Melies
All-in-one AI filmmaking platform bringing 42 creative tools and more than 30 generative models into a single workspace, so a solo creator can go from a story idea to a finished, fully edited film without leaving the browser.
What is Melies?
Melies is a web-based AI filmmaking platform published by YUKI CAPITAL, a French company based in Antibes. It borrows its name from Georges Méliès, who filmed a trip to the Moon in 1902, sixty-seven years before anyone made one, and the ambition stated on its manifesto page is of the same order: equipping a hundred thousand independent filmmakers to make Hollywood-quality films without a Hollywood studio behind them.
The design choice that shapes everything else is that Melies trains no model of its own. It aggregates the best generative models on the market and organises them around the five stages of a film: story, visuals, motion, sound and assembly. The catalogue holds 42 tools split into fourteen for image, eleven for video, five for story, seven for characters and five for audio. Behind them sit more than thirty models, among them FLUX from Black Forest Labs, Kling, Runway, Luma, Sora 2 Pro, Veo 3.1, Seedream and Seedance from ByteDance, Hailuo from MiniMax, Qwen and Wan from Alibaba, Imagen, GPT Image 2, Grok Imagine, Ideogram, Recraft and ElevenLabs for voice.
Two features carry the platform's argument. The first is character consistency: a library of more than 150 ready-made AI actors, plus custom actors trained from a single reference photo, so a protagonist keeps the same face from one shot to the next instead of drifting into a slightly different person each scene. The second is shared credits: one balance spends across every model, so comparing FLUX against Seedream costs a comparison rather than two subscriptions. Around them sit 220+ visual styles, 100+ cinematic effects, and direction controls for expression, camera angle, lighting, weather, colour grade and mood.
Clips run to roughly ten seconds and are stretched further by a video extender, and the timeline editor means the cut happens where the footage was made. A second door exists for developers: an npm command-line tool, shipped with a SKILL.md file and structured JSON output, built so that AI agents such as Claude Code or Cursor can generate images and video unattended.
What it does
- Turn a rough idea into a structured screenplay, then into a shot-by-shot storyboard
- Generate key frames, concept art and scene stills across eighteen image models
- Animate a still into a cinematic clip with camera movement and duration control
- Cast a consistent character from a library of 150+ AI actors, or train one from a single photo
- Produce voiceover, music, sound effects, subtitles and lip sync for the same project
- Assemble, trim and export the finished film in the built-in timeline editor
- Drive the whole toolkit from a command line so an AI agent can generate on your behalf
When to use Melies / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Melies is the right fit.
When to use Melies
- Independent filmmakers who want to write, shoot, score and cut a short film alone, without a crew or a studio budget
- YouTubers and social creators producing cinematic video, thumbnails and UGC-style ads at a steady weekly pace
- Advertising agencies mocking up campaign concepts and 30-second spots before committing to a live shoot
- Studios and production teams building previz, concept art and shot design ahead of the crew arriving on set
- Developers and AI agents automating image and video generation from a command line rather than a web interface
When not to use Melies
- Anyone hoping to generate for free: exploring the workspace costs nothing, but every generation requires a paid plan
- Users under 18, who are excluded by both the terms of service and the privacy policy
- Non-English speakers, since the interface and the documentation ship in English only
- Organisations with strict procurement rules, as no DPA, no security certification and no hosting country are published
- Teams needing long single takes, because a clip is generated in a 5 to 15 second window before it has to be extended
How to use Melies
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account on the website, with an email address or through Google, Facebook or Discord sign-in
- Explore the workspace for free, then choose a paid plan, since generation only starts once monthly credits are attached
- Start from the movie idea generator to build a concept step by step, or open any of the 42 tools directly
- Expand the concept into a screenplay with the screenwriting tool, then into a storyboard
- Generate key frames, switching image model whenever a scene calls for a different look
- Cast an actor from the library, or create a custom one from a photo, so the same face carries across every shot
- Animate the stills into clips with a video model, setting camera movement and duration
- Add voiceover, music, sound effects, subtitles and lip sync
- Assemble everything in the built-in timeline editor and export the finished film
- For automation, install the CLI globally through npm on Node.js 18 or later, authenticate by browser or API token, and use the fast, quality and best presets or force a specific model
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Genuinely covers the whole film workflow, from first idea to final export, inside one subscription
- Shared credits across 30+ models, so testing rival engines does not mean stacking subscriptions
- Character consistency across shots, backed by a 150+ actor library and custom actor training
- Credit cost is published model by model, alongside the number of generations each plan buys
- Commercial licence included and output ownership assigned to the user once paid
- Top-up credits never expire, start at 10 USD for 1,000 credits and carry volume discounts up to 40%
- French publisher under GDPR, with named providers, a legal basis table and a documented rights procedure
Cons
- No free generation tier and no free trial: producing anything at all requires a paid plan
- Monthly credits reset each cycle and do not roll over, so unused allowance is simply lost
- Generation cost swings from 2 credits to 400 depending on the model, which makes budgeting hard
- No data hosting country or region is disclosed anywhere in the privacy policy
- No published DPA, no security certification and no trust or security page
- No documented way for a customer to opt their data out of model training
- English-only interface and documentation, with no iOS or Android application
Pricing & Plans
There is no permanent free plan and no free trial. Creating an account allows the workspace to be explored at no cost, but any generation requires a paid subscription with monthly credits. The cheapest entry point is the Starter plan at 9.00 USD per month, which includes 500 credits. Annual commitment is advertised at 20% off. Credit top-ups are sold separately from 10 USD for 1,000 credits, with volume discounts of up to 40%, and purchased credits never expire.
