HomeJemari Sapp

Directing AI

How I design with AI. I write the brief, AI tools build it, and I review the rendered work and art-direct the fixes until it meets my standard. Then I turn the process into a system so the next piece is faster.

Role
Creative director & systems designer
Client
TRISP Studio
Work
AI-assisted design, Motion, Social, Systems
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My review notes

Above is a promo I made for my studio’s graduation sessions, shown the way I reviewed it. Each note on the right is one I gave while watching renders, and each one jumps to the moment it changed. The safe-zone and center-line toggles are the checks I ran on every frame.

Claude did the production: converting footage, setting type, compositing and encoding, all written as code. The brief, the shot choices, the copy and every call on what was good enough came from me. AI made the work faster. My eye decided what shipped.

The loop I run on every project

  1. Brief. I set the idea, the audience, the format and the look, along with the rules the work can’t break.
  2. Build with AI. Claude, ChatGPT or Codex produce the layouts, motion, code and copy.
  3. Review the render. I judge the finished frames, not the code behind them.
  4. Art-direct the fixes. I give specific visual and factual notes, and the AI revises.
  5. Ship it as a system. The result becomes a template, toolkit or skill that makes the next piece faster.

Starting from a draft that missed the brief

An earlier cut of the promo already existed. Reviewing it against my brief, I found the problems: saturation pushed up when I’d asked for natural color, heavy dark bars behind the text, prices sitting where TikTok’s caption covers them, and montage photos flashing by in about half a second.

The new cut opens on a question, pairs each behind-the-scenes clip with its final photo, and builds to pricing on photos the viewer hasn’t seen yet.

The earlier cut, one frame per second
Before: the earlier cut, one frame per second
The final cut, one frame per second
After: the final cut, one frame per second

Choosing, checking and correcting

Claude built labeled contact sheets of every session so I could pick shots in minutes instead of scrolling through folders. The iPhone clips were HDR, so they were converted to standard color with nothing added. Every render was checked as stills, with a center line for framing.

Labeled contact sheet of one session
Contact sheets for picking shots
Behind-the-scenes clip frames after HDR conversion
HDR footage, converted without grading
Two frames checked against a center line
Centering on the subject, checked against a guide

Carousels from the same system

The same pipeline made three Instagram and TikTok carousels, with every slide built as a web page in the studio’s type and color. My edits were about tone: softening the closing slide from an upsell to “Sessions start at $150,” fixing a widow, swapping a cover that was already used elsewhere, and dropping “Part 2” so the posts work in any order.

Spotlight Series, slide 1Spotlight Series, slide 2Spotlight Series, slide 3Spotlight Series, slide 4Spotlight Series, slide 5Spotlight Series, slide 6Spotlight Series, slide 7
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An explainer written as code

An 82-second video explaining the session management system I run my photography studio on. Every scene, animation and note of the music is written as code: scenes are web pages rendered frame by frame, and the music bed is synthesized with whooshes timed to each scene change. It has no voiceover, so the type carries it.

These are the notes I gave on the renders. They’re an art director’s notes, and they’re what moved it from a working draft to something I’d put my name on.

My notes on the render

  • The “BUILT BY ME” label overflowed its card. Make it fit.
  • Connector lines have to touch the boxes they connect.
  • Two services aren’t part of the session system. Take them out.
  • ChatGPT doesn’t book the session. It makes the portal from my calendar.
  • Lose the hard-edged shadow under the phone.
  • Fix the broken characters in the on-screen text.

Every note was fixed and re-rendered from the same script.

Packaged as skills

Once the workflow was repeatable, I packaged it as five Claude skills, split by what someone starts with. Two are self-contained, so a creator can run them without me. Every skill stops at an approval gate before it builds anything, because the review step is the part that can’t be skipped.

Starts from
An existing video, or photos and a voiceover
Hands back
A new edit in a look taken from a reference
  1. 1AskOne short batch of questions, only for what’s missing, each with a default.
  2. 2StudyDownload the reference and look at a frame every half second.
  3. 3ApproveShow a style guide and shot list, then wait for a yes.
  4. 4BuildWrite the video as code, check stills, render and deliver.

Runs from my studio folder and follows each client’s saved profile.

Frames from the TRISP promo, 16:9
site-to-video: a TRISP promo built from the studio’s website, 16:9
Frames from the TRISP promo, 9:16
The same script, rendered at 9:16
Frames from the TRISP soft-launch video
new-style-video: a soft-launch video in a new editorial look, made by running the packaged skill end to end

Results

  • The graduation promo was posted to TikTok.
  • Each round of notes became a small edit and a re-render of about three minutes.
  • One script renders vertical and horizontal cuts of the same video.
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