So the frustration is real. I think a lot of
people feel this. You find yourself writing these,
I don't know, 500 word novels for an AI video
tool. And what you get back is still blurry or
inconsistent. It just looks like amateur garbage.
You're spending hours on it. You're trying to
describe the lighting, the mood, the exact movement.
And the model just seems to ignore the most important
parts. It's exhausting. Stop wasting that time.
I think we've figured this out. The problem isn't
that you need more words. It's that you need
a stronger foundational framework. The real figure
here is mastering seven, just seven simple prompt
styles. Welcome to the deep dive. And yeah, that
novel you're trying to feed the AI, it's not
designed for that. It's looking for structural
cues, not, you know, beautiful prose. We've basically
boiled down the key workflows from all the top
AI filmmakers. And the main insight is this.
The best results, they come from frameworks that
give you directorial control. And these aren't
unique to one tool. These seven styles work across,
well, everything. Veo, Kling, Runway, Sora 2,
Pika. It's about moving from just describing
a scene to actually directing it. So our mission
today is to really distill this craft, to give
you the architecture to stop guessing and start
creating high -fidelity, consistent work. Let's
just jump in. framework one is all about getting
that directorial control over the space in your
scene we call this one prompt style number one
cinematic prompts this is where you use the language
of film to tell the ai what to do it's not just
what's in the scene but how the virtual camera
is seeing it a tiny tweak to the camera movement
can completely change the whole psychological
impact of the clip yeah think about it like passive
versus active observation if your prompt is just
uh an artist in a studio, the model picks the
perspective. It's almost always flat and boring.
Right. But if you start using intentional camera
language, you change the whole experience. Yeah.
It's contrast to static shot where the camera's
just locked down. That gives you a feeling of
stillness, maybe contemplation. With a rotating
zoom in. Exactly. That rotating zoom instantly
tells you something's changing, right? It builds
suspense or maybe a really intimate emotional
connection. The model knows what these moves
mean. And for dynamic movement, you have to be
really specific. A tracking shot that runs alongside
someone, that creates a sense of flow, of progression.
But if you swap that for a handheld drift. Oh,
that little wobble. Yeah, that slight instability.
It injects this human tension, this realism,
that a perfect, smooth tracking shot. just doesn't
have. And we've seen people get really good with
the vertical element, too. A vertical tilt up,
it can suggest something huge, ambitious, maybe
even overwhelming. A tilt down, on the other
hand, it immediately suggests fatigue or someone
searching for something. It's psychological control
with just two words. And the pro move, I think,
is combining these. You can actually string them
together. You can prompt. The camera starts with
a slow tracking shot from behind. Then it smoothly
tilts up to their face and then it circles around
to reveal the city below. That's a whole whole
dynamic sequence built into one cohesive prompt.
So how does controlling the camera angle fundamentally
change the meaning? It just changes how the audience
experiences the scene completely. So we've got
control over space. Now we need to talk about
control over time. And that brings us to style
number two, timestamp prompts. This is so important.
I've tried to do this without timestamps. If
you try to script a sequence, like a character
walks in, finds a key, then reacts to a sound.
If you put that in one paragraph. It's a mess.
The AI just dumbles the timing. It might show
the reaction before the key is even found. Or
it merges everything into this one chaotic simultaneous
moment. So timestamp prompts, they basically
turn you into an editor. You're dictating the
timeline second by second, and you segment your
video into these exact blocks, and you force
the model to follow a precise sequence. It's
how you choreograph something complex. Let's
use an example, like an eight -second video of
a barista. Right. You wouldn't write one block
of text. You'd break it down. Zero three seconds.
Slow pan across the empty coffee shop, stopping
exactly on the barista. Then you force the shift.
Three to five seconds. Camera pushes in close
as the barista pours steaming milk. Very focused.
And the final beat. Five to eight seconds. Camera
tilts up to the barista's face as they pause,
exhale, and look out a rain -streaked window.
Does this method prevent that chaotic randomness
we were talking about? Yes, it dictates the timeline
and the sequence precisely. No more guesswork.