- Starter — 9 USD per month — 500 credits per month
- basic image and video models
- up to 2K resolution
- 1 concurrent generation
- Pro — 49 USD per month — 5
- 000 credits per month
- all models
- up to 4K resolution
- 3 concurrent generations
- priority queue
- Max — 99 USD per month — 15
- 000 credits per month
- all models plus early access
- up to 4K resolution
- 8 concurrent generations
- Yearly billing — 20% off any of the three monthly plans
- Credit top-ups — from 10 USD for 1
- 000 credits
- volume discounts up to 40%
- purchased credits never expire
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Melies handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR compliance is claimed in substance rather than in slogan. YUKI CAPITAL names itself as data controller, with its SIREN and its Antibes address, and its privacy policy dated 1 August 2026 sets out a purpose-by-purpose table of legal bases: contract, legal obligation, legitimate interests, consent. Data subject rights are listed in full, including access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection, portability, withdrawal of consent and post-mortem instructions under French law, with a one-month response target. International transfers rely on adequacy decisions, standard contractual clauses or another lawful mechanism, with supplementary safeguards assessed case by case. The CNIL is named as supervisory authority. No Article 27 representative is designated, which is expected of an EU-established publisher, and no DPO is named.
Who owns the data?
You keep your rights in everything you bring in: prompts, scripts, uploads, likenesses, voices and reference files, which the terms group under Customer Content. YUKI CAPITAL takes only a limited licence to host, copy, adapt, transmit and process that material in order to run, secure, support and improve the service, and to forward whatever a request needs to the AI or infrastructure provider handling it. On the output side the publisher claims no ownership, and assigns to you whatever rights it might hold once the related fees or credits are paid. Private Customer Content is not used in Melies marketing, nor to train the publisher's own models, without separate permission.
Reuse rights
Yes, within limits you should read before publishing. Generated output is yours to use personally or commercially, with no further permission to request, but commercial use only holds where the plan and the specific model you picked allow it: the licence is not uniform across the thirty-plus models on the platform. Clearance, attribution and release paperwork stay your responsibility, especially when a real face, voice or performance is involved. The publisher grants no exclusivity and cannot guarantee an output is free of third-party rights, since AI results may resemble material produced for someone else. Assets taken from the Melies libraries carry their own limits: usable inside a permitted project, but never resold or redistributed on their own.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
No hosting country and no hosting region is disclosed. The privacy policy names Cloudflare for hosting and media delivery, alongside unnamed server, database, queue and storage providers, and states that some providers or their subprocessors operate outside France and the EEA, including in the United States. Where a transfer requires it, the publisher relies on an adequacy decision, approved standard contractual clauses or another lawful mechanism, with supplementary safeguards assessed according to the service and the transfer. Generation requests add a further layer: content and settings are forwarded to whichever AI provider runs the selected model, potentially on infrastructure outside France or the EEA, under that provider's own retention terms. The domain resolves to a Cloudflare anycast address, which identifies no real hosting location. The publisher itself is established in Antibes, France, and is therefore subject to French and EU law.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Melies.
- AI output may resemble material created for someone else: no exclusivity is granted and no guarantee against infringement is given
- Commercial rights depend on both the plan and the individual model, so the licence is not uniform across the catalogue
- Using a real person's face, voice or identity without the required consent stays your legal exposure, not the platform's
- Closing an account destroys projects, outputs and unused credits alike, so export before you leave
- Outside statutory rights there is no automatic refund for a started period, spent credits or delivered output
- Content can be processed outside the EEA by third-party providers whose retention and model-use terms differ from Melies' own
- Automated moderation can filter a prompt or block a generation, and leaning on generative tools for every creative decision quietly erodes the craft judgement that makes the result worth watching
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low for the web app: create an account by email or through Google, Facebook or Discord, and start generating, with nothing to install and no prompt engineering required, since presets and styles do that work. The command-line route asks a little more, a global npm install on Node.js 18 or later, browser or token authentication, and an API token generated in the account settings, but stays routine for anyone comfortable with a terminal. The real learning curve is creative rather than technical: precise scene writing is what separates a generic render from a cinematic one.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Melies
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Melies.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is Melies?
Is there a free plan or a free trial?
How do credits work?
Do unused credits carry over to the next month?
Can I use what I generate commercially?
Can I keep the same character across different shots?
Which models are available?
Is there an API or a way to automate generation?
Who is behind Melies and where are the data hosted?
Is there a minimum age?
Should you pick Melies?
Melies makes a coherent bet: rather than training yet another model, it assembles the best ones and wraps them in the one thing standalone generators never provide, a workflow. Writing, key frames, motion, sound and the final cut live in the same project, spend the same credits, and never require an export-reimport round trip. For an independent filmmaker or a creator shipping weekly video, that continuity is worth more than any individual model, and the character consistency built on a 150+ actor library is the feature that turns a set of clips into something that reads as a film.
The reservations are just as concrete. Nothing can be generated for free: exploring the workspace costs nothing, but the first render requires a paid plan, and there is no trial to soften that. Budgeting is genuinely awkward when a single generation ranges from 2 credits to 400, and monthly credits vanish at the end of each cycle. On the compliance side the picture is mixed: the publisher is French, subject to the GDPR, names its providers and documents user rights precisely, which is more than many competitors manage, yet no hosting country is disclosed, no DPA is offered, no certification is claimed, and no opt-out from model training is documented.
Worth noting too that YUKI CAPITAL is a young company, incorporated in 2025 with modest capital, and that the site contradicts itself here and there on model counts and clip lengths. None of this disqualifies the platform. It simply means Melies is best judged as what it presents itself to be: an ambitious creative suite for individual storytellers, rather than a procurement-ready tool for an organisation with a compliance checklist.
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