Case study15 October 2026Updated 20 October 2026

How Base44’s Apps 2.0 film was made in Plnty

By Shimi Cohen

Case studies
Motion
Image
3D
Art direction

Plnty’s Collections film: Base44’s builder, then the Apps 2.0 pictures shared out of Plnty as a private collection, commented on and fixed.

Base44 launched Apps 2.0 with a film of people building apps with their own name on them.

Shimi and the studio team used Plnty to cast the characters, try their outfits and find the camera angles before making the final shots.

01 / Base44

A launch film about builders

Base44 turns a few words into a working app. Its Apps 2.0 launch film follows the people who build with it, moving between their worlds through water, a stream of objects that becomes a typing cursor, and clothes that walk off a phone screen.

Base44's Apps 2.0 launch film.

Transcript

Narrator. From an idea to something real with your name on it. Base44. Big changes start small. A few words even will get you a fully working app. From a tool only you will use to a platform millions might. From passion projects to enterprise-level systems. Same starting point, no ceiling. Shape it, push it, build on it. Your back end is covered, secure, and ready to launch. What if you can build it today? Base44.

A world for every builder

The brief was a film about what people build with Base44 when their own name is on the app. Each person got a world of their own: a woman whose app dresses her from her wardrobe, a pianist building a learning app with a leaderboard, a maker writing the controller for the robot arm on his desk, a woman in a cafe building a breathing app, and a delivery dashboard tracking a fleet.

Every one of them needed a face, clothes, a room and a camera angle before an animator could start. The studio settled all of that on Plnty boards first.

Four frames from the film in a grid, a woman at a desk in her bedroom, a pianist at his keyboard, a maker at his workshop desk with a robot arm, and a woman with a laptop in a cafe. — Four of the film’s worlds, as they appear in the final cut.

Shimi CohenCreative lead, Base44 Apps 2.0

02 / The film

The film, piece by piece

Here's how the studio worked through seven moments in the film, from changing the words on a page to finding the right angle in a cafe. We recreated the tool demonstrations below with the studio's pictures and prompts, using the tools as they look today.

Thirteen frames of Base44’s Apps 2.0 film, from its first second to its last, each part’s own moment above its bar. — The film’s seven parts, in order. Each one has its section below.

Paper pages whose typed words now read From an idea. — The film’s seven parts, in order. Each one has its section below.

Part 1 · The words

Changing the words inside a video

The opening started with a clip of paper pages full of typed words. The team used aleph-2 and Gemini Omni to change the writing and remove a word that was left behind. The clean title that types across the pages was added in the final edit. You can follow the changes below.

From an idea typed on a white ground, a small paper page between the words. — Their pages as uploaded and after each edit, then the film. Each clip plays as it was made.

Their pages as uploaded and after each edit, then the film. Each clip plays as it was made.

Part 2 · The water

One shot, several looks

The film opens on water and moves into its interface through graphic textures, so the look of single shots was tested as carefully as the people. style-transfer took a dark picture of a hand touching a rock pool and gave it the light and color of another picture, keeping the hand, the ripples and the framing. A few passes gave the opening its options, from warm cream to open sky.

A hand touching dark water in a rock pool, with bright rings spreading from the fingers. — The subject

The same hand and rings on turquoise water with sky reflected in it. — The subject

Three versions of the hand in the water side by side, in turquoise, in warm cream and with sky reflections. — Three looks for the opening from the same subject.

Part 3 · The screen

Finding the screen texture

For the screen close-up, the team tried the same pixel effect on three models: GPT Image 2, Nano Banana 2 and Seedream. Nano Banana 2's version became the pixel grid in the film. Its dotted cursor gave the editor a place to cut into the typing cursor at the end of the opening sequence.

Our demonstration starts with Rothko setting up the edit, then shows the studio's results. The studio made these edits without Rothko.

Sunglasses

Metronome

Two of the objects from the opening run, animated with Seedance.

Part 4 · The outfits

Trying different outfits on the same character

Character sheets let the team try different clothes on the same person. One prompt asked for “Recreate the same character and the same character sheet, changing only the outfit to a {suggest 20 different hipster outfits}”. The braces make this a variable: each outfit runs separately and lands beside the others on the board.

For the fashion creator, video-restyler made the outfit swaps in the mirror. The clothes walking off her phone used first-last-frame, with the flat clothes as the starting image and her shot as the ending image.

Trying the outfits side by side, then bringing the wardrobe changes into the film.

