Articles

Plain answers about making films.

Each page answers one question people ask when a film has to work. Where Nine does it, the page says how, and says plainly when something costs extra or needs a certain plan.

Using Nine

• A long, a short and a snippet from one filmOpen the film in the chamber, drag the two handles under Cuts to the stretch you want, save it as a version and get its video file. Do it once for each length; the film as it was made is always kept.
• Edit a film yourself in the chamberThe chamber is where you change a finished film by hand: its colours, its pace, its framing, the size of its words, its music and where it starts and ends. Every change can be undone, and every version you save is kept.
• A film from a script or a documentPaste your script, or drop a Word file, a PDF or a plain text file, into Nine's script way in. The film follows your words in your order, and it can be up to 30 seconds on Film and Film + Transparent, 90 seconds on Production and 3 minutes on Studio.
• The same film in several languagesA Nine film is made in the language of the words you give it, so the simple way is one film per language, each from its own translated script. On the Production and Studio plans, extra languages of one film are part of the plan, and we set them up with you by email.
• Let a client see a film and give notesPress Share for review on your film and send the link. Your client watches that version with no account, pins each note to a moment and answers Approved or Changes needed. The notes come back to your film, where you fix them yourself or send them to Nine.
• Transparent video for editors: ProRes 4444 and WebM with alphaA transparent video holds the animation with the background left out, so you can lay it over your own footage or your own web page. Nine gives it as a ProRes 4444 .mov for editing programs, or as a WebM for the web.

Craft

• AI animation software in 2026: which kind you actually needNearly every complaint about AI animation software comes down to one thing: the person bought a tool from one category and had a job from another. The categories are easy to tell apart once somebody names them.
• AI logo animation, without wrecking the logoA logo is the one piece of design a company cannot afford to get wrong, and animating it is the fastest way to get it wrong. The good news is that the rules are short and they are mostly about restraint.
• An AI video generator that reads your website firstThere are two kinds of AI video generator, and the difference is not the model. It is where the thing gets its information. One asks you to describe your company in a sentence. The other reads the company you already built.
• AI video for business in 2026: what it is good at, and what to ask before you commissionAI video is not one thing. It can mean generated footage, automated editing, or a film shaped around your own brand. Each is useful for a different job.
• Motion graphics vs animation: what the difference actually isYou have been told you need animation. That word covers at least five different jobs, with different costs and different failure modes. Here is how to tell which one you are actually asking for.
• How to write an onboarding film people actually watchMost onboarding films are not bad films. They arrive at the wrong hour, in the wrong order, with the wrong job attached. Here is how to write one that a new person watches, remembers, and still trusts in month three.
• Captions and subtitles: how to make a business film work with the sound offMost people watch your film with the sound off, in a room where nobody is listening. If the message only exists in the voiceover, the film only exists for the handful of people who hear it. Here is how to build captions in from the start rather than adding them at the end.

Process

• Hiring an AI animation studio: what to ask before you signA studio that uses AI and a studio that is AI are different businesses with similar websites. Eight questions separate them, and every one of them has a short answer that a supplier either gives you or does not.
• How long does an animated video take? The timeline, stage by stageYou have a date: a launch, a trade fair, a board meeting. What you need is not a reassuring answer but the arithmetic, the stage order, and the two places where animation projects actually die.

Where it goes

• AI video ad generator: what a machine does well, and where it quietly failsThe expensive part of a video advert was never the animating. It was deciding what the advert is for. A generator is very good at the first and has no opinion at all about the second.
• A short film in a tender or a bid: the answer that argues without youA bid is read by people you never meet, in minutes they did not choose to spend on you. A short film is the one part of a submission that still makes your argument when nobody is there to explain it.
• The product demo video is the ninety-second version of your front pageYour front page has about ninety seconds to explain what the software is for. That is the length of a product demo video, and it is enough, provided the film is given one job and the feature tour is left out.
• One film, every format: making one animation work on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, a website and a trade fair screenThe same film has to work in a feed, on a wall, and on a screen in a hall. That is not a resizing job. It is a second composition, and it is worth planning before the film is approved rather than after.
• A hero video on your website: when it helps, and when it wrecks the pageA film above the fold is a promise about weight, sound and attention, and it sits in the most expensive space on your site. Here is how to decide whether your homepage should carry one, and what has to change on the page once it does.