Okay, that makes sense. But what if you need
more than just one smooth shot? What if you need
dramatic visual variety? That leads us to style
number three. cutscene prompts. Right. This technique
lets you script actual cuts like you're in an
editing bay. If timestamp prompts control when
things happen, cutscene prompts dictate a hard
instant change in the camera angle mid -video.
And the trigger is usually super simple. Something
like the phrase cut to or new shot. So you could
have a wide shot of a street photographer walking,
you see their whole body. And then you dictate,
cut to a close -up, a macro shot, focusing on
their fingers, pressing the shutter. It's that
immediate shift that builds impact. But the best
way, the pro workflow, is combining these two.
You'd write zero threes, wide shot, three fives,
cut to a close -up of the eye and the viewfinder,
five eights. Cut back to a medium shot as they
walk away. That's multi -angle storytelling in
one prompt block. Now here's a crucial warning.
Don't, and I mean don't, cut to radically different
visual styles. Oh yeah, I've seen this happen.
If you go from, say, a photorealistic street
scene to like a 3D anime character. The AI just
freaks out. It tries to smear the two styles
together and you get this incoherent mess. You
have to maintain visual consistency. So what's
the biggest risk when using the cutscene technique?
Cutting between radically different visual styles,
it breaks the AI's brain. Okay, so we've directed
the camera and the clock. Now let's get some
help writing the script itself. This is prompt
style number four, GPT prompts. We should be
using AI to help us write for another AI. The
concept is, well, it's pretty elegant. You create
your own specialized prompt helper. You take
a large language model like a custom GPT, and
you feed it the official documentation for your
video tool. So you give it all of Runway's rules
and syntax guidelines. Exactly. And the job description
you give it is simple. You are an expert prompt
writer for Runway. I give you a scene. You generate
an optimized prompt with all the right language.
It's meant to save you hours of manual formatting.
So the GBT spits out this technically perfect,
beautifully structured prompt. It follows all
the rules and it sounds like the perfect solution.
But, and I'll admit this, I still get tripped
up here. I wrestle with a prompt drift myself
when I lean on these helpers too much. There's
a deadly blind spot. And that blind spot is the
visual rendering capability of the actual video
model. The GPT knows language, but it doesn't
know what the video AI is currently, you know,
bad at rendering. Like crowds. If you ask the
GPT for an angry mob of a thousand people shouting.
It'll write you a beautiful detailed prompt.
But when you feed that to the video AI. Blobby
robots every time. Because rendering hundreds
of distinct moving individuals is one of the
hardest things for these models right now. The
human fix is so important here. You have to simplify
the action but keep the emotion. So instead of
a shouting mob, you change it to silent, still
townsfolk watching with growing, ominous unease.
It simplifies the geometry but keeps the tension.
So why is human judgment still necessary, even
with a prompt helper? AI generates technically
perfect prompts, but lacks awareness of what
it can render visually. Okay, that makes total
sense. Now let's talk about making sure our scenes
stay the way we designed them. Which brings us
to prompt style number five, anchor prompts.
This is your consistency insurance. AI loves
to hallucinate away details. The things you care
about most, like a unique scar on your hero's
face. Or the color of a prop. It can just disappear.
Or change from one shot to the next. Your protagonist
suddenly looks like a different person. Anchors
are the fix. they are specific repetitive phrases
you use to lock down those critical details physical
appearance like scars or wrinkles or even more
important spatial relationships there was a great
example of this an orc warrior riding a dire
wolf right without an anchor you get the shot
back and the orc is just floating like three
inches above the wolf's back as it runs it just
breaks the whole illusion so the anchor is a
phrase you add and repeat the orc is securely
seated on the back of the dire wolf Locked in
position. You're just forcing the AI to maintain
that connection across the whole movement. And
they're also great for off -screen details. If
your warrior has armor only on their left shoulder,
you anchor that detail. So when they turn and
you see them from the other side in the next
shot, the AI remembers the armor is still there.
