From music videos to cinematic short films, AI video generators can create dynamic content in seconds. But the quality of what you get depends almost entirely on the prompt you write. A vague prompt may lead to choppy, inconsistent footage, while a well-crafted one can unlock polished, cinematic sequences that feel intentional and professional.

In this guide, we’ll break down how to write advanced AI prompts for video generation. You’ll learn the core elements every strong video prompt needs — like composition, atmosphere, and creative direction — as well as advanced strategies such as image-to-video workflows, camera movement control, and multi-shot sequencing. Along the way, we’ll share examples, templates, and tips you can use right away to make your AI-generated videos more consistent, stylized, and cinematic.

Table of Contents

• What is an AI Prompt?
• How to Write Advanced AI Prompts for Video Generators

What is an AI Prompt?

An AI video prompt is a written instruction you give to a video generator to guide what it produces. The quality of your prompt directly shapes the pacing, style, and clarity of the final video.

Simple prompts generate basic results, often vague or inconsistent. More detailed prompts, on the other hand, let you control key aspects like style, mood, and perspective, bringing the output much closer to what you envisioned.

For example, if you’re creating a music video and use the prompt “a band playing onstage”, you'll get a clip like the one below. It works on a literal level but lacks the style and energy you’d expect from an actual music video.

To make the scene feel like it belongs in a music video, you need to guide the AI with details such as lighting, character, energy, or even the camera style. These elements transform the same concept into a dynamic, stylized sequence.

For instance, using the prompt below produced a scene that is much more fitting for a music video:

“A cinematic opening shot of a rock band performing on stage in a packed underground club. The camera begins with a wide angle, capturing the glowing neon signs behind the stage and the crowd’s silhouettes raising their hands. Rain from the ceiling sprinklers glistens in the colored spotlights, catching blues, purples, and reds. The lead singer leans into the microphone, hair damp, as the guitarist strikes a chord that sends a ripple through the crowd. Smoke machines fill the stage with haze, giving the whole scene a raw, atmospheric, music-video quality that feels both gritty and electrifying.”

Key Elements of an Advanced AI Video Prompt

When crafting an advanced AI prompt for images or videos, the details you include determine how polished, consistent, and professional the final output looks.

Here’s an overview of the main elements to consider: Composition, Atmosphere, and Creative Direction.

Composition

In advanced AI prompts, composition defines what your viewer sees and how they see it. Key elements include:

• Subject: The focus of the scene. This might be a product, person, or place.
• Frame: How much of your subject is visible. Specifying the frame controls how much of the subject and its surroundings is shown.

• Angle: The position relative to the subject. Specifying the angle changes how the subject appears; low angles make it look bigger and vice versa.
• Camera Movement: The way the virtual camera moves. This controls how the subject and scene is revealed, followed, or emphasized.

Atmosphere

In advanced AI prompts, atmosphere sets the context and mood of the scene. Key elements include:

• Lighting: How your video is lit. This might describe the time of day (night, sunset), the light's temperature (warm, cool), or direction (backlit, front-lit).
  Specifying lighting sets the mood of your video. For example, warm light sets a drastically different scene than cool fluorescent light.

• Background: The setting that surrounds your subject. It dictates what appears behind the subject, but it also influences the atmosphere of the video.
  For example, a neon-lit city street will naturally cast dramatic shadows, while a sunset beach will add warm golden tones.

Creative Direction

In advanced AI prompts, creative direction defines the output's artistic vision. Key elements include:

• Visual Style: The overall artistic approach that determines the medium and execution of the output. This could be the format (animation, photorealistic) or the treatment of the subject (romantic, cinematic, surreal)

Cultural/Artistic Influences: The influences that inspire the output.
Unlike visual style, which is more general, influences are based on an artistic tradition or cultural mood. This might include references to media (The Simpsons, anime, Pixar cartoons) or art (impressionism, modern, abstract).