Cost

• A brand film when you do not have a studio budgetMost small businesses do not need a brand film. They need one short film that does one job. Asking for the second thing instead of the first is the difference between a few hundred pounds and a few tens of thousands.
• Explainer video cost in 2026: what you are actually paying forAn explainer video cost is decided by a handful of things you can name before the work starts. Learn what they are and you can read any quote in about five minutes, including the cheap one.

Reading

• Turn your website into a short brand filmPaste your web address on Nine's front page. Nine reads your colours, your lettering and your words, and shows your colours on our films for free. On a plan, it writes a short film of your own in that look, usually in a few minutes, checked before you see it.
• 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, 4:5, where each one actually goesA film made for a screen on a wall and a film made for a phone held in one hand are not the same film cropped. Here is what each shape is for.
• Animation for training and procedures nobody readsThe films that earn the most are usually the ones with the smallest audience and the highest cost of being misunderstood.
• How to give notes on a film that make the next version betterAlmost every expensive revision round is expensive for the same reason: the note said what somebody felt, and the studio had to guess what to change.
• One film or three: how to spend the same budgetThe most common commissioning mistake is not spending too much. It is spending it all on one film when the job needed three shorter ones.
• What a film costs, and what you are actually paying forA design studio will quote you between forty and seventy thousand kroner for a short film. Here is what is inside that number, and where it can honestly be smaller.
• What we measure, and what we refuse to inventA useful check names what it looked at. When there is no honest measurement, Nine says so instead of making up a score.
• Fourteen places a short animated film earns its keepAn animated film is usually filed under marketing. Most of the ones we make are not marketing at all, they are the shortest way to explain something that is expensive to explain badly.
• Your colours, your typeface, and what happens when a brand has neitherA studio with a house style makes every customer look like the studio. We took the other position: the film is made of your material, and where your material is silent, the film says so.

Occasions

• A birthday film: the one occasion where the number mattersA birthday is the one occasion where the number matters. Most birthday messages ignore it or say it in words. A film can make the number the whole idea.
• A Christmas card as a film: the family version, and the company versionA Christmas greeting is the most predictable film of the year, and the reason to make one is not novelty. It is that December is the one month when everybody reads the same message at the same time.
• A film for a funeral, a memorial, or a goodbyeA memorial film should be the emptiest film anybody makes. It counts nothing, it celebrates nothing, and it says only what the people left behind wrote.
• A film for a team, a choir, or a season that just endedA voluntary organisation has the same communication problem as a company and none of the staff. That is exactly the case a template is for.
• A film for somebody leaving, or somebody who has been there for yearsA retirement speech is hard to write and harder to listen to. Counting the years is easier to write, easier to watch, and says the same thing.
• A greeting for the holidays after ChristmasChristmas is not the only date in the calendar that asks for the same message from the same person to the same list. It is only the busiest one.
• A new person in the family: christenings, naming ceremonies, and the announcementA baby announcement is the one occasion film where the deadline is not a date. It is the moment the parents decide they are ready to tell everybody.
• A new product, and an invitation to hear about itA small company launching something on a Tuesday does not need a campaign. It needs one clear film by the end of the day, and it needs to know what to leave out.
• Internal messages that actually get watchedThe problem with an internal announcement is not that it is badly written. It is that it arrives in the same place as forty other messages on the same morning.
• Messages to customers and partners: the opening, the year, and the partyThese four have nothing in common except the audience, and that is enough to put them in one family: somebody outside the business is going to watch it and decide something.
• The big days: weddings, confirmations, and the films that go with themA wedding, a confirmation and an engagement have one thing in common that no other occasion has: two people or two families have to agree on the wording before it goes out.