Every month, someone in this sub asks which tool or model will get them the best output for their film.

I work as an AI director at a Korean media company and I test a ton of AI tools and workflows to figure out what actually holds up in real video production.

So I thought I’d share a list of all the best ones I’ve found. Basically, this is everything I would hand a newbie on day one.

Standard disclaimer: this stuff moves fast. Pricing, credits, limits, and features change constantly. Check before you pay for anything, and if you are reading this six months from now, assume half of it has shifted.

Pre-production

Most of my AI films start by locking the look, the character, the wardrobe and the shot language so a video model never has to guess. These are the tools I use in pre-production to lock my look before I spend a single video credit.

• Midjourney: Best for stylistic look development, moodboards, poster frames, character looks, environments, and art direction.
• Recraft: Good when characters or environments need to feel more photographic. Skin texture is usually where image models give themselves away and this one keeps it real.
• Nano Banana 2 / Pro: Fast, accurate, and strong for final frames. Good for character sheets because it can hold a reference across edits instead of reinventing the person.
• Magnific Upscaler: Great for polishing up key frames and upscaling hero images up to 4K. Most of the time you won't need it since Nano Banana already outputs at 4K but when a frame just needs that extra upscaling, that’s where this comes in handy.

Pro tip: solve the film in stills first. If the storyboard does not work as images, the video model is not going to become your cinematographer out of pity.

Scene Generation

Once the stills are locked, this is where the shots come from.
Each of these models has its pros and cons, but these are the ones I reach for the most.

• Seedance 2.0: It is the bast all round model out there. Strng for action, motion-heavy shots, stunts, crashes, longer takes, and generations with multiple reference inputs. FYI, I am still testing Seedance 2.5.
• Kling 3.0: This is the one I trust with performances. Dialogue, effects and ambience generate in the same pass as the picture, so a line in quotation marks comes back spoken with the face matching it. Motion Control takes that further: hand it a reference video of someone acting and your character performs it. Costs little enough per second that I do my roughing out here.
• Veo 3.1: Use this when a shot has to look choreographed and not generated. It takes precise camera instructions and holds references quite accurately. The only drawback is that it is capped at 8 seconds.
• Wan 3.0:  If you're making horror or anything with real violence in it, this is the one that won't refuse you halfway through a sequence due to TOS.
• Runway: It is the safe default. Good references, strong shot editing, and useful when you want to change a shot instead of rerolling it from scratch.

Audio & SFX

Bad audio makes AI video feel cheap instantly. People will forgive a weird background. They will not forgive a dead voiceover. These tools make sure that doesn’t happen.

• ElevenLabs. All my voice work runs through this. It clones off thirty seconds of clean audio and still sets the bar for narration that doesn't sound narrated.
• Suno. Go here when a scene needs an actual song rather than a bed under it. It leads the field on vocals and structure, and it hands you something finished instead of a loop you have to build around.
• Udio. This is the producer's version of the same thing: section-level regeneration and stems, so a weak chorus gets fixed without touching the rest. Check its export terms first though, because downloads have been restricted while the licensing gets sorted.
• MiniMax Audio. I reach for this when one piece has to go out in a lot of languages. Wider coverage than ElevenLabs at lower cost, notably better on Asian languages, and it copes with imperfect source audio when you're cloning off a bad recording.
• Artlist / Epidemic Sound. Thus are licensed rather than generated, and still the right answer when something has to clear for distribution and you need paperwork on the music rather than an assurance about training data.

Agentic Workflows

These have access to most of the models listed above but I would only recommend these if you are doing serious work, longer projects, recurring formats, or production at scale. 

Using an agentic workflow for one-offs is like booking a full crew to film your lunch.

• invideo Agent: Useful for longer projects where continuity matters. You brief it with an idea, script, or shot breakdown, then build the film step by step. It keeps everything you feed it and everything you create saved in memory, and routes work across multiple image, video, and audio models.
• Luma Agent: Easiest to pick up. The frames-based canvas is a nice way to work, and Ray 3.2 image-to-video/HDR output is very strong. Good for visual quality, cinematic motion, and shot-level work.