Leverage — Where Your Effort Pays
From Job Photos to a Reel: Claude Drafts It, Skywork Renders It
You already take the photos. This is the twenty-minute path from a folder of before-and-afters to a posted reel, and the split that keeps it repeatable.
You already did the hard part
You photographed the job. That was the expensive bit — you were on site, on a ladder, in the rain, and you remembered to take the shot.
What usually happens next is nothing. The photos sit in a folder on your phone until someone asks for a "before and after" and you scroll for ten minutes trying to find a matching pair.
This lesson is the path from that folder to a posted reel, in about twenty minutes, repeatable every month.
The split, again
The track's first lesson gave you two jobs. Media is the same split, one layer down:
| Claude | Skywork | |
|---|---|---|
| Job | Draft and structure | Render |
| Output | A shot list, captions, an end card | An actual video file |
| Where your judgement goes | The words and the claims | Almost nowhere — by design |
The reason to keep them separate is the same reason as before: the words go out with your name on them, and the render does not have an opinion. If you let the render tool write the words, you get generic marketing copy over your photographs. If you let Claude "make a video," you get a description of a video.
Draft first. Render second. Always.
Step one: pick three photos that tell one story
Not your best three. Three from the same job, in this order:
- The problem, wide enough to read — the mossy roof, the streaked siding, the cracked driveway
- The work happening — a wand, a hose, a ladder. Motion sells the labour
- The result, from the same angle as shot one
That last constraint is the one people skip, and it is the one that makes a before-and-after land. If the angle changes, the viewer cannot tell whether the surface is clean or you photographed a different house.
If you do not have a matching pair, that is a note for next week's jobs — shoot the "after" from where you shot the "before". It costs nothing and it doubles what the photos are worth.
Step two: Claude drafts the structure
Do not ask for a video. Ask for the structure of one. Paste your standing business brief first, then:
> I have three photos from one job: [service] in [city]. Photo 1 is the problem, photo 2 is the work happening, photo 3 is the result from the same angle as photo 1.
>
> Give me a 20-second vertical reel structure:
> - a shot list with a duration for each of the three photos
> - one line of on-screen text per shot, six words maximum each
> - an end card: business name, the service, the city, and a call to action
> - captions for Google Business Profile, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok
>
> Caption rules: GBP 150-300 characters, friendly and local, a subtle "get a free quote", one or two emojis, NO hashtags. Facebook similar and also NO hashtags. Instagram 150-300 characters, visual-first, then 5-8 hashtags on a new line. TikTok punchy, 3-5 hashtags mixing niche with broad.
>
> Claim nothing I have not told you. No timescales, no percentages, no guarantees.
That last line is the important one, and the next lesson is entirely about it.
Step three: Skywork renders
Give the render tool the three photos and the shot list, in order, with the durations and the on-screen text. It is doing exactly one job: putting your images on a timeline with your words on top.
What you specify:
- vertical, 9:16 — that is the shape every platform in the list wants
- 20 seconds or under
- the three photos in your order, with your durations
- your on-screen text, verbatim
- the end card, verbatim
What you do not delegate: the words. They came from step two, where you could read them.
Step four: you watch it before anyone else does
The whole reel is twenty seconds. Watch it.
- Is the "after" actually from the same angle as the "before"?
- Does any on-screen text claim something you did not do?
- Is a house number, a licence plate, or a face visible in any frame?
That third one is a habit, not a one-off. Your photographs are taken at customers' homes. A house number in frame is a customer's address on the internet, and it is your reputation attached to it. Crop it or use a different frame — the same rule the panel's gallery follows.
And screen the photo BEFORE it goes into the render tool, not just before it posts. This is the part people get backwards. Skywork's terms say that content you upload grants them *"an unrestricted, assignable, sublicensable, irrevocable, royalty-free license throughout the universe to reproduce, distribute, publicly display... create derivative works from"* it. Irrevocable means deleting the reel afterwards does not take the grant back.
So the rule is simple and it applies at upload, not at publish: nothing with a face, a house number, or a licence plate goes into Skywork at all. Crop it first. A frame you would not publish is a frame you do not upload.
Do this once
One job, twenty minutes, and you have a reel and the captions to go with it. Do it with the best job you finished this month.
The next lesson is the part that keeps a render from embarrassing you.
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*That is the freebie, and it is a real one — do that once and you will have a reel your competitors do not.*
*When you want the rest of it — the cadence that keeps it going without you thinking about it, the prompt set for the services you actually sell, and the bid work wired into the same pipeline — [call me](https://devforgeacademy.com/consultation). That part I do with you, not at you.*