Prompting for video

A good video prompt reads like a shot description a director hands a camera operator. It names the subject, the action, the camera, and the light — and resists cramming three shots into one.

A reliable structure

Write in this order:

1. Subject — who or what, specific. "A young woman in a red raincoat."
2. Action — the single thing that changes during the clip. "walks toward the camera and looks up."
3. Setting — where, and what's around. "on a rain-slicked city street at night, neon reflected in puddles."
4. Camera — the move. "slow dolly in, eye level."
5. Light & mood — "cool blue light, cinematic, moody."

A young woman in a red raincoat walks toward the camera and looks up, on a rain-slicked city street at night with neon reflections, slow dolly in at eye level, cool cinematic light. 9:16, 5 seconds.

Camera language the models understand

PonPon's Studio timeline exposes the exact camera moves the models respond to — use these terms in any prompt:

• Push In / Pull Out — move toward or away from the subject.
• Pan Left / Right, Tilt Up / Down — rotate the camera in place.
• Tracking — follow alongside a moving subject.
• Orbit — circle around the subject.
• Crane Up, Aerial — rise above the scene.
• Handheld — loose, organic movement.
• Dolly Zoom — the vertigo effect.
• Static — a locked-off shot.

One action per shot

The most common mistake is describing a whole scene with multiple events. A clip is only a few seconds — give it one beat. If you need a sequence, generate each shot separately and assemble in Flow, or use the multi-shot timeline in Studio on Kling 3.0 to direct several cuts in one generation.

Pacing and length

• Keep clips short while iterating; judge the motion, then commit to a longer render.
• Words like "slow", "unhurried", "gentle" vs "quick", "snappy", "energetic" genuinely change the result.

Match the model to the shot

• Veo 3.1 — the most precise camera direction, plus native audio. Reach for it when the move matters.
• Kling 3.0 — best for dialogue (lip-sync) and multi-shot sequences.
• Sora 2 — when physics and texture realism carry the shot.
• Seedance 2.0 — fast, expressive, vertical-first social clips.

Fixing common problems

Lock the look with a first frame

When the *style* matters more than the surprise, generate or upload a still and animate it with a Start Frame in the video generator. You stop gambling on the look and only ask the model to handle motion. For the fundamentals, revisit Text-to-video basics.