So are anchor prompts essentially just forcing
visual consistency? They are an insurance policy
against the AI assuming details disappear. Perfect.
So if anchors handle consistency, then style
number six, image prompts, is all about defining
the style of that consistency. This is so key.
Image to video workflows are absolutely essential
for professional output. Text describes motion.
The image defines the style. Trying to describe
a really specific visual look with a just text
-like hyper -detailed cinematic photorealism
with a 1980s neon color palette is so hard to
do consistently. Yeah, you'll get 10 different
versions of that. The professional workflow is
this. You generate a high -quality base image
first. Use something like Midjourney or Dully.
That image establishes the exact composition,
the lighting, the style you want. Then you just
feed that image into your video tool, like Clang
or Runway, and use a simple text prompt to describe
the motion. Something like, the character slowly
raises their head. The model keeps the style
from the image, and the text just handles the
action. And this is the secret for consistent
characters. You don't try to generate a 30 -second
video of your character walking and talking.
You generate a perfect, high -fidelity -based
image of them first. Then you use an image tool
to generate variations, a side profile of them
sitting, an action pose. And then you animate
each of those images separately, so you end up
with five different perfectly consistent shots
of the same person. So which is more critical
for setting the visual tone? The image or the
text? The image defines the style, and the text
describes the motion. Simple as that. Okay, last
one. Prompt style number seven, negative plumps.
This is often the easiest and fastest tool for
a quick surgical correction. Yeah, instead of
adding more instructions, you just tell the AI
what you don't want. There's super targeted corrections
for when the AI makes some weird, unwanted assumption.
Like if you're generating a futuristic city and
the AI keeps adding flying cars and drones because
that's what it thinks future means. Right, you
just add a negative prompt, no flying vehicles,
no drones, no traffic in the sky, and it just
cleans the scene right up. They're also really
good for sound control. A lot of these models
are starting to add their own sound design now,
which is terrible if you want to do professional
audio in post. Exactly. So if you're generating
a meditating monk and the AI adds, I don't know,
dramatic chanting. You just add total silence,
no chanting, no music, no ambient sound, and
you get a clean slate for your own sound design.
So when should negative comps be your first instinct?
When the AI's default assumptions conflict sharply
with your vision. Okay, that covers all seven
styles. But these aren't just individual tricks.
The real power is when you see how they all stack
together. Yeah, let's do a quick recap of the
function for each one. Cinematic. That's controlling
the camera. I'm stamp rag. Choreographing your
sequences. Cutscene. That's for visual variety.
GP key prompts. Speeding up the writing, but
with human oversight. Anchor prompts. Locking
in all your details. Image prompts. That establishes
your style and consistency. And finally... Negative
prompts. That's for surgical removal. And when
you look at how a 30 -second short film is built,
you see this integrated approach. You don't start
from scratch. You start with control. Right.
A single shot might begin with a strong image
prompt to set the aesthetic. Then you layer an
anchor prompt on top to lock down a crucial detail
like ash on the character's armor. And you finish
it with a negative prompt to block any distracting
music that AI might want to add. And then you
move to the next shot where you dictate the timing
with a timestamp and you integrate a cutscene
halfway through to jump to a close -up for dramatic
pacing. This whole framework just moves you completely
beyond guessing. It's repeatable creative control.
This is what separates hobbyist work from professional
asset creation. And when you think about that,
whoa. I mean, imagine scaling that level of precise
directorial control across hundreds of assets.
For a full -length project, the efficiency gain
is just massive. That's the main takeaway here.
Prompting is a craft. It needs a directorial
structure. And the future of creative video production,
it's going to depend entirely on people who understand
how to direct the AI, not just use it like a
magic button. These seven styles are the foundational
techniques that every pro -AI filmmaker is using
right now. Master these, and you will fundamentally
change the quality and consistency of everything
you make. So now that you know how to truly direct,
what is the first impossible shot you were going
to create, something that was visually out of
your reach before this? We look forward to seeing
what you build.