Part 5 · The piano

Finding the piano movement

The first pianist looked too similar to another character, so the team recast him with a beard, glasses and a red work jacket. To get his hand sweeping along the keys, they tried the same starting image and prompt across several video models, then refined the movement with Seedance 2.5. These takes helped shape the rough cut the animators worked from; the final close-up of the hand was made later.

Trying the piano movement across models, refining the takes, and cutting to the finished film.

Part 6 · The arm

From a robot arm sketch to a moving shot

The maker's scene starts with a drawing of a robot arm and ends with it moving on his desk. The team tried technical drawings, blueprints, charcoal and marker with edit-images before settling on pencil. A 3D view of the arm gave every redraw the same pose and proportions.

For this post, we rebuilt the moving desk shot with scene-builder and video-restyler. The desk becomes a 3D set, with the arm and camera movement on a timeline. That gives us a clay clip to paint using one of the studio's stills as the style reference. The studio made its original desk shot outside Plnty.

The scene-builder card holding the desk set, a clay figure in an orange beanie at a monitor with the robot arm beside it, the arm’s moves on the timeline and the To the canvas button. — Our desk set in scene-builder, with the arm's movement and a camera push toward the hand.

The clay desk set from scene-builder, a figure in an orange beanie at a desk with a monitor and a robot arm. — Clay · scene-builder

The same shot painted, a man in an orange beanie at his desk, the monitor showing the arm’s app and the black robot arm beside it. — Clay · scene-builder

The studio's arm drawings, followed by our reconstruction of the moving desk shot and the moment in the finished film.

The studio’s redraw of the robot arm sketch, the arm in the pose from the 3D view. — The arm drawings beside their moments in the film, all following the same pose. The first sketch appears in the film; the other drawings are the closest versions on the boards.

The same sketch in the film. — The arm drawings beside their moments in the film, all following the same pose. The first sketch appears in the film; the other drawings are the closest versions on the boards.

Six versions of the robot arm sketch in a grid, technical drawing, blueprint, charcoal, marker, ink and conte crayon. — Six drawing styles for the same robot arm.

Part 7 · The cafe

Camera angles with the angles tool

Every character needed a room: a cafe by a tram stop, a studio with a keyboard under the window, a workshop with the arm on the desk. Once a room worked, the team used the angles tool to look around it and choose a new camera position.

The cafe was explored from different sides of the table, and the frame used in the film came out of that search.

The woman in an olive shirt working on a laptop in a cafe, a close angle from the board. — On the board

The same woman at a cafe table by the window, the frame used in the film. — On the board

Eight pictures in a grid of the same woman working on a laptop in a cafe, each from a different camera angle. — Eight of the cafe angles, made with change-angle and edit-images.

Overhead
Fisheye
In a mirror
Through the window

What was Plnty used for on the Apps 2.0 film?

The studio cast the characters, tried their outfits, explored camera angles and tested the look of individual shots in Plnty. Those choices came together in a rough cut for the designers and animators to work from.

How do you keep an AI character consistent across shots?

Fix the character as a sheet first, the same person from the front, the side and the back on a plain ground, and make every later picture against that sheet. The Apps 2.0 boards hold a sheet for each character, and the outfits were made from them.

How do you dress one character in twenty outfits?

Give image-gen’s edit-image mode the character sheet and one prompt with a variable in braces, such as {suggest 20 different hipster outfits}. Plnty writes the list and runs each line on its own, so the outfits land side by side on the board, all on the same person.

Outcome

What the process achieved

The characters, rooms, outfits and transitions helped shape Base44's Apps 2.0 launch film. The rough cut made in Plnty gave the designers and animators a shared starting point.

What required manual work

The final shots were finished by the studio’s designers and animators, and the film was edited and graded after the boards.

What remained unresolved

Some of the film is not on the boards at all: the reveal in the opening, the close-up of the pianist’s hand and the desk shot after the drawings. The title typed over the opening pages is the editor’s.

Sources and methodology

The studio's work comes from its seven Apps 2.0 boards in Plnty and the finished Base44 film. Shimi Cohen was the creative lead and editor; the full team is credited above. Our tool demonstrations replay the studio's work with the current tools. The desk set and painted camera move are our reconstruction for this post, and the opening Collections film shows the Apps 2.0 pictures shared through Plnty. The story also draws on a conversation with Shimi. The tool names have since changed: edit-images is now image-gen’s edit-image mode, change-angle is One angle in angles, and first-last-frame is Frames in video-gen.