  Short videos on social media are the dominant way young people consume
content. News outlets aim to reach audiences through news reels -- short videos
conveying news -- but struggle to translate traditional journalistic formats
into short, entertaining videos. To translate news into social media reels, we
support journalists in reframing the narrative. In literature, narrative
framing is a high-level structure that shapes the overall presentation of a
story. We identified three narrative framings for reels that adapt social media
norms but preserve news value, each with a different balance of information and
entertainment. We introduce ReelFramer, a human-AI co-creative system that
helps journalists translate print articles into scripts and storyboards.
ReelFramer supports exploring multiple narrative framings to find one
appropriate to the story. AI suggests foundational narrative details, including
characters, plot, setting, and key information. ReelFramer also supports visual
framing; AI suggests character and visual detail designs before generating a
full storyboard. Our studies show that narrative framing introduces the
necessary diversity to translate various articles into reels, and establishing
foundational details helps generate scripts that are more relevant and
coherent. We also discuss the benefits of using narrative framing and
foundational details in content retargeting.
