Founding teams · applications open
A book has two finished forms today: one you read, one you listen to. We are building the third — the whole work, rendered and timed to its own narration, watchable end to end. The tools exist. What does not exist yet is anybody who has made one. We are forming a small number of teams to change that.
What we are making
Not a trailer. Not a film adaptation, which throws the book away and keeps the plot. Not an audiobook with a cover sitting on it. A chapter you watch, built from the book's own sentences — every shot exists because a beat exists, and every beat exists because a sentence does — and timed to the narration that is already reading it to you.
That is a new shelf, and nothing is on it. The interesting questions are not technical any more: they are how long a beat should hold, how much a face has to change before a reader stops believing it, whether a chapter wants coverage like film or stillness like a picture book. Nobody knows. The people who find out first will have made the thing.
We would like some of those people to be a producer, a director, a character creator and a set creator who have never met this format before, and to give them everything they need to make one chapter properly.
The team
Apply as a whole team if you have one, or on your own for a seat and we will introduce you to the rest. These are crafts, not job titles — the software is a week of learning, and taste is not.
Owns the chapter end to end — what it is for, what "finished" means, and whether it is actually done.
On the chapter
Chooses the book and the chapter, keeps the other three pointed the same way, and calls the approvals that close each stage.
Suits
Anyone who has shipped a creative project with other people in it. The software is the least of this job.
Decides what a scene looks like when you watch it — coverage, pacing, what earns a shot and what does not.
On the chapter
Works the storyboard: reviews proposed shots per beat, rejects what does not read, and judges a chapter as a viewing rather than a gallery.
Suits
Film, animation, comics, storyboarding, or anyone with strong opinions about why a cut lands.
Makes a character look like themselves in every frame they appear in — the hardest problem in the format.
On the chapter
Casts each character to an identity, curates the images that are right, and holds that likeness across a whole chapter.
Suits
Character design, casting, portrait work, or anyone with the patience to reject ninety images to keep ten.
Builds the world the scenes happen in, and keeps a place recognisable between visits.
On the chapter
Resolves the locations and props the book actually names, and establishes how each one reads on screen.
Suits
Production design, environment art, architecture, or anyone who notices when a room changes shape between scenes.
What you get
Credit, by name
Named on the chapter you make, wherever it is shown — demonstrations, the site, conference talks, investor rooms. Your work is the argument for the format; the credit travels with it.
The hardware, on us
Rendering and model training run on our GPUs, not yours. You need a computer that can run the desktop app and hold a video call. That is the whole hardware requirement.
A discounted licence at release
Founding teams get a standing discount on whatever this costs when it is sold. There is no percentage here because there is no price yet — see Pricing, where every number is still blank. We are not going to invent one to make this paragraph better.
First hands on the format
You will have made a long-form visual chapter before the tools to make one are publicly available, and you will know how — which is a thing roughly nobody can currently say.
What we ask
The scope is a chapter, not a calendar. We are not going to hand you a deadline for a process neither of us has measured yet.
What this is not
Here before you apply rather than after, because the alternative is finding out in week three.
Apply
A team of four, or one person looking for three others. Either is a real application and neither goes to the back of the queue.
Where this goes
This form is hosted by JotForm, and submitting it sends what you type to them as well as to us. It is the only part of this site that involves anyone else's infrastructure — every other page is static and phones nobody. Thelegal page says the same thing in the same words.
Before you apply
We would rather you arrive sceptical and informed than enthusiastic and surprised. TheVisualBook pagedescribes the production pipeline you would be working in, including the parts that need judgement rather than a button. Theplatform page covers what happens to a book before any of that starts.