subscription and credit model. The official pricing page highlights Max at $24.99/month, Scale at $69.99/month, Scale 2x at $139.99/month, Scale 4x at $279.99/month, and Enterprise with custom pricing, with a note that displayed prices reflect iOS plans. The official Subscriptions & Plans help page adds the Free plan, Android-only Lite at $4.99/month, Pro/Starter at $9.99/month with 200 monthly credits, Max at $24.99/month with 500 monthly credits, Scale at $69.99/month with 1,400 credits, Scale 2x with 2,800 credits, and Scale 4x with 5,600 credits. Credits refresh monthly on paid plans, while Free credits are lifetime credits and do not refresh. Unused paid credits can roll over up to two extra months, so the balance can hold up to 3x the monthly allowance. Separate Mirage API pricing is usage-based: styled video captions cost $0.15 per input minute, and Mirage Video 1 costs $0.175 per generated second in 6-second increments.

Frequently asked questions

How much does this full workflow cost?

It depends on usage, but expect ChatGPT Plus ($20/mo), Midjourney ($10-30/mo), Kling (freemium with credits), Descript (free tier or paid), Captions (free tier or paid). Total can be under $50/mo if you use free tiers wisely.

Can I use free alternatives for any of these tools?

Yes, you can replace ChatGPT with Claude free tier or Google Gemini; Midjourney with Stable Diffusion (free if self-hosted); Kling with Runway Gen-2 free trial; Descript with CapCut (free); Captions with built-in caption tools in editing software. However, quality and consistency may vary.

Where should I start if I have no experience?

Start with ChatGPT to flesh out your idea. Then try Midjourney's free trial to generate a few images. Watch tutorials for each tool before diving in. It's better to learn one tool at a time rather than all at once.

What common mistakes do people make?

A common mistake is skipping the script stage and jumping directly to image generation, leading to disjointed visuals. Another is not planning the handoff between tools—e.g., not saving images in consistent aspect ratios for Kling. Also, over-relying on AI captions without proofreading can introduce errors.