Modern films speak in messages. The texting scene, the keyed phone, the fictional messenger, the story told entirely on screens. Today that layer is hand-built in a motion design app, bubble by bubble. ChatAnimate generates it from the script, then hands your edit a finished layer it can cut.
Free plan, no credit card. Transparent WebM and chroma green exports from the Creator plan.
RENDER · CONVERSATION LAYER
SCENE 04 · INT. NIGHT · SARAH & MILO
The short version
ChatAnimate is not an editor. It is a generator for one layer of the film: the conversations. Premiere, After Effects and DaVinci stay exactly where they are, because nothing here replaces cutting, grading or finishing. This page is about the job inside the edit that nobody enjoys: rebuilding messaging UIs, keyframing bubbles, timing typing by hand, then redoing all of it when the script changes.
Your NLE still cuts the film
Picture, structure, rhythm and the final grade live where they always lived.
Your compositor still keys and tracks
Screen replacement and handheld tracking are compositing work. ChatAnimate just hands them a finished layer.
ChatAnimate generates the conversation
Typed, timed, sounding and receipted by the engine, exported as a layer the timeline already understands.
The workflow today
Every production meets the texting scene. The industry's own guides offer three ways through it: shoot the phone, place flat text over the frame or motion-design the bubbles. Only the third one looks like the phones your audience stares at all day. It is also the expensive one.
Route A
Shoot the phone
The camera watches a screen. Glare, reflections, bezels and a UI you cannot change in post without reshooting.
Route B
Flat text on screen
Floating captions over the shot. Readable, cheap, instantly recognizable as a workaround from a decade of television.
Route C
Motion-design the bubbles
The version audiences believe. Also a motion design build: UI, masks, keyframes, typing states, read states, sounds, timing. Then the writer changes the dialogue.
The Route C build, priced
then the script changes and the rungs start over
What it does on set
Filmmakers keep finding ChatAnimate inside the same six jobs. Each one replaces a motion design build with a generated conversation. The slates below are the overview.
The texting scene as a clean, generated layer. Platform-accurate skins, typing that hesitates, receipts that fire. Cut it like any other shot.
replaces the motion-designed bubble comp
A WebM with a real alpha channel. The conversation floats beside the actor while they keep acting. No masks, no roto, no key.
Composites in Premiere, After Effects, DaVinci Resolve, CapCut or any timeline that reads alpha. Transparent WebM exports from the Creator plan.
replaces the masked overlay build
Film the prop phone with a chroma display. Generate the real conversation and key it in, synced to the actor’s typing.
Chroma key export runs on WhatsApp-family skins from the Creator plan. 4K Ultra HD keeps the layer crisp inside the display after the composite.
replaces the blank-screen screen replacement
NEXUS, HALO, whatever the script names. A branded messenger built from the skin system, with the whole UI on the table. Section 04 has the surface.
replaces the custom UI build in a motion app
The story told entirely on screens: chats, calls, lock-screen stacks, comment threads, thoughts and unsent drafts. The modes are the coverage.
replaces the whole desktop-film motion kit
The conversation plays as a live call: the incoming ring, the pickup, a running timer, then hang up. Voice every line with AI voices per participant or upload the actors’ own recordings per message. Export the call and key it over any phone, dashboard or scene in post or drop the MP4 straight into the cut.
The same Green screen mode that keys the chat screens keys the call screen: the call background resolves through the conversation’s background, which the key color overrides. Group conversations render as conference calls. Per-message timing keeps the lines synced to the actors.
replaces the staged phone shoot and the call-screen motion comp
Every job ships with the engine standard
the founding note Chroma support was not a feature idea. It exists because this exact shot is one of the reasons ChatAnimate was built: a green screen phone prop that needs a real conversation inside it, without a motion designer keyframing the whole thing at midnight.
Beyond the texting scene
Screenlife stories need more than a chat thread. The comment pile-on, the lock screen at 3AM, the thought nobody says out loud: each mode is a shot type. Each renders as a video file for the scene.
The comment section, staged.
Social comment streams in seven platform styles, with replies, names, avatars and timing. Dramatize the pile-on at the heart of a bullying storyline or the supportive turn that follows it.
The lock-screen stack, any color.
Notification cards pile up with count badges and sound, exactly like the phones audiences know. Define up to five custom apps with transparent PNG icons and any color you choose, so the fictional app can glow green at 3AM. Export the stack as video for the scene.
Interior monologue as a UI state.
The line types, then lifts into a thought bubble above the thread. What the character almost said.
The message that deletes itself.
The draft types, hesitates, then vanishes into an unsent state. Dramatic irony the audience can see.
Cuts inside the screen world.
Lock-screen cards and time-jump cards between messages, plus the cold-open title card of the screen world. Scene transitions that never leave the phone.
The call, as a scene.
A conversation context that renders as a live call: the ring, the pickup, the running timer, the hang up. Pixel-accurate iOS and Android call screens, with the ringtone and every voice cast. Export it keyed against chroma green for the composite.
The arc and the split screen.
Chain scenes with continuity rules or render both phones side by side in a 16:9 split screen: sender and receiver in one frame.
Every mode renders as a video file for the scene. 1080p starts on Lite. Exports run up to 4K Ultra HD from the Creator plan.
The fictional messenger
Real apps date a film and clearances complicate it. Stories call for apps that do not exist. The White Label skin builds that messenger instead of WhatsApp. The Studio Panel puts every surface of it under art direction.
