Prompting cheatsheet

Prompting cheatsheet

Frontier video models read cinematography vocabulary. Use it.

Shot framing

• Wide / establishing — full environment, character small
• Full — character head-to-toe
• Medium — character waist-up
• Medium close-up — chest-up; the conversational frame
• Close-up — face fills frame
• Extreme close-up — single feature (eye, hand, object)
• Over-the-shoulder — POV-adjacent for dialogue
• Bird's eye / overhead — top-down
• Low angle — looking up at subject (heroic / threatening)

Camera moves

• Static / locked — no movement
• Push-in / dolly in — moving toward subject
• Pull-out / dolly out — moving away
• Pan — horizontal pivot
• Tilt — vertical pivot
• Tracking / follow — moving alongside subject
• Crane / boom — vertical lift
• Whip pan — fast pan with motion blur
• Dutch angle — tilted horizon (tension)

Lighting

• Golden hour — warm low sun, long shadows
• Blue hour — twilight, cool palette
• Rembrandt — single key light, triangle on the cheek
• Practical — visible in-frame light source (lamp, screen)
• High key — bright, low contrast (commercial)
• Low key — dark, high contrast (drama)
• Backlit / silhouette — light behind subject
• Soft window light — diffuse natural

Motion + pacing

• Slow-motion / 120fps — extreme slow-mo
• Time-lapse — accelerated time
• Hand-held — slight shake, organic feel
• Steady-cam — smooth despite movement
• Static then push — first second still, then push-in

Texture / look

• 35mm film / 16mm film — grain, character
• Anamorphic — 2.39:1 with horizontal flares
• Cinematic, shallow depth of field
• High contrast, color graded

Avoiding common failure modes

• Don't over-specify motion in 5s shots. Models compress motion;
• asking for "running through a forest, jumping over a log, then
• climbing a tree" in 5s yields a blur. Pick one motion beat.
• Subject FIRST, then style. Models read the first 30 tokens most
• closely. Lead with what's in frame.
• One scene per shot. Cuts within a shot are unreliable across all
• models. Use the storyboard for cuts.

Templates that work

Talking head

Medium close-up of [person], [emotion]. [Lighting]. Slight slow zoom-in. Cinematic, shallow depth of field, 35mm.

Product reveal

Overhead top-down shot of [product] on [surface], [lighting]. Slow downward dolly. Minimalist editorial.

Action beat

[Subject] [doing one action] in [environment], [time of day]. Tracking shot. Hand-held energy.

B-roll

[Setting] at [time], [lighting], [weather]. Slow [motion]. Quiet, observational.