Referencing influences is one of the easiest ways to upgrade your AI prompts, with some of the most popular prompts being recreations of famous artists, directors, or franchises.

Narrative/Conceptual Notes: Even a short clip benefits from a hint of story — is the subject arriving, transforming, escaping, or celebrating? A narrative anchor makes the video feel intentional.

How to Write Advanced AI Prompts for Video Generators

1. Start with an Image and Expand It into Video

One of the most effective strategies for AI video generation is to use an image-to-video workflow rather than generating video directly from text.

Writing a text-to-video prompt can be difficult because it can be unpredictable, often producing outputs that are less stylized. By contrast, starting with image-to-video is easier because you can focus on the look and style of the scene before adding motion.

Imagine you’re creating the opening scene of a cyberpunk anime. Here’s what that prompt might look like:

This prompt was run to create the video below.

The output includes several inconsistent or even nonsensical details, and the overall style feels fairly plain, closer to a generic animation than the highly stylized cyberpunk look the prompt was aiming for.

Now let’s try the same idea with an image-to-video workflow. First, we used the opening part of the prompt to generate a still image.

This locked in the characters and setting, producing a result that was much more stylized and visually consistent.

Next, the prompt was expanded with instructions for motion, turning the static image into the video below.

While a few small inconsistencies remain, the overall result is far more stylized and detailed than the text-to-video attempt. The movement also feels more intentional, flowing naturally from the established scene rather than appearing random or out of place.

2. Direct Your Generations with Camera Movements

Camera work is one of the key elements that make videos feel cinematic. Without specifying movements, AI models often default to static shots. By adding film terminology into your prompts, you can guide how the camera moves and create sequences that feel choreographed rather than random.

Here are some of the most useful movement types to know:

• Pan: A sweep of the camera along a single axis.
• Tilt: A vertical movement, shifting the frame up or down.
• Dolly: Moving the camera forward or backward. This draws the viewer closer or farther from the subject.
• Truck: A lateral movement of the camera left or right.
• Roll: Rotating the camera around the lens axis, so the frame tilts diagonally.
• Pedestal: Physically moving the camera up or down without tilting the angle.

To make prompts more precise, combine a movement type with a pace modifier (slow, quick, gradual) and a target focus (subject, object, or environment). This gives you control over how the shot unfolds:

"Expand this image into video with a [pace] [movement type] on the [focus]. Then [describe the next movement or transition]."

If we applied this technique to the image-to-video generation above, this might look something like:

“Expand this image into video with a slow dolly in on the pink-haired girl, who is handed a cigarette by the guy. The video zooms in on her mouth as she starts smoking the cigarette. This is followed by a tilt up to the neon skyline.”

3. Build Multi-Shot Sequences with Continuity

Multi-shot prompting strings together different camera angles and focal points, much like how a scene is cut in traditional filmmaking. Instead of producing a single continuous shot, you can break the action into multiple perspectives.

Only some models support multi-shot prompting, and each may use different commands. For example, Kapwing uses the Seedream model, which recognizes the phrase “switch camera” as a signal to cut to a new shot.

Adding it to your prompt keeps the same setting and characters. You just specify a new angle, shot type, or action, and the model continues the sequence.

When writing multi-shot prompts, it helps to storyboard the way a filmmaker would:

• Start broad with a wide establishing shot to set the scene.
• Move into medium shots for character action or dialogue.
• Finish with close-ups to highlight key details or emotion.

We applied this technique to the shot below, expanding on the image-to-video workflow:

This clip works because the layered structure makes the sequence feel intentional and narrative — something often missing from single-shot AI-generated content. The wide establishing shot sets the scene, the medium shots carry the action, and the close-up delivers an emotional payoff.

If the AI video generator you're using doesn’t support this feature, you can still apply the same techniques by generating each shot separately. The tradeoff is that style, characters, and setting may shift between generations, whereas multi-shot prompting helps preserve consistency across the entire sequence.

Frequently Asked Questions