There is no house look to fight. How messages arrive, how they sound, what sits behind them and how the whole messenger is dressed: every option is a setting, not a redesign. Set it once for the production, then get on with the work.
App identity
Name, icon, header and status bar, so the app feels native to the film’s world instead of a recolored clone.
Bubbles and materials
Presets, geometry and surfaces that read as a set piece, not a template.
Typography
Fonts and weights under the production design, tuned to the period and the world.
Message animations
How each message arrives: entrance style, easing and typing feel. Type, Fade, Slide, Pop or Snap.
Send effects
The cinematic flourish on the send button, from a quiet tap to a full pulse.
Sounds
Platform sound packs by default, with per-message clips for the moments the mix needs to land.
Backgrounds
Solid colors, gradients, images and effects behind the thread. The screen is part of the shot.
The composer
The input row, dressed to match the messenger’s world.
Fifteen quick-start presets put a believable app on screen in minutes. Nine design cards keep the look tunable in one place.
For period pieces the standard skin grid carries retro phones and messengers: the Nokia 3310, AIM, ICQ, MSN, BBM and MySpace, so a 2003 flashback actually looks like 2003.
White label ships on the Studio plan.
The cutting room
ChatAnimate does not sit at the end of the pipeline. It sits in the middle, as the specialized stage that hands your timeline a finished conversation layer. Everything before and after it stays yours.
The script
type the dialogue, paste a chat export, hand over an art department screenshot or draft with AI Writer
ChatAnimate
skin, timing, sounds, receipts and reactions from the conversation itself. Voice it or play the scene as a phone call
The layer
transparent WebM or chroma green MP4, up to 4K Ultra HD
Your timeline
Premiere, After Effects, DaVinci Resolve, CapCut. Cut, track, grade, finish
The cut
picture lock. The conversation already believes itself
Handheld shots still get tracked in your compositor, as always. The difference is what the tracker receives: a finished, keyed layer ready to composite, instead of a comp that needs building.
On the schedule
The first pass is never the problem. The fourth pass is. Scripts change, lines get cut, the network wants a different phone. ChatAnimate treats the conversation as data, so the re-render is a re-export.
The revision, re-priced
edit the text, export again. Typing, pauses, sounds and receipts reschedule automatically.
Batch export
Up to ten conversations per run. The whole season’s texting scenes, queued before lunch.
Studio
Presenter pages for review
Revocable links with opening and closing screens, private presenter notes and evidence playback fullscreen. Dailies without an NDA screening room.
Studio
The team, unbranded
Three seats, shared conversations, shared brand kits, your watermark on exports and no ChatAnimate mark on embeds.
Studio
The honest cut
A specialized tool should know its lane. ChatAnimate is not an NLE, not a compositor and not a color suite. It does not cut, track, grade or mix. It generates one layer with obsessive care and hands it over.
Tracking
A handheld phone prop still needs motion tracking in your compositor. ChatAnimate supplies the keyed layer the tracker composites.
The grade
Color decisions belong to the colorist and the suite. The layer arrives neutral so it takes the grade like any other element.
The mix
Final sound design happens in your DAW. Message sounds travel with the export as a guide, then your mix takes over.
Delivery
Export codecs, wrappers and QC for broadcast stay your pipeline’s job. The layer is an input, not a master.
Before the shoot
No. It generates the conversation layer: animated chats, notification stacks, comment threads, thoughts and unsent drafts, rendered as video files you cut in your own editor. The edit stays in Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, CapCut or After Effects.
Two routes. The transparent skin exports WebM with a real alpha channel, which drops straight over footage with nothing to key. Or export against a chroma green background and key it out with the keyer you already trust. Both routes start at the Creator plan.
Yes. Every message carries its own Start Time, Duration and Typing Speed in the timeline panel, from the Creator plan. Match the burst the actor performs on set, message by message, then let the engine handle the in-between timing.
Yes. The White Label skin plus the Studio Panel on the Studio plan builds a branded messenger: app identity, status bar, header, composer, bubble presets, typography and message animations, each on its own card, with 15 presets to start from. Retro skins in the standard grid cover period pieces.
Exports run up to 4K Ultra HD from the Creator plan. 1080p starts on Lite. The free plan covers 480p with a watermark, which is enough to validate the look before the shoot.
Yes. Switch the conversation to Call Mode and it renders as a live call: the ring, the pickup, a running timer and every line spoken, with AI voices per participant or your own recordings per message. Turn on Green screen mode and the call exports against chroma green or magenta, ready to key over any phone or scene in your compositor. Group conversations render as conference calls.
Studio. It carries white label, three seats, batch export of up to ten conversations per run, the API at 30 requests per minute, unbranded embeds and presenter pages with private notes for review.
That's a wrap on the pitch
Write the scene. Pick the skin. Let the engine type it, time it and sound it. The first conversation is free. The layer is yours to cut.
Free plan, no credit card. 4K, chroma and alpha from Creator. Studio for teams.
Premiere Pro and After Effects are trademarks of Adobe Inc. DaVinci Resolve is a trademark of Blackmagic Design Pty Ltd. CapCut is a product of ByteDance Ltd. WhatsApp is a trademark of Meta Platforms Inc. ChatAnimate is an independent product and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any of them. Screenlife is used here descriptively, for the screen-native film format.