Get the shot you meant to get
The gap between a generated clip and a usable one is mostly vocabulary. These are the words that move a camera, hold a character, and keep a render inside its budget.
Three things worth learning first
Motion and camera
Getting a deliberate camera move instead of a drift. Push-ins, orbits, locked-off shots, and how to say "hold still" so it sticks.
Start with the prompts →Look and consistency
Keeping a character, a palette and a lighting direction stable across shots that were rendered separately.
Read the guide →Automating the pipeline
Moving from clicking render to submitting jobs: the API, webhooks, and letting an agent do the boring passes.
Read the guide →Copy one, swap the brackets, run it
Each prompt is written for a model in the catalogue and comes with the reason it works. The bracketed parts are the ones you are meant to change.
Slow push in
Camera moves · Wan 2.7
A slow dolly push toward [subject], starting wide and ending at a medium close-up. The camera moves at a steady walking pace, no handheld shake. [Subject] stays centred as the background compresses behind them.
Naming the end framing keeps the move from overshooting into a close-up you did not ask for.
Orbit around a still
Camera moves · Wan 2.7 — image to video
Orbit the camera 90 degrees to the left around [subject], keeping it in the centre of frame and at the same size throughout. Parallax reveals [background element]. No zoom, no cut.
Image-to-video holds your art direction; the prompt only has to describe the move.
Locked-off product shot
Camera moves · LTX-2.3
Static locked-off camera on a tripod. [Product] sits centre frame on [surface]. Nothing moves except [one small motion]. No camera drift.
Saying "locked-off" and "no camera drift" twice is not redundant — one of them usually sticks.
Single-source key light
Lighting · LTX-2.3
One hard key light from [direction] at roughly 45 degrees, deep falloff into shadow on the opposite side, no fill. Practical [light source] visible in frame. Everything else unlit.
Specify the absence of fill. Models default to flat, evenly lit scenes.
Overcast neutral
Lighting · HunyuanVideo 2.0
Flat overcast daylight, no visible sun, soft shadows directly under [subject]. Neutral white balance, no colour cast, low contrast.
The neutral look is the hardest to get by accident — it has to be asked for explicitly.
Same character, next shot
Consistency · HunyuanVideo 2.0 — image to video
Continue from the attached frame. Same character, same wardrobe, same lighting direction. New action: [action]. Do not change the face, the outfit, or the time of day.
Drive every shot from one reference frame rather than re-describing the character each time.
Palette lock
Consistency · Wan 2.7
Colour palette restricted to [colour one], [colour two] and neutral greys. No saturated accents outside that palette anywhere in frame.
A named, closed palette is what makes separate renders look like one piece.
One beat per shot
Pacing · LTX-2.3
A single continuous [duration]-second action: [one thing happening]. No cuts, no scene changes, no second subject entering frame.
Video is billed per second of output. One idea per shot is both cheaper and easier to cut.
Hold for the cut
Pacing · Wan 2.7
Begin on [starting state], move to [ending state], and hold the final framing still for the last second with no further motion.
The still tail gives an editor somewhere to cut without a jarring mid-motion splice.
Guides
All writing →Agentic AI for content creation
What an agent can genuinely take off your hands in a media pipeline, and what it cannot.
Making a game trailer with AI
A shot-by-shot workflow from key art to a cut trailer, with the budget worked out per shot.
Camera control with Wan
Turning flat footage into something with intent: the vocabulary that actually moves the camera.
What Seedance 2.5 pricing means for you
Per-second billing, and how to estimate a project before committing to it.
FLUX 2: technical predictions
What the architecture trend suggests about the next image model, stated as falsifiable guesses.
How this is written
Techniques, not showreels
Every prompt names what to change and why it works, rather than showing a result you cannot reproduce.
Cost is part of the craft
Video bills per second. Guides do the arithmetic so a shot list has a budget before it has a render.
Written against real models
Prompts are written for models in the catalogue, so you can paste one and run it today.
Repeatable, not lucky
The focus is consistency across shots — the part that separates a sequence from a collection of clips.
Short enough to use
A technique per card. Read one, apply it, come back for the next.
Ends in a pipeline
The last track moves you from clicking render to submitting jobs from your own code.
Reading is cheaper than rendering
Try a prompt, price the run in the catalogue first, then commit.