Editorial satire · single scene · portrait 9:16
How to make a satirical news video
A satirical news reel is a single sustained image, not an edit. One AI-painted caricature scene animated with slow ambient motion, a bottom-pinned panel carrying the editorial line, and a music bed — twenty seconds, no cuts. The restraint is the joke: the image holds while the caption does the work. baz ships this as the Satirical News Reel skill, built from a single article and the claims you want to make about it.
The shortcut: run a skill instead of starting from scratch
A skill is a context file that teaches an AI agent one specific video style — its structure, pacing, typography, motion grammar and sound design. Hand an agent the skill plus your product, and it rebuilds that video for you. The steps below are what the Satirical News Reel skill already encodes, so you can follow them by hand or let the skill carry them.
baz is a library of video skills: context files that teach an AI agent a specific motion-graphics style, so it can rebuild that video for your product, with your brand, from your inputs. Run a skill inside your own coding agent — Claude Code, Codex — or directly in the baz editor.
What you need before you start
Required
- The news article text
- The key claims you want the reel to make
Makes it materially better
- A clear editorial angle — what the joke actually is
- Your publication branding for the pinned panel
How to make a satirical news video: step by step
Find the absurdity already in the story
The best satirical reels do not invent a joke; they point at the one the story is already telling. Read the article for the detail that is quietly ridiculous and build the image around that.
Design one image that carries twenty seconds
There are no cuts. The caricature scene has to reward looking at it for the full duration, which means it needs a foreground read and a background detail. A single flat gag exhausts itself in three seconds.
Keep the motion ambient and cyclical
The animation is atmosphere — drifting, breathing, looping — not action. Motion that resolves draws attention to the fact that nothing else is happening. Motion that cycles lets the image sit.
Put the editorial line in the pinned panel
The bottom panel is where the actual writing goes. The image sets up, the panel lands. Keep it to something readable in the time available and in a voice consistent across your reels.
Keep the satire on institutions, not private individuals
Satire of public figures acting in their public role is well-established ground. Caricaturing a private individual is not, and a reel that reads as targeting a person rather than a position is both a legal risk and a worse joke.
Check what is actually true before you exaggerate it
Satire works by exaggerating a real thing. If the underlying fact is wrong, the reel is not satire — it is just false. Verify the claim from the article before you build the image on top of it.
What the finished video actually contains
Approximate timings for a 20 seconds cut. Treat them as a shape to hit, not a spec — the exact durations shift with your script and your music.
| Time | Beat | What is on screen |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:20 | Single caricature scene | One painted editorial illustration, animated with looping ambient motion. No cuts. |
| Throughout | Pinned brand panel | Bottom-anchored panel carrying the editorial line and your publication identity. |
| Throughout | Locked music bed | A single track running the full duration, set at the start. |
Mistakes that cost you the view
A flat gag that resolves immediately
Do this instead: Build an image with a second read. Twenty seconds on one frame is a long time for a joke with one layer.
Motion that completes
Do this instead: Keep it cyclical. An animation that finishes leaves fifteen seconds of a still frame.
Satirising a private individual
Do this instead: Aim at institutions and public roles. It is safer ground and it is almost always the funnier target.
Exaggerating something that is not true
Do this instead: Verify the underlying fact first. Satire built on an error is just misinformation with a caricature attached.
Cramming an essay into the panel
Do this instead: One line. The panel is a punchline, not a paragraph.
Run it from your own agent
Skills are designed to run inside a terminal agent like Claude Code or Codex, against a project you control. The same skill produces the same style whether it runs in your agent or in the baz editor.
npm install -g bazaar.it@latest
# Install this skill into your agent (Claude Code, Codex or Cursor)
baz skill add satirical-news-reel-portrait-editorial
baz project create --name "Satirical News Reel for my product"
baz prompt "make a satirical news video" --stream-json
baz review --summary --json
baz export start --wait --format mp4 --jsonOperations draw from a prepaid balance. See the CLI reference for the full command set.
Common questions
Why only twenty seconds and no cuts?
Because the form is an editorial cartoon, not a film. A cartoon works by being one image you take in at once and then keep looking at. Cutting would turn it into something else entirely.
Can I run this as a daily series?
Yes — the short runtime and single-scene structure make it one of the cheapest formats to produce repeatedly, which is what a topical satire channel needs.
Do I need video editing experience?
No. The skill carries the editing decisions — shot order, pacing, type treatment, transitions, sound design. You supply the raw material and the facts about your product; the agent assembles the cut. You review it and ask for changes in plain language.
Can I run this in my own coding agent instead of the baz editor?
Yes. Skills are designed to be run from a terminal agent like Claude Code, Codex or Cursor. Install the CLI with `npm install -g bazaar.it@latest`, then `baz skill add <slug>` to pull the skill into your agent. The same skill produces the same style whether it runs in your agent or in the baz editor.
What does it cost?
baz bills against a prepaid dollar balance rather than a seat subscription — you top the balance up and each operation (generation, voiceover, render, export) draws a listed amount from it. There is no per-seat fee to make a video, and the price of each operation is published.
Can I change the video after it renders?
Yes, and this is the point of doing it as code rather than as a flat render. Every scene is a real component you can edit — ask the agent to re-time a beat, swap a screenshot, rewrite a line, or change the accent colour, and only that part rebuilds. You are not re-rendering from scratch each time.
Will every video from this skill look the same?
The grammar is the same — that is what makes it a skill and not a template. The content is not: your brand colours, typography, screenshots, copy and data all come from your inputs. Reusing one skill across a series is a feature, because episode three lands in the same visual language as episode one instead of being rebuilt from scratch.
Related guides
Pick a skill. Get the video.
Run the Satirical News Reel skill in your own coding agent, or in the baz editor. Usage comes out of a balance you top up, with a listed price per operation — no seat subscription to